Futility Closet - 229-The Stone of Destiny

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 a house made of paper to a murderous roller coaster. This is episode 229. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1950, four patriotic Scots broke into Westminster Abbey to steal the Stone of Scone, a symbol of Scottish independence that had lain there for 600 years. In today's show, we'll follow the memorable events

Starting point is 00:00:39 of that evening and their meaning for the participants, their nation, and the United Kingdom. We'll also evade a death ray and puzzle over Santa's correspondence. The Stone of Scone is an oblong block of red sandstone that's one of the earliest symbols of Scottish nationhood. According to legend, Jacob used it as a pillow in biblical times when he dreamed of a ladder to legend, Jacob used it as a pillow in biblical times when he dreamed of a ladder to heaven, and later it made its way through Egypt, Spain, and Ireland to Schoon Abbey in Scotland in 846. For 400 years, it was used in the crowning ceremony for Scottish kings. That was until 1296, when King Edward I of England took the stone as a spoil of war during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Starting point is 00:01:23 He took it to Westminster Abbey in London and had it fitted into the base of a special coronation chair. Edward II was crowned on that chair in 1307, and so was nearly every king and queen of England since then. To patriotic Scots, this makes the stone an emblem of strained relations with England. By moving the stone to London, Edward was declaring himself King of the Scots. Generations of patriotic Scots resented the stone's removal and demanded its return. That was particularly true just after World War II, when two million Scots signed a covenant asking for some measure of home rule within the United Kingdom. When the government essentially ignored that request, a 25-year-old Scottish law student named Ian Hamilton decided to do something about it. He would go to London,

Starting point is 00:02:05 break into Westminster Abbey, remove the stone from the coronation chair, and return it to Scotland. He was serious. In November of 1950, he went to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and took out every book he could find on Westminster Abbey and the Stone of Scone. He drew maps, made calculations, and studied photographs. And he drove down to London to reconnoiter. He studied the stone in Westminster Abbey. It was a block of rough-hewn sandstone, about 27 inches long, fitted into the wooden coronation chair. He guessed it couldn't weigh more than 300 pounds, though he discovered later that it was more than 400. He asked a guide how they kept the Abbey so clean. There must be an army of cleaners every night. He was told there wasn't. He wandered the back streets to examine

Starting point is 00:02:42 approaches to the building, and he came back at night to study security. He saw only one policeman 300 yards away. That convinced him that the theft was really feasible, and he went back to Glasgow and set about making firm plans. It would be impossible to steal the stone by daylight, so he decided to organize a night raid using the smallest possible number of people. If they managed to liberate the stone from the abbey, the English would raise an alarm and block the roads north to Scotland, so he resolved to hide the stone in Dartmoor, southwest of London, until the coast was clear. To help him, he approached three sympathetic friends, Alan Stewart and Gavin Vernon, who were both engineering students, and Kay Matheson, a domestic science teacher. At 25, Ian was the oldest of the group. They reviewed the maps and

Starting point is 00:03:23 diagrams, Ian gathered some tools, and they found two cars they could drive to London. They set out a few days before Christmas 1950. The journey to London took 20 hours in an era when there were no heaters in cars, but they reached the city safely on December 23rd and went into the Abbey together to reconnoiter. After some discussion, they decided to act immediately that evening. Ian would find a hiding place in the abbey just before closing time, and after the night watchman had finished his rounds, he would get one of the doors open, and he and a helper would carry the stone to a car.

Starting point is 00:03:54 Ian stowed his tools about him. They parked a car outside the abbey, and Ian arrived at the building just as Big Ben struck 515. He walked innocently up the north transept, and as he reached the top, he crawled under a window cleaner's trolley, covered his face with his coat, and lay still. He heard the clock strike quarter to six, then the hour. The building closed at six. He waited another 15 minutes, emerged to find the Abbey dark, took off his shoes, and had gone three paces when a watchman shone a light in his face and said, what the devil are you doing here? He said he'd been shut in and was concerned that he'd be in trouble, so he'd taken off his shoes to avoid getting caught.

