Futility Closet - 203-Notes and Queries

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from the rigors of Welsh to the politics of key rings. This is episode 203. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll explore some more curiosities and unanswered questions from Greg's research, including a misplaced elephant, a momentous biscuit failure, a peripatetic axe murderer,

Starting point is 00:00:38 and the importance of the Nine of Diamonds. We'll also revisit Michael Malloy's resilience and puzzle over an uncommonly casual prison break. Okay, notes and queries. We do this from time to time. These are either stories that weren't quite long enough to get the full proper treatment, or questions I couldn't answer, or just odds and ends that wouldn't fit anywhere else. If you can shed any light on any of this, please write to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Here we go. In their 1999 book, The Language of Names, Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays say that the town of Deathball Rock, Oregon was named to commemorate an unsuccessful attempt to make biscuits.

Starting point is 00:01:21 I'm a fire to know more about that, but I haven't been able to find anything anywhere. They must have been astonishingly terrible biscuits to name a whole town after them. Well, I'll sort of call them Death Ball. Yeah, they didn't name them like Disappointing Biscuits Oregon. Like they just made this name that's going to reverberate through the ages. In their 1975 book, The Making of King Kong,

Starting point is 00:01:41 which is about the making of the original King Kong in 1933, Orville Goldner and George E. Turner described the troubles that the stop-motion animators on that film faced. They write, an animator worked for several hours on a difficult scene when he discovered that he had left a pair of pliers lying so that one of the handles was within camera range in the foreground. Due to the low camera angle, it was unidentifiable, but appeared only as an elongated gray mass. Unable to bear the thought of starting afresh, the animator slowly and carefully moved the tool out of the scene frame by frame as he animated the dinosaur in the particular action. Anyone

Starting point is 00:02:14 seeing the undistinguished form moving along the bottom edge of the frame would consider it a snake or other reptile escaping, but it is safe to say that few people would be diverted from the main storyline unfolding on the screen to the extent of giving the animated pliers a second thought. I haven't been able to confirm that, and they don't say whether that scene made it into the finished film. If it's true and anyone knows which scene that is, let us know. I was thinking, if it's true, that means that in the world of that movie, there's a giant animated pair of pliers that lives on Skull Island and has adventures, right? Like it has to fight Tyrannosaurs and cross rivers, which is great. I'd see that movie in a second, King Kong versus

Starting point is 00:02:50 a giant pair of pliers. Fred Astaire was making movies at about the same time that King Kong came out, and the author Brian Siebert gives us an example of Astaire's perfectionism. In those days, it was difficult to synchronize a movie's sound with the image on the screen, but Astaire once called an editor in on a Sunday to fix the synchronization in one of his films. 24 frames of film go by every second, and there are four sprocket holes alongside each of those frames. Astaire would say to the editor, move the film two sprocket holes ahead, and then he'd look at the result and say, no, maybe one. One sprocket hole is about 10.5 milliseconds, and I think he was doing this in the 30s. Another biographer, Arlene Croce, writes, Astaire could detect disparities where everyone else saw wholeness and perfection. The Oxford mathematician Nick Treffin jots down

Starting point is 00:03:35 thoughts on index cards. One of them notes that, according to his dictionary, the singular of the word timpani is kettledrum. I haven't been able to confirm that, but I like the idea. word timpani is kettle drum. I haven't been able to confirm that, but I like the idea. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes routed the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry Regiment. In an interview the following year, the Sioux chief Red Horse said, among the soldiers was an officer who rode a horse with four white feet. The Sioux have for a long time fought many brave men of different people, but the Sioux say this officer was the bravest man they had ever fought. I don't know whether this was General Custer or not. Many of the Sioux have for a long time fought many brave men of different people, but the Sioux say this officer was the bravest man they had ever fought. I don't know whether this was General Custer or not.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Many of the Sioux men that I hear talking tell me it was. I saw this officer in the fight many times, but I did not see his body. It has been told me that he was killed by a Santee Indian who took his horse. This officer wore a large brimmed hat and a deerskin coat. This officer saved the lives of many soldiers by turning his horse and covering the retreat. Sous say this officer was the bravest man they ever fought. No one seems to know who this was. And on and off, I've been searching it for several years, just trying to find out if there's any consensus about who it was. And I'm not getting anywhere. Because it was such a route, there was no one left and no witnesses to explain who it might

