Futility Closet - 231-The Halifax Explosion

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 runaway jet to a willow cathedral. This is episode 231. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is episode 231. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

Starting point is 00:00:30 In 1917, a munitions ship exploded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, devastating the city and shattering the lives of its victims. In today's show, we'll follow the events of the disaster, the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima, and the grim and heroic stories of its victims. We'll also consider the dangers of cactus plugging and puzzle over why a man would agree to be assassinated. Halifax, Nova Scotia was thriving in 1917. World War I had been underway for three years

Starting point is 00:01:03 and tens of thousands of troops and supply ships passed through the city on their way to or from the war. 50,000 people lived there, but it was also home to Canadian and British naval bases, major supply centers, and a hospital for wounded soldiers returning from the war. All that activity brought on a fateful encounter. On the morning of December 6, 1917, two ships converged in a narrow strait near the city's harbor. The Norwegian freighter Imo was departing from New York to pick up relief supplies to carry to Belgium, and the French cargo ship Mont Blanc was arriving from Brooklyn to join a convoy to Europe. Imo had to steer around some traffic, which sent it into the path of the Mont

Starting point is 00:01:39 Blanc. The two ships sounded their whistles and tried evasive maneuvers, but finally they collided bow to bow. Neither ship was badly damaged, and this might have amounted to a nautical fender bender, except for one thing. Mont Blanc was carrying 3,000 metric tons of explosives, gun cotton, benzol, picric acid, and TNT destined for the French war effort. As the ships parted, a fire started on the Mont Blanc's deck, and it soon engulfed some barrels of benzol, a highly combustible motor fuel, that were stored there. A plume of black smoke rose into the sky and teams of firefighters and sailors from other ships began to make their way toward Mont Blanc while the city's residents came to their windows to watch the drama. The ship had no special

Starting point is 00:02:19 markings and only a few port officers and her crew knew what she was carrying. As the fire grew out of control, the crew sprinted to their lifeboats, rowed madly to the shore, and kept running. They shouted warnings to everyone they passed, but they were shouting in French, and they couldn't be heard anyway as people crowded toward the waterfront to see the fire. Billowing smoke, the Mont Blanc drifted helplessly toward Pier 6, a busy area full of residential homes, businesses, moored ships, a naval college, and a large sugar refinery. As it drifted, the burning barrels on its deck began to explode like fireworks, which attracted even more onlookers. One of the few people who understood

Starting point is 00:02:55 what was about to happen was Vincent Coleman, a railway dispatcher who controlled the train traffic coming and going from the Halifax Peninsula. He was about to flee his office when he realized that the overnight express train from St. John, New Brunswick was on its way into town carrying 300 passengers. He told his staff to run for safety, went back to his telegraph, and set a warning to the next station up the line. It said, hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Goodbye, boys. The ship detonated with the energy of three kilotons of TNT, instantly leveling more than a square mile of the waterfront and destroying 1,600 houses and damaging 12,000 more. The

Starting point is 00:03:37 concussion shattered every window in the city, sending a storm of glass shards into the onlooking residence, blinding and killing hundreds of people. And it punched a hole in the harbor itself, exposing the bottom and creating a 60-foot tsunami that roared into the city, carrying some people thousands of feet inward and dragging others back into the harbor to drown. The Halifax Blast was the largest man-made explosion of the pre-atomic age. It destroyed concrete factories, cement schools, brick churches, and stone houses. People on Cape Breton Island felt the shock 250 miles away, and it shook the clock from the wall of a dispatcher's office in Truro, 50 miles to the north.