Starting point is 00:04:28 He gave a fake name and address to the watchman, who set him outside and wished him Merry Christmas. That was embarrassing, but it hadn't revealed their plan. Ian reconnected with the others, and they held another council. They figured their only chance now was to break in from the outside. The best option was to force their way through the door to Poet's Corner, the most secluded door in the Abbey and the only one made of pine, all the others were of oak. They'd still have the watchman to contend with, but they imagined he made his rounds only every two hours at most. They waited until 4 a.m. on Christmas morning. Kay waited in the getaway car near the church, and the others made their way to the door at Poet's Corner and jimmied it open. There was no sign of the watchman. They went down the transept through a gate up into the Confessor's Chapel, which was

Starting point is 00:05:08 in darkness, and lifted the rail that kept back the public. Now the stone was before them, breast high in an aperture under the seat of the coronation chair. They removed the bar of wood that kept it in place, but even so the stone turned out to be enormously hard to budge, and they had to pull, shove, and jimmy it in silence to avoid alerting the night watchman. At one point, the plaque saying coronation chair and stone fell off the display, but Ian caught it in midair and put it in his pocket. All their care was misplaced, though, because when the stone finally came free, it toppled over and smashed into two pieces. Ian later said, people always think I must have been horrified, but it made it easier to carry. He took up the smaller piece, which still weighed about 100 pounds, got it out to the car,

Starting point is 00:05:47 told Kay they'd broken it, and went back to help the others, who were dragging the larger piece along in Ian's coat. As they turned into the transept, they heard a crunching noise. The plaque, which was still in the coat pocket, had fallen out, and the whole weight of the stone had passed over it. As they emerged from the door, they saw that Kay had pulled the car forward. Ian ran to her and said, get the car back. We're not ready yet. She said, a policeman has seen me. He's coming across the road. Ian got into the car, closed the door, switched on the side lights, wiped the dust from his hands, threw Alan's spare jacket over the stone in the back seat, and took Kay in his arms. The policeman reached them and said, what's going on here? Ian said,

Starting point is 00:06:22 it's Christmas Eve, you know, officer. The policeman said, Christmas Eve, be damned, it's five o'clock Christmas morning. Kay said, is it that time already? The policeman said, you're on private property, you should be off home. Ian explained that they were on holiday from Scotland and had arrived in London too late to get a room. The policeman, who was apparently bored, lit a cigarette and started talking to them. Alan and Gavin, who hadn't heard him, were still struggling audibly with the stone, so Kay and Ian laughed noisily and made loud comments. As Gavin emerged from behind the door and saw the policeman standing at the car, he said later, everything in me froze. When I look back on it, I don't think I thought of anything except saying to myself, my God, it was a holy silent night. Even in the middle of London, it was silent. The policeman directed Ian

Starting point is 00:07:03 and Kay to a car park, so they were forced to thank him and go, which left the policemen behind with Alan, Gavin, and the stone. Ian and Kay weren't sure what to do now. After some discussion, they agreed that she would depart with the smaller piece of the stone. She had a friend in the Midlands who she thought might help her to hide it, and Ian would go back and try to help the others. He gave her directions, got out, and ran for the abbey. She told him later that she'd gone only 500 yards when the lid of the boot flew open and the stone

Starting point is 00:07:28 fell out onto the road. She stopped and managed to lift it in again, though it was nearly her own weight, and drove off to safety. When Ian got back to the abbey, he found the stone lying alone in the yard. There was no sign of Alan or Gavin. He looked in the building, and he went to the remaining car, but there was no sign of them. That meant that they hadn't found the car keys, which were in the pocket of the coat they'd been using to drag the stone. That meant that when the plaque had fallen out of his coat, the keys must have come out also. And that meant that his car keys were lying somewhere on the floor of Westminster Abbey, which he would now have to enter for the fourth time that morning. Back in he went. He had left his flashlight with Kay, so he had to grope