Starting point is 00:04:42 have been. In September 1898, McClure's magazine published an interview with the Cheyenne chief, Two Moon, who said, One man rides up and down the line, all the time shouting. He rode a sorrel horse with white face and white forelegs. I don't know who he was. He was a brave man, and then the five horsemen and the bunch of men, maybe so 40, started toward the river. The man on the sorrel horse led them, shouting all the time.

Starting point is 00:05:03 He wore a buckskin shirt and had long black hair and mustache. He fought hard with a big knife. His men were all covered with white dust. I couldn't tell whether they were officers or not. He said the man on the white-faced horse was the bravest man. It doesn't seem to have been Custer himself who died higher on the ridge. One possibility is that it was Captain Miles Keogh, an Irish soldier who led Company I in Custer's battalion, but no one seems to know for sure. The epigraph to Ernest Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro reads, Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Maasai Ngajengai, the house of God. Close to the

Starting point is 00:05:43 western summit there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. I was reminded of that in researching our episode 147 about Italian prisoner of war Felice Benuzzi's attempt to climb Mount Kenya with two companions in 1943. Apparently, the bones of a bull elephant lie on the mountain's north face above 14,000 feet. It was nicknamed Icy Mike by the British climbers who discovered it. I haven't been able to learn anything more about that, maybe nothing

Starting point is 00:06:08 more is known, but 14,000 feet seems very high for an elephant just to wander on its own. The philosopher Bernard Suits defined a game as the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles, which I thought was a tidy definition for a notoriously slippery concept. Gordon Snell, in the Book of Theater Quotes, says that in the 1950s, a member of the public complained to the Lord Chamberlain that a musical review had used the word maidenhead. The Lord Chamberlain's office wrote back in reply, Dear Sir, Maidenhead is a town in Berkshire in which over 17,000 people contrive to live without embarrassment. I haven't been able to confirm that, but I hope it's true.

Starting point is 00:06:46 Here's an odd one. Each day in his diary, the 17th century planter William Byrd of Virginia wrote the words, I danced my dance, usually right after describing what he had for breakfast. It's not clear what he meant by that. It might mean calisthenic exercises, and it might be a euphemism for something more personal, but there doesn't seem to be any consensus that I can find about what he meant. In episode 97, we described a rather horrible axe murder that took place in the town of Villisca, Iowa in 1912, and which has never been solved. Listener Jay Onesco wrote to let me know there's a new book that suggests that the Villisca murders were part of a much larger

Starting point is 00:07:19 series of murders committed by a single killer who rode from town to town by train and killed as many as 100 people over 10 years. That theory is interesting in itself, but the book is also notable because the author is Bill James, the baseball analyst. If you've seen the Brad Pitt film Moneyball or read the Michael Lewis book on which it's based, it's that Bill James, the one who proposed using evidence-based statistical analysis rather than subjective judgment in assembling a baseball team. So it's interesting to get his take on this subject. It's hard to prove the case conclusively after more than a century, but it's fascinating to see him lay out the evidence. If you're interested, the book is called The Man from the Train. James co-wrote it with his daughter, Rachel McCarthy James. Thanks, Jay, for letting

Starting point is 00:07:55 me know about that. On somewhat the same theme, three years ago, a listener sent me an article about something called the Cincinnati Privy Disaster of 1904. 300 children were playing in a Cincinnati schoolyard when a sudden downpour started, and 30 girls crowded into a 10x10 outhouse to get out of the rain. Under their weight, the floor gave way, which plunged them eight feet into a pool in which nine of them drowned, a singularly horrible death. For three years, I've been dithering over whether to make that into a podcast episode. It's an affecting story, but it's really awful, and I didn't want to put people through it, so this is my compromise, I guess. I'll put the article in the show notes, and you can pursue it if you want to. Kudos, in any case, to the writer, Richard Jones, for his historical reporting. I think that