Starting point is 00:04:13 On the train Maritime Express, two miles away, windows were demolished and a five-pound piece of metal shot through the baggage car and killed the brakeman in his bunk. Charles Myers, third officer of the British Transport Middle Limb Castle, had been only 200 yards from the Mont Blanc, about to step into a boat to go ashore, when someone shouted, look out. He said, I remember hitting something with my left side. I remember meeting pieces of timber and wood. I was quite conscious. I felt the water. I thought I was under the bottom of the sea somewhere. Everything went black. I was wet when I came down. I had no clothes on when I came to except my boots. There was a little girl near me and I asked her where we were. She was crying

Starting point is 00:04:50 and she said she did not know where we were. It turned out they were on top of Fort Needham Hill, more than a mile from his ship. Three of the sailors fleeing the Mont Blanc were wounded by projectiles. One said, I have been in the war. I have been in front of German guns, but never before was there an explosion like this. It was worse than 100 shells. A shell will blow up a house, but mon dieu, this blew up a city. One was safe nowhere. We were a mile away when the ship blew up, and it got three of us. As a mushroom cloud rose two miles into the air, their ship had ceased to exist. The shank of its anchor, which weighed half a ton, was later found four miles to the west, and an iron deck cannon was thrown three miles to the east. The remains of the firefighters were never found because they had been literally vaporized. The Imo, which was 430 feet long, had been tossed several hundred feet across the narrows and beached there, riddled

Starting point is 00:05:39 with shrapnel. The time of the blast was recorded permanently on the City Hall clock tower, whose hands had stopped at 9.04 and 35 seconds. Altogether, the explosion had destroyed 6,000 buildings and rendered 25,000 people homeless. 1,600 people were killed instantly, 400 more would die in the days that followed, and 9,000 were wounded. The stunned survivors found that their peaceful city had been converted into a war zone. The ruins were littered with bodies, strangely contorted, often with their clothes torn off and missing arms, legs, even heads. One six-year-old had been blown through the roof of a house in Yonge Street, rolled from the roof to the ground, and suffered only a few scratches. The body of ten-year-old Elizabeth Ryan was still clutching a schoolbook in one hand. And it wasn't over. The ship had exploded just as most Haligonians had stoked their furnaces and finished making breakfast on their stoves, so fires immediately started up in

Starting point is 00:06:29 the shattered houses, where many people lay trapped under wreckage. Many of them would die of their burns, and in this age before antibiotics, wounds caused by iron shrapnel would kill many more. The city's civilian administration wasn't well equipped to respond to any of this. The mayor was away, so leadership fell to his deputy. He had only a small police and fire service, and the explosion had killed the fire chief and destroyed the city's only fire pumper truck. Billy Wells, the truck's driver, had been blasted out of the driver's seat, torn out of his clothing, and shot up a hill, still clutching the steering wheel.

Starting point is 00:07:00 A few seconds later, the tsunami had carried him back down, and he became entangled in some telephone wires. The fire engine was a massive twisted wreckage. Many citizens assumed at first that the explosion was an attack by Germany, and troops turned out to defend the city. But when no attack materialized, they were quickly put to work rescuing victims. As people reached out to one another, bizarre stories came to light. One man who'd been shaving during the explosion had cut his throat from ear to ear. William Swetnam, pastor at the K Street Methodist Church, had been watching his family sing at the piano when the floor gave way beneath them. When he came to, he found that all but his underwear had been blown off and that the piano had landed on his wife and son, crushing

Starting point is 00:07:38 them. His daughter was alive but trapped under wreckage, and fires were already burning nearby. With the help of some neighbors, he sawed through some timbers and managed to free her. Thirteen-year-old Noble Driscoll had been walking to school when he was blown a quarter mile through the air. He landed on a pile of rubble, surrounded by smoke so thick that it made the sun look like the moon. He wondered briefly if he was the last person on earth. One victim in a flattened building managed to crawl out a window and found that the world had turned black. He wrote, But if Halifax was uniquely wounded, it was uniquely ready to respond.