Starting point is 00:08:05 his way along the floor until he remembered his matches. He'd run through nearly the whole match box when he finally discovered his keys lying near the door. He snatched them up and ran all the way back to the car. According to the rest of it, the night watchman would just be starting his rounds now. He pulled out of the car park and along into Palace Yard. Two policemen stood at the door to the Houses of Parliament under St. Stephen's Tower, and there were some early pedestrians on the street. There was nothing for it. He swung the car into the access lane in full sight of the policemen and backed up as fast as he could, not even bothering to switch off the headlights. Somehow, working alone, he wrestled the stone into the back seat, covered it with a coat, and drove off. He found out later that Andrew

Starting point is 00:08:42 Hislop, the night watchman, was just phoning the police at that moment. He figured he had at best an hour and a half before the police organized a response, but he was sure they'd concentrate on the roads to the north. Still, he needed to hide the stone as quickly as possible. Lost in a maze of side streets and purely by good fortune, he happened upon Alan and Gavin. They had fled the abbey when they couldn't find Ian's car keys. He showed them that he had the stone, but he couldn't take both of them as passengers because the car was already straining under its burden. Gavin agreed to meet them at Reading Station at four o'clock, and Ian and Alan drove into open country and hid the stone in a hollow. Now what? The policemen they'd spoken to would be able to describe Ian, but Alan and Gavin were probably in the clear, so it seemed

Starting point is 00:09:23 best for those two to move the stone to Dartmoor. Ian would decoy the police by driving into Wales. They had no way to judge the extent of the furor they'd caused. They had no radio, and English newspapers didn't publish on Christmas Day. But as he drove west, Ian began to notice that the police cars he passed showed no interest in him. That meant he might drive all the way to Wales, only to realize that no one was chasing him. He decided to return to Reading and help Alan and Gavin with the stone. He found Alan at Reading Station, and they called a friend in Scotland, who told them that the country was mad with excitement and that roadblocks had been set up at the border for the first time in 400 years.

Starting point is 00:09:56 Gavin failed to materialize, so Ian and Alan retrieved the stone, found a better hiding place for it in Kent, and headed for Scotland. It turned out that both Gavin and Kay were safe. Gavin had suspected he was being followed, and so had avoided in Kent and headed for Scotland. It turned out that both Gavin and Kay were safe. Gavin had suspected he was being followed and so had avoided the others and headed for home, and Kay had left her car and the smaller piece of the stone at a friend's house in Birmingham and taken the train to Scotland. So all four of them were safely back in Scotland and the stone was hidden in two pieces in England. As word of the theft spread, Scots were jubilant and the English were grave. King George

Starting point is 00:10:25 VI sent a personal reprimand to the Dean of Westminster, who called the stone the most precious relic that we have and said, we shall never be happy until it is returned to us. The BBC banned all jokes about the stone, saying they touched too closely on royalty and the church. Scotland Yard appealed to every person in Britain to aid in the search for the stone, but admitted that if nationalists had taken it, it might not turn up for a hundred years. On a tip, they dragged the Serpentine Lake and Hyde Park, but found only a safe, a baby carriage, six benches, and a slab of concrete. Six benches.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if you drag, like, any body of water, if you just find, like, really weird stuff. The conspirators drew up a petition to the king to announce their motives. They admitted to stealing the stone, but pointed out that Edward III had promised in 1328 to return it to Scotland. They said they wanted to reaffirm their loyalty and make it clear that they meant no treason or disrespect. If King George would pledge to keep the stone in Scotland, they would agree that it could still be used in English coronations. They typed this up and left it in a Glasgow newspaper office. Now, Alan's father, who was an engineer, expressed a concern about the larger piece of the stone, which they'd left in a field.