Starting point is 00:08:36 story might have been forgotten without him. Reader Tony Orme wrote to tell me about the Woodingdean Well, a remarkable well that was dug by hand in East Sussex in the middle of the 19th century. It's 1,285 feet deep, making it the deepest hand-dug well in the world. It's deeper than the Empire State Building is tall. Members of a local workhouse were put to work digging in 1858 to provide water for a school for juveniles. Working by candlelight, they toiled down for four years without finding water. Finally, on March 16, 1862, a bricklayer noticed that the crust at the bottom was rising, and the workmen fled. Over the next three-quarters of an hour, 32,000 gallons rushed in, and by April 10, the water stood 945 feet above the bottom. All the churches in Brighton rang their bells to celebrate.

Starting point is 00:09:20 Digging such a deep well by hand is an almost unthinkable task. Toward the end, the workers regularly would have had to climb the height of the Empire State Building just to get out of the hole. Roy Grant, a local historian, writes, imagine climbing that building in darkness on a twice-daily basis using just a series of rickety ladders. I've wanted to write about this ever since Tony told me about it, but there just aren't enough detailed sources. I'll link to a diagram in the show notes. At the surface, it looks just like an ordinary well outside a hospital near Brighton. In his 2004 book, The Complete Lyrics of P.G. Woodhouse, Barry Day says that Woodhouse described his novels as musical comedies without music, and worked them out in the form of acts, chorus numbers, duets, and solos. He believed that a

Starting point is 00:09:58 story should be split up into scenes and have as little between the scenes as possible. The Nine of Diamonds is known as the Curse of Scotland, and no one seems to know why. People have been inquiring into the reason since at least 1708, but there doesn't seem to be an agreed answer, or at least one that I can find, which seems odd because that's, with an epithet like that, it must refer to something very specific. There must be some kind of story, yeah. In fact, it's the Nine of Diamonds of all cards. You'd think this would be understood, but I can't get an answer to that. Here's an odd entry from the diary of the English clergyman Francis Kilvert, dated May 12, 1874.

Starting point is 00:10:30 At the door of the White Lion Hotel in Bath, we found a large crowd gathered around the donkey and cart of the nobleman organ grinder. The disguised nobleman and his organ were putting up at the hotel, and the people were waiting for him to finish breakfast and come out. No one knows who he is. There are many reports. Some say he is an Irish baronet. Some say he is a lord. It is believed that he has made a wager for 30,000 pounds that he will go about for three years with the same donkey and live by his earnings.

Starting point is 00:10:55 People give him gold in the street, and some days it is said he makes as much as 15 pounds. Perhaps he has run through one fortune and taken this means of getting another, or perhaps a fortune of 30,000 pounds was left him to be inherited on this condition. I haven't been able to learn anything else about who this was. Kilvert's diary was published more than 50 years after his death, so even when it appeared, this event lay far in the past. But it sounds very intriguing.

Starting point is 00:11:17 At Strawberry Hill, his villa in Twickenham, the 18th century English art historian Horace Walpole used to call for his servants using two silver owls on perches that had been fashioned into whistles. And finally, I think this is a really interesting story. Last year, a listener told me about a married couple who were said to be instrumental in helping the Union Army in the early part of 1863 when it was encamped opposite the rebels on the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The couple's name was Dabney, but their first names had been lost. They were runaway slaves who had made their way into the Union territory earlier that year. The husband worked as a cook and a groom with the Union, and his wife was eventually hired to work as a laundress

Starting point is 00:11:53 at the headquarters of a rebel general across the river, so the two were separated. Shortly after this, Dabney, the husband, was found to be amazingly well-informed about the rebels' activities, which corps was moving, in what direction, how long they'd been on the march, and in what force. But no one ever saw him leave camp, and he never talked to scouts. Finally, the officers asked him how he knew what the rebels were doing. He took them to a hill overlooking the river and pointed to a clothesline on the opposite bank where some clothes were hanging to dry. According to an 1867 account, he said, well, that clothesline tells me in half an hour just what goes on at Lee's headquarters. You see my wife over there.