Starting point is 00:08:29 Thousands of military members, merchant sailors, and lumbermen poured into the blast zone. American and British Navy ships sent help within minutes. Army nurses went into action, and surgeons began operating non-stop. Ophthalmologist George Cox would remove 79 ruined eyeballs in 48 hours. The glass was apparently just terrible. I mean, it's literally hard to find an account of this at all that doesn't mention the injuries due to the glass. I hadn't thought about that, I mean, until you just mentioned it, but yeah, everybody was at their windows, and all the windows were blown out. Because no one obviously expected any of this, but I have many anecdotes that I'm sparing because they're pretty gruesome. It's very bad. The underwater cable between Halifax and Dartmouth was damaged, probably when the EMO had landed on it, and all the phone lines were down, so all communication with Halifax's north end was cut off. That prevented the city's officials from asking other cities for help,

Starting point is 00:09:13 assessing the extent of the damage, quashing rumors, and coordinating their efforts. But linemen kept working on the cables even during a brief scare that a local barracks might explode. While the rest of the population moved to higher ground to escape the danger, the superintendent of the Children's Hospital told her staff, no one shall leave this building. It would mean the death of many of the children if they had to be moved to the commons, and it is the duty of everyone to stand by our post. And if it should be that we are to die, we will die at our post. In the end, an Ottawa battalion flushed the barracks magazine into the harbor, so the danger was averted. As the survivors began to confer, they discovered even more bad news.

Starting point is 00:09:52 One-sixth of the city's population had been wounded, 9,000 of them seriously. That was about ten times the number who could be accommodated by the four public hospitals in Halifax and Dartmouth. So hundreds of emergency surgeries took place on store counters, front porches, and dining room tables, and they often took place without anesthesia. And now word began to spread that a winter storm was headed up the coast from North Carolina, just as 25,000 people, almost half the city's population, had no adequate housing. As doctors began to arrive to lend their aid, they served as witnesses to the destruction. Dr. Ernest Barse wrote to his uncle, no reports could exaggerate the terrible damage and loss of life. We couldn't get within three miles of the city, for the whole space in between was a blazing mass of ruins.

Starting point is 00:10:29 Of the north end, he said, I saw some terrible scenes of desolation and ruin at the front, but never, even in the old, hard-hammered city of Ypres, did I ever see anything so absolutely complete. In that entire area of over three square miles in the immediate vicinity of the explosion, there was not one stick or stone standing on another. Every house and building was just crumpled up, and the whole was a raging mass of flames. When Dr. Percy McGrath arrived from Truro, he heard another doctor mutter something about Dante's Inferno. One doctor did surgery for 13 straight hours until his instruments would no longer cut. Another later took his own life. He was so haunted by what he'd seen.

Starting point is 00:11:05 William Swetnam, the pastor who'd rescued his daughter, said, If this was the work of God, I'll tear off this clerical collar. The blizzard arrived the following day and drove temperatures down to 16 Fahrenheit. Practically all the automobiles that had been commandeered broke down in the storm, and it knocked out all 200 telephone lines that had just been restored the previous day. The cold had one grim benefit. It meant the dead could be stored in basements without embalming fluid and preserved for weeks until they could be identified or buried. Amid all this horror, the rescue efforts turned up

Starting point is 00:11:35 some causes for hope. A closet door had fallen across one baby's crib just before the ceiling collapsed. When the rescuers removed the beams and plaster and lifted off the door, they found a healthy baby underneath. Frank Leonard of St. John found a little child in a pubby in a room whose walls had remained intact while most of the house had collapsed around it. They'd been there for two days without food. The child had snuggled up close to the dog and was near exhaustion from cold, hunger, and fear, but both of them were uninjured. And at about 11 a.m. on December 7th, 26 hours after the explosion, a rescue party just 200 yards from Pier 6 heard a baby's cry. They dug through the ruins to find a wood stove still warm with 23-month-old Annie Liggins under its ash pan.