Starting point is 00:11:35 It was exposed now to the elements for the first time in hundreds of years, and he thought it might soak up water and then split when it froze. Ian and Alan went south to retrieve it, and in their car it returned to Scotland for the first time in 600 years. At the border, they even doused it in whiskey to celebrate. Separately, Ian also went to Birmingham to retrieve the car and the smaller piece of the stone. So now both pieces were in Scotland, and the plan was complete. But what should they do now? Ian wrote, what do you do with the Holy Grail once you have found it? The conspirators' goal had been to wake up the country, and they'd done that, but now they still had the actual stone to deal with. The public wanted some resolution, and opinion would eventually turn against them.

Starting point is 00:12:12 So they arranged for Scottish stonemasons to reunite the two pieces, and on April 11, 1951, they left the repaired stone on the altar of Arbroath Abbey in Forfarshire, where the Declaration of Scottish Independence had been signed in 1320. They shrouded it in the flag of Scotland and left two unsigned letters with it, saying again that they had intended no indignity to the royal house, asking for a measure of self-government for the Scottish people, and asking that the stone be retained in Scotland. That request found little sympathy with the English, who reclaimed the stone and took it back to London, where it was used in the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, But the English authorities agreed not to prosecute the thieves.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And there was an unexpected postscript 40 years later. In 1996, the British Prime Minister John Major announced that the stone would be returned to Scotland on the condition that it would still be used for crowning the British monarchy, and today it resides in Edinburgh Castle. The four perpetrators went on to lead rather normal lives. Gavin Vernon said he never had to buy a beer again. He maintained throughout his life that taking the stone hadn't been theft. He said it was stolen by Edward in 1296. Kay Matheson and Alan Stewart went on to conventional careers, and Ian Hamilton rose to become Queen's Counsel. For years, young lawyers in his office were warned not to mention the stone, and he refused to discuss it. But in his later years, he said he's proud of taking the stone.

Starting point is 00:13:29 He said, I felt I was holding Scotland's soul when I touched it for the first time. And England seems to have gotten over its own hard feelings. On Christmas Eve 2000, when Gavin Vernon returned to Westminster Abbey for the 50th anniversary of this adventure, the doors were specially opened for him with the words, Welcome back, Mr. Vernon. Futility Closet would not still be here today if it weren't for the generous support of our amazing listeners. We appreciate all the different ways that many of our listeners help the show, but the backbone of our support is our Patreon campaign, as that gives us an ongoing source

Starting point is 00:14:09 of support so that we can commit to the amount of time that the podcast takes to make. Patreon also gives us a good way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles, extra discussions on some of the stories, and updates on Sasha, our ever-diligent Futility Closet mascot. You can learn more at our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of our website for the link. And thanks so much to everyone who helps make Futility Closet possible. closet possible. I have some updates for the puzzles from episodes 223 and 224. Spoiler alert. The puzzle in episode 224 was about how Air Force One has taken off one more time than it's landed,

Starting point is 00:15:05 and that's because Nixon's resignation took effect while he was mid-flight aboard Air Force One. Several people wrote in thinking there was a problem with the puzzle answer, as they thought Lyndon Johnson had been sworn in aboard the plane after Kennedy died. Dave Domingo summed up the situation nicely. Hello, Rosses. Greg, nice job on the Air Force One puzzle in episode 224. At the outset, I was pretty sure it had something to do with the plane's designation changing while it was in the air, but I had the specific event wrong. What came to mind for me was the well-known image of LBJ being sworn in aboard the presidential plane after the Kennedy assassination, but I made an incorrect assumption that Johnson took the oath while the plane was in the air. I also quickly

Starting point is 00:15:45 realized that if my assumption were true, it would have led to the wrong phenomenon. Air Force One would have landed more times than it had taken off. When the puzzle's answer was revealed, I still suspected, because of my assumption, that the Johnson situation at least canceled out the Nixon situation. That was when I checked online and found out that LBJ had been sworn in before takeoff. Puzzle aside, I wonder how many people have made the same assumption I made about the circumstances of LBJ swearing in. Keep up the great work on the podcast and blog. And Dave, based on the email we got, apparently a number of people assumed that Johnson was sworn in while in the air. I was surprised to discover how well known this event was because I actually hadn't known anything about Johnson's inauguration myself,