Starting point is 00:12:25 She washes for the officers and cooks and waits around, and as soon as she hears about any movement or anything going on, she comes down and moves the clothes on that line so I can understand it in a minute. That gray shirt is Longstreet, and when she takes it off, it means he's gone down about Richmond. That white shirt means Hill, and when she moves it up to the west end of the line, Hill's Corps has moved upstream. That red one is Stonewall. He's down on the right now, and if he moves, she will move that red shirt. This came to be called the clothesline telegraph. It said that it was a key source of information

Starting point is 00:12:53 for the Union in the weeks leading up to the Battle of Chancellorsville. This is a great story, but it's so good that I think if it were true, it would be better known. I haven't found it in the most authoritative sources, and experience has taught me to be skeptical. But I haven't found anyone saying outright that it's false either. If anyone knows any more about that, please let me know. So that's it. If you know anything about any of these items, or have a story idea, or just want to talk to us, we're always glad to get your emails. You can reach us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. We frequently tell you that our podcast would not still be here if it weren't for the support that we get from our listeners and that really is the case

Starting point is 00:13:39 If you've been listening to our show you'll know that there's a Patreon campaign to support the podcast and that is the main thing that keeps this show going. But if you like the show and want to support us in other ways, there are other things you can do to help us out. You can make a one-time donation on the website at futilitycloset.com. And we can always use help spreading the word about our show. So if you like the podcast, please consider recommending it to your friends or giving it a rating on Apple Podcasts or other podcast directories. And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign, for a dollar an episode, you'll get access to bonus content, such as

Starting point is 00:14:15 outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks into what goes on behind the scenes of the show. You can find more information on that at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or on the Support Us page of the website. And thanks so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. We really couldn't do this without you. Several of our listeners wrote in about the story of Michael Malloy in episode 198. For example, Stanislav Stankovic said, Dear Sharon, Greg, and Sasha, in episode 198 of your great podcast, you were talking about

Starting point is 00:14:51 a curious case of Michael Malloy, a victim of an insurance fraud who managed to survive several murder attempts. I think I have a clue why at least some of the early attempts to end his life might have failed. You mentioned that the perpetrators of the fraud attempted to first make him drink himself to death and then poison him with wood alcohol. These two methods of poisoning might have actually worked against each other. What is known as wood alcohol is a chemical mixture in which the main ingredient is a type of alcohol known as methanol. Methanol actually becomes toxic as it gets broken down by liver enzymes to two toxic organic compounds. One of the antidotes for methanol poisoning is ethanol, a type of alcohol that is the main active component

Starting point is 00:15:30 in alcoholic beverages. As an antidote to methanol poisoning, it acts by the mechanism of so-called competitive inhibition. Ethanol molecules can make bonds with liver enzymes more easily than methanol molecules can. In essence, ethanol molecules crowd out methanol molecules. So by giving Malloy plenty of regular alcohol first, the would-be murderers basically neutralized the potential toxicity of the wood alcohol that he drank next. That is almost poetic. That they got it wrong like that?

Starting point is 00:16:01 Yeah, I mean, it's inept enough. The original story is just astonishingly inept. I think they tried to kill him five times and failed each time. But here, they actually gave him the antidote while they were giving him the poison by accident. By accident, right. Stanislav also said, furthermore, dosing stale oysters and other food in heavy amounts of methanol probably helped disinfect them, killing all the microorganisms that might have spawned there. And Stanislav added,

Starting point is 00:16:31 using ethanol as an antidote to methanol poisoning is a part of lore in countries where accidental methanol poisonings are more common, such as Russia. Methanol can creep into badly produced moonshine. Local recommendation is to drink beer along with such booze, just to be on the safe side. As beer is an industrial product and a result of a much more controlled process, there is a far lesser chance for it to contain this dangerous substance. So there's a possible safety tip for today if you happen to be planning to drink badly produced homemade alcohol.