Starting point is 00:16:30 so that didn't come into play for me while I was trying to solve the puzzle. But looking into it, I learned that this was the only U.S. presidential inauguration to have been performed on an airplane, though as Dave discovered, the plane was still on the ground at the time, as the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, had advised Johnson to take the oath of office before the plane took off. Jonathan Kaufman in Dublin, Ireland, added some more details to the story. Hello, Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. I love the lateral thinking problem about Air Force One in episode 224. It made me wonder if any other transfers of presidential power occurred in an aircraft, and it turns out that one did, shortly after the assassination of John

Starting point is 00:17:10 F. Kennedy in November of 1963. After leaving the Texas hospital where Kennedy was initially brought, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson boarded the presidential plane at Love Field, Texas. The inauguration took place in the cramped aircraft with 27 witnesses, and the plane took off nine minutes later, at which point it must have carried the call sign of Air Force One. Had the inauguration taken place in the air rather than on the tarmac in Texas, I wonder if this would have meant that the aircraft would have taken off carrying the call sign of Air Force Two and then landed as Air Force One, and that by the time Nixon had resigned, Air Force One would have then had an equal number of takeoffs and landings. An interesting side note, Johnson's presidential

Starting point is 00:17:50 inauguration was the first in history performed by a woman. Thanks for the hours of entertainment and mental stimulation. And according to Wikipedia, Sarah T. Hughes is still the only woman to have sworn in a U.S. president. That function is usually performed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but Johnson's first inauguration was put together very quickly on the fly in Dallas. And lacking a Supreme Court justice, when Johnson was told that any federal judge could perform the task, he specifically requested Hughes, a longtime friend who was currently a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. This was all being done very quickly and in a pre-Internet age,

Starting point is 00:18:28 so it actually took a couple of phone calls for it to be determined who would be qualified to swear Johnson in. And Hughes was at home when she received the call telling her, they need you to swear in the vice president at Love Field. Please get out there. She said, is there an oath? And was told, yes, but we haven't found it yet. She said, don't worry about it. I'll make one up. Before she got to the airport, though, it had been realized that the oath is actually in the Constitution. And someone had called it into the plane for her to use, which I guess would have meant somebody scribbling it down as it was dictated over the phone. Yeah, because all of that obviously was completely unexpected.

Starting point is 00:19:03 They'd have to... Yeah, you know, you hear about it as a historical event, but until you start looking into it a little bit, you don't realize how very quickly the events unfolded. And right, nobody was prepared for this. And we take electronic communication so much for granted these days that I find it interesting to stop and think how much more difficult these kinds of tasks were without electronic communications. But in Johnson's case, at least they had telephones they could use. When Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in 1923, the vice president, Calvin Coolidge, was in Vermont visiting his family who didn't have electricity or a phone in their house. Coolidge received the news by messenger and was sworn into office in the middle of the night by the light of a kerosene

Starting point is 00:19:44 lamp with the oath of office administered by his father, who was a notary public and a justice of the peace. After Coolidge got back to Washington, he was secretly given a second oath of office by a federal judge as it wasn't clear whether a state official actually had the authority to swear him in. And the second swearing in was actually kept a secret until 1932. Oh, that's interesting. And this second swearing-in was actually kept a secret until 1932. Oh, that's interesting. The puzzle in episode 223 involved a building in London with a concave face of windows that produced a so-called death ray that melted parts of a jaguar parked near it in 2013.

Starting point is 00:20:31 Andy Washington sent us a link to a recent update on this building, which some call the walkie-talkie because of its shape. In November, the Londonist ran an article titled, The Walkie-Talkie Death Ray Could Actually Have Killed Someone, which says, Imperial College fire expert Guillermo Rain ran computer simulations to see how dangerous the reflected sunlight off the walkie-talkie's concave surface was, especially to passers-by on the street. An article in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation shows his findings. The paper proves that the name death ray wasn't standard journalistic hyperbole. The reflected solar radiation actually could have killed someone. And then they quote Professor Rain as saying, by sheer luck, the beam didn't cause anyone serious harm. Had the worst case scenario happened, the ray would have been so intense that it could have started fires in

Starting point is 00:21:10 nearby flats and hurt the skin and eyes of passersby, particularly children and the elderly. Cloud cover and the path of the ray, which did not fall on street level at its worst, helped avoid this worst case scenario. So there seemed to me to be a bit of a discrepancy here between killing people and hurting skin and eyes. So I found the article published in the Journal of Building Performance Simulation, which was titled, Computer Simulation of Sunlight Concentration Due to Facade Shape, Application to the 2013 Death Ray at Fenchurch Street, London.

Starting point is 00:21:44 And according to this paper, the computer simulations did find that the plastic parts of the Jaguar very well could have melted from the building's reflected and concentrated sunlight. The building's reflected light would have had about 10 to 15 times the thermal energy of direct sunlight, which puts it well above the melting point for plastic. The simulations also found that the worst hot spot would have produced more thermal energy than people can tolerate for prolonged times, but that this worst area would have been over the rooftops of nearby buildings and not at street level, which is not perhaps quite the same as saying that it would have killed someone, though I suppose you could imagine a situation where someone was sleeping or unable to move and who happened to be in the very wrong spot for a considerable period of time. In any case, no one did die from the walkie-talkie

Starting point is 00:22:30 buildings and modifications, of course, have been made. So people and cars are now hopefully safe from death rays on the streets of London. You know, I hadn't thought about it, but obviously there are millions of buildings in the world. That's probably not the only one that's at least capable of doing this, you know? Yeah. That would be surprising. Yeah. Actually, when I did the puzzle, I said that there are actually lists of buildings that have started fires and burned peoples and stuff. This is just one of the more well-known examples. That's kind of frightening.

Starting point is 00:22:58 On this same topic, Matthew Farwell wrote, Thanks for the podcast. Love listening to it. About the puzzle in episode 223, I saw a YouTube video which gives a good explanation of this by Mike Merrifield, who was the source of another urban myth about an art installation which supposedly fried pigeons in 2001. Mike Merrifield is an astronomer who was called in to ensure that the artwork wouldn't pose a danger to the public when they were planning it. And Matthew sent a video from September 2013 called How to Melt Cars and Barbecue Pigeons.

Starting point is 00:23:31 In the video, Merrifield, an astronomy professor at University of Nottingham, helpfully explains in plain English the physics behind how the walkie-talkie building caused its death ray and how he accidentally created an urban legend about a piece of artwork in Nottingham, England. This art installation is called the Sky Mirror, and is a concave mirror six meters in diameter that reflects the sky in a square outside a theater. Merrifield was called in to consult on whether this mirror might cause any problems, and he warned that due to the concentration of sunlight, there could possibly be some issues at particular times of the year. The designers decided to err on the side of caution and place sunshades on top of the theater

Starting point is 00:24:12 to reduce the amount of sunlight that would fall onto the mirror. A planning application was submitted for the changes, a local newspaper saw the planning application, and ended up coming to Merrifield to ask about it. While talking to the reporter, Merrifield playfully said in passing, you have to be careful about these things because if you weren't then a passing pigeon could end up being barbecued as it flew through the beam. Merrifield said that it must have been a slow news day because the newspaper then ran a banner headline about barbecued pigeons and this got picked up on the wire services both nationally

Starting point is 00:24:43 and internationally. The theater got abuse for its harming pigeons, to which a chef at the theater's restaurant responded by putting barbecued pigeons on the menu. Merrifield says in the video that even more than 10 years later, people are still sometimes saying that this mirror barbecues pigeons. I did a quick search on this and did find a few mentions from 2001 about this story. For example, ABC News had a story with the title, British Sculpture Could Fry Birds, that says that for 16 weeks a year, it will barbecue birds that cross its path, and that Merrifield warned the design team that the mirror would focus the sun's rays so that