Starting point is 00:17:01 I'm glad he wrote in because when I was researching, I thought, this can't be true. You can't just drink a whole, you know, topical wood alcohol. Yeah, that was confusing. But everyone said that's what happened. Right. And several people did write in to let us know that there is a really good reason for why it didn't work. Tucker Drake wrote to say that there was an episode of a British TV series that addressed this fact about wood alcohol. Tucker said, As I was listening to episode 198, where you talked about the bumbling efforts to kill Michael Malloy, my mind immediately flashed to the wrong goodbye episode from season four of Doc Martin.

Starting point is 00:17:38 In that episode, Doc Martin uses a bottle of 100-proof vodka to save a man's life from wood alcohol poisoning while he delivers his wife's baby in the bar. And Tucker thought that we could use the Doc Martin situation for a lateral thinking puzzle in which no one would die. And that would have been a cute idea, but perhaps would have been a bit difficult to guess if you didn't know the fact behind it. Yeah, that's true. With yes or no question. Tucker also said, as for why the sandwich with tin shavings in it didn't kill Malloy, there are a couple of possibilities. One is that Malloy probably didn't have very good teeth, so he likely gummed the sandwich, and this would have meant

Starting point is 00:18:15 that there was a protective coating of food around the metal, enabling it to pass safely through his system. Another possibility is that since tin dissolves readily in stomach acid, the metal never got much of a chance to cut him before it was gone. And those are some interesting possibilities for why the tin shavings didn't seem to affect Malloy. I tried looking into stomach acid dissolving tin and was able to learn that stomach acid really is fairly acidic. Stomach acid contains hydrochloric acid, which can dissolve many metals, though I wasn't able to find out just how quickly it does that, particularly for tin. I did find a published study where researchers examined how much of a razor blade would be dissolved by simulated gastric

Starting point is 00:18:57 juices in 24 hours, and the answer to that is about 37% by weight. Pennies, on the other hand, were unaffected, and little cell batteries were found not to leak in that time frame. But unfortunately, they didn't test tin shavings in this study, apparently because they are not as likely to be swallowed. They were actually just testing for how concerned to be about different things if patients swallow them, and apparently there just aren't that many people swallowing tin shavings these days. It's good they test those things, though.

Starting point is 00:19:28 The little I could find on hydrochloric acid in tin sounded like tin will dissolve pretty slowly in dilute hydrochloric acid, but rather rapidly in concentrated acid, especially if it's heated. So maybe it just depends how acidic Malloy's stomach was, though I like Tucker's idea that maybe the shavings being embedded in food made them less harmful too. So that's three out of five, or I guess six, murder attempts where they sort of foiled themselves. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:56 You'd think they could just, in theory, they could just do that perpetually, you know, just like try for years and years and never quite manage to kill him. One of the other emails we received on this subject came from Elone Etan, who I wanted to note for his sending of a very helpful recording of his name for me and for sending in a screenshot of his podcast app to show us that our podcast is number one for him. So thank you, Elone, and to everyone else who wrote in on this topic. And a few listeners let us know that a puzzle in episode 200, spoiler alert, about sailors who can't get aboard their yacht is similar to the plot of a movie.

Starting point is 00:20:33 For example, Charlie Draper wrote, one of your latest lateral thinking puzzles bears striking resemblance to the plot of this terrible movie. The film claims to be based on a true story, but I can find no reputable evidence this is accurate. Open Water 2 Adrift is a 2006 horror film about six adults who try to survive a series of rather dramatic incidents after they all leave the boat they were on and then realize they haven't lowered the swim ladder to get back aboard. According to IMDb, the tagline of the movie is, in the water no one can hear you scream, which I guess is a variation, the tagline of the movie is, In the water, no one can hear you scream. Which I guess is a variation on the tagline from the movie Alien.

Starting point is 00:21:10 In space, no one can hear you scream. That's not true, though. I know. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. It doesn't really work. I know. And the movie poster actually shows a woman whose head is above water, apparently screaming. And I'm thinking, well, I think people can hear you in that situation, but okay. Anyway, it seemed to me

Starting point is 00:21:30 that if this movie really is based on a true story, that it must be based pretty loosely. But for a related story that did actually happen, Mark Sauerwald wrote, Greetings, Greg, Sasha, and Sharon. The abandoned boat puzzle made me remember something that happened to me about 30 years ago. There were a group of us, all amateur scuba divers and all quite experienced, who were camping in Baja, California and diving. We brought with us two inflatable boats, each one capable of carrying six to eight divers. One morning we took both boats out to a location offshore where there is a pinnacle that rises from very deep to about 30 feet below the surface. There is a lot of wildlife on these

Starting point is 00:22:10 pinnacles so they are a great place to dive but they're quite far offshore so from an inflatable boat you can't see the shore. There were a total of eight of us, four in each boat. We got to the site, dropped anchor next to each other, geared up and dropped into the ocean. My buddy and I got to the surface and the other pair was already in the boat so we pulled anchor and went back into shore. One of the pairs from the other boat got back to their boat climbed in and found the tank in gear from one of the divers of the other pair from that boat in the bottom of the boat but neither of the other pair were in the boat. They waited for a little while and then assumed that the remaining pair had come up one of them had dropped his gear in the boat and then they had joined us in the boat. They waited for a little while and then assumed that the remaining pair had come up. One of them had dropped his gear in the boat and then they had joined us in the first boat and

Starting point is 00:22:47 went back. So the second boat returned to shore with only two divers in it, expecting to find the other pair at our camp. What turns out happened was that the missing pair was the first pair to get back to the boat. One of them got into the boat and took off his tank and weight belt. His buddy was having a hard time fighting the current, so he dove back into the water to help his buddy, and they both ended up being carried off in the current. It took us almost all day to find the two missing divers. We took our boats out to search for them and alerted the nearest place where there were people, a small fishing village, which also sent out all of their boats. We found them late in the afternoon, about three miles from where we had done our dive. This was before cell phones, and it was difficult to call for help. And that all sounded pretty scary to us, so Greg wrote back to Mark asking whether

Starting point is 00:23:29 the missing divers had been okay, and Mark said, the divers, George and John, were okay. They were wearing dry suits, which provided much more insulation than wet suits, so they survived the cold. John, the one who had not dropped his gear in the boat, took off his weight belt, removed the weights, and used the belt to tie the two of them together. Since then, when leaving an empty boat for a dive, we have always taken a long rope with a float on the end of it and put it out, so that you could swim over to the rope and then pull yourself back to the boat if there is a bad current. So, possibly a second safety tip from our listener mail today. And if they hadn't found the pair of divers, it sounded to me like one of the types of mysteries that we sometimes cover on the show.

Starting point is 00:24:09 Like they find just one person's gear inside the boat, but no sign of either person. And it becomes rather puzzling to work out just what might've happened. But luckily this story had a much better ending to it. That must've been, I mean, I'm glad there's a happy ending, but that must've been terrifying for them. It sounds like they spent hours in the water not knowing if they would be found in time.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Right. Yeah. And, you know, pre-cell phones, pre-having no way to call anybody and tell them where your location is or anything. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks so much to everyone who writes into us. And I do still really appreciate pronunciation help for tricky names.

Starting point is 00:24:43 If you would like the chance to hear me try to pronounce your name, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Esmeraldo Rupp Spangle. In 2017, Peruvian burglar Alexander Jefferson Delgado was midway through a 16-year sentence when one day he simply walked out of prison. He passed through six checkpoints, all of which let him go, though he was wearing no disguise. How did he manage this? I'm going to assume it wasn't that he was just let out, right?