Starting point is 00:25:23 anything in its path could fry. I wonder if Merrifield is now a lot more careful about what he says to the press. I thought it was interesting to see the whole genesis of a urban legend there. Yeah, it doesn't take much. And Alon Shacham wrote from Israel, Hello, podcasters. I have just finished listening to episode 223 and to the lateral thinking puzzle involving concave reflecting buildings. I used to work in an outdoor science museum, and we had there a giant parabolic mirror that can burn wood. We would tell the visitors about the dangers of curved buildings facing south in the northern hemisphere, so I caught up on the solution quite

Starting point is 00:26:02 easily, always enjoying the quirky history. And Alon sent a video that demonstrates a so-called solar oven that uses a concave mirror to reflect sunlight to a focal point and that is shown to burn wooden sticks, pop popcorn, and roast marshmallows. They didn't barbecue any pigeons, though. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We always learn so much from our listeners and are glad to get your comments and feedback. If you have any you'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And I still appreciate name pronunciation tips. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Starting point is 00:26:47 I'm going to give him a strange-sounding situation, and we're going to see if he can figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle is based on something that I read in Dan Lewis's e-newsletter, Now I Know. Why do some GE employees in Schenectady, New York, end up answering thousands of letters sent to Santa every year? Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:16 So presumably there's some deal set up with the post office where they just take those letters and... No. So if a kid writes a letter to Santa, well, it would have to go to the post office first and then get routed to GE in Schenectady. Okay. So that's what I'm asking is the post office would have to redirect them, no?

Starting point is 00:27:39 They don't redirect them and there isn't a deal with the post office to do this. So if I'm a kid and I write a letter to Santa and drop it in a mailbox, it gets delivered to Schenectady, New York. It might. Because of the address that I put on it? Yes. Is there an address?

Starting point is 00:27:56 Is there some address for Santa Claus that I don't know about, like some official postal address? No. That would be cool if we had the official postal address for Santa Claus. But if there's some convention, like if there's a certain zip code that if that turns up on an envelope, then it's addressed to Santa and they send it to Schenectady. That is not quite right. Okay, when the kid addresses the letter to Santa, does she put the whole, some, I don't know what I'm asking, some whole address on there, a deliverable address of some kind? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:28 And some of these end up at this GE plant in Schenectady. Okay, so the ones that end up in Schenectady have something in common in that address. Yes. Is it the zip code? Yes, it is. That's really good. That's exactly it. The 1-2-3-4-5 zip code is assigned exclusively to the GE plant in Schenectady. Any letter with

Starting point is 00:28:48 that zip code automatically goes to the plant, and that includes letters to Santa with any address, such as Candy Lane or Elf Way, that children end up using that zip code for. In the U.S., Santa doesn't have an official postal code, although in Canada he does, and it's H-O-H-O-H-O, or ho, ho, ho. Employees at the GE plant started answering letters to Santa back in 1994. According to an article in a Schenectady newspaper, the employees use form letters. They respond on Santa's behalf, but they don't actually have Santa's powers after all. But they do try to personalize the letters with quick notes at the end, like, Love always, Santa, or P.S. Don't forget the milk and cookies. They'll also include the child's name. do try to personalize the letters with quick notes at the end like love always santa or ps don't forget the milk and cookies they'll also include the child's name that's wonderful if they do that

Starting point is 00:29:29 but i imagine that's a lot of letters it's a lot of letters yeah they they use up their lunch hours doing it for a lot of december apparently isn't that sweet that they do that though thanks to everyone who sends in puzzles to us we always appreciate getting them so if you have one you'd like to have us try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us. If you would like to help support

Starting point is 00:29:57 our celebration of the quirky and the curious, check out the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com where you can find a donate button and a link to our Patreon page. At our website, you'll also find Greg's collection of over 10,000 trivia tidbits, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast with the links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or feedback for us, you can email us at podcast

Starting point is 00:30:25 at futilitycloset.com. All of our music was written and performed by Greg's awesome brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 229-The Stone of Destiny

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