Starting point is 00:25:30 I could do that someday. Yeah, I mean, it was just time for him to go. They, you know, they paroled him or whatever. That's lateral. That's an unexpected solution. No, that's not it. Time off for good behavior. Okay, so I am to assume that he was not supposed to be leaving the prison, but he did anyway. Right. In fact, he was only two years into his 16-year sentence. Okay.

Starting point is 00:25:51 So it's kind of like, how did he walk out? And you say he walked out. Yes. Okay. So he wasn't dead. He wasn't carried out or carried out unconscious.

Starting point is 00:26:03 And you said he wasn't wearing a disguise. Right. Did any other prisoners leave at the same time? No. Okay. Does it matter that it was in Peru? Not particularly, no.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Okay. Was there some special event occurring that allowed for this? Like there was a catastrophe or weather conditions or a blackout or you know like some special event that made this easier for him no okay um and he walked out alone yes uh was he wearing his prison clothing no aha was he wearing something else yes okay so he wasn't wearing something else. I think they would have stopped him. He couldn't take it. But you said he wasn't wearing a disguise. Right. So his face was visible?

Starting point is 00:26:51 Yes. But he was wearing clothing that made it look like he had a different identity or a different occupation? Yes. Was he wearing prison garb? No. I mean, prisoner guard outfit. No. A prisoner guard outfit. No, he wasn't. No. Was he disguised as a garb? No. I mean, prisoner guard outfit. No. A prisoner guard outfit. No, he wasn't.

Starting point is 00:27:06 No. Was he disguised as a particular occupation? No. But he was disguised as a... Oh, was he disguised as a woman? No. No. And that would be disguised.

Starting point is 00:27:18 But his clothing made it appear like he was a visitor? Yes. So did he swap clothes with a visitor? Yes. Is there more to it than that? Yes, there is. A a visitor? Yes. So did he swap clothes with a visitor? Yes. Is there more to it than that? Yes, there is. A specific visitor? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:30 Was he disguised as like Santa Claus or something? Oh my God, that's brilliant. That would be really cute if somebody comes to be Santa Claus and put on the Santa outfit. No, I wish I could say yes, but no, that's not it. Okay, so a specific visitor had come. Yes. Was this coordinated with this prisoner that they were going to swap clothing? No.

Starting point is 00:27:48 Ah. A specific visitor had come. Does it matter how he obtained the visitor's clothing? Did he work in the laundry, for example? No. These are all great guesses, but no, that's not it. So he did something, you would say, like clever or cunning to get this clothing from the visitor? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:11 Okay. And it's a specific visitor. Like I need to work out the specific identity of the visitor. That would be the most useful thing. Really? Okay. So is it a visitor that had some kind of relationship or connection to this prisoner? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:23 It is. Did he have an identical twin? Yes, he did. Delgado's twin brother Giancarlo visited him in his cell and Alexandra gave him a soda laced with sedatives. Oh my. Then Alexandra swapped clothes with him and walked out pretending to be his own twin brother. The checkpoints should have noticed that he didn't have a visitor stamp on his arm, but they didn't. When Giancarlo woke up, he protested, but the prison authorities didn't believe him until he convinced them to check his fingerprints. Then the prison warden and a number of guards were fired. Alexander evaded authorities for more than a year. He was

Starting point is 00:28:52 finally captured in February 2018. Asked whether he still loved his brother, Giancarlo said, yes, I do love him. Asked whether he forgave him, he said, I need to speak with him about that. So that's a real warning. If anybody has a twin, do not go visit them in prison. So thank you, Esmeralda. Yes. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported primarily by our awesome listeners. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:29:37 While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 compendious amusements. Check out the Futility Closet store in case you want a mug or a t-shirt. Learn about the Futility Closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can send us an email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All the exceptional music that you hear in our shows was written and performed by Greg's talented brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 203-Notes and Queries

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.