Starting point is 00:12:16 She had some burns but was very much alive. Her mother and four-year-old brother had gone to the window to watch the Mont Blanc burn, and both of them had been killed by the explosion. But the concussion had shot Annie across the kitchen and under the stove, which had shielded her when the house collapsed and kept her warm during the blizzard. She became famous as Ash Pan Annie and her story inspired others to keep up their searches, which probably saved even more lives. And she lived to be 94 years old. I found her obituary. That's incredible. So I guess she lived all that time with that memory. Through all of this, there was an enormous, spontaneous outpouring of aid from the United States, which had been an uneasy neighbor with Canada ever since the American Revolution.

Starting point is 00:12:53 In particular, contributions from Massachusetts totaled $750,000, or $15 million today, and Boston, the nearest major city, organized a relief train full of food, supplies, and medical help. Rescue workers kept finding remains until January 11, 1918, 34 days after the explosion. Coroner Arthur Barnstead couldn't identify 242 victims because they were too disfigured or there were no family members left to claim them, and 410 people were listed as missing and their bodies were never found. The last victim was discovered in the summer of 1919 in Exhibition Hall, which was thought to have been empty when the explosion hit. Workers found the shattered bones of a man while they were clearing out one of the cattle sheds. He's thought to have been a

Starting point is 00:13:32 vagrant who'd been living in the building. Considering that the disaster was completely unforeseen, the community's response to it was remarkably effective. Haligonians treated an estimated 90% of the wounded within 24 hours. Most received attention through 12 emergency dressing stations, doctor's offices, and home visits, and 2,500 packed the local hospitals and were treated in towns as far away as Truro. The Medical Relief Committee reported that doctors had performed 250 eye removals and 25 amputations over about two weeks, and that estimate is probably low because it doesn't include house calls

Starting point is 00:14:04 or patients treated in doctor's offices, homes, and impromptu operating rooms. The total damage to the city was estimated at $30 million, more than half a billion dollars today. Altogether, the explosion and its aftermath had killed 1,953 people, more than the whole province of Nova Scotia lost in World War I. Halifax historian Thomas H. Rattle wrote, for months the people of the North End lived like cavemen, with black tar paper in place of windows, with patched up doors, with the heat of their stoves escaping through cracks and slashes in the walls and roofs. An inquiry was conducted over the next two and a half years to determine which of the two ships, the Mont Blanc or the Imo, had been to blame for the accident. The Supreme Court of Canada finally ruled that

Starting point is 00:14:43 the two ships had been equally at fault, and that verdict was upheld by the Privy Council in London. No one was convicted. Today, Halifax has resumed its old spirit and has become a major economic center in Atlantic Canada. But the community remembers the disaster each December 6th with a service at the Memorial Bell Tower in Fort Needham Park, and every Christmas the city sends a 50-foot, two-ton Christmas tree to Boston in gratitude for the help they sent. All of this happened a century ago, and a lot of people in Boston don't know why they're being thanked, but someone in Halifax said, why should we stop thanking them? Thank you. our newest super patron. If you want to join Matthew and all our other incredible patrons who enable our continuing celebration of the quirky and the curious, please go to patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of our website.

Starting point is 00:15:56 I also want to thank everyone who sent in donations to the show, which are also really appreciated. So thank you so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. I have updates to a couple of older puzzles, so the usual spoiler alert here. The puzzle in episode 225 was about thieves stealing palm trees in California. Joseph Dunn wrote, Your lateral thinking puzzle about palm tree theft reminded me that Arizona has a real problem with people stealing saguaro cactus, to the point that a national park microchipped their cactus to discourage thieves. And Joseph included a link

Starting point is 00:16:36 to an article on the topic and said, the article says they're worth around $100 a foot, and that can add up fast as large as they are. I also vaguely remember stories of people trying to steal these cactus, not realizing how heavy they can be, and getting trapped under their uprooted prizes. Some quick googling didn't find anything like that, but I'm sure you'll share if you find any strange stories. Thanks for making a great podcast and even if my wife isn't fond of it, I look forward to listening every Monday. So, so sorry to hear that your wife isn't a fan, Joseph, but glad that you persevere with your listening anyway. One of the many interesting parts of doing this show is how often I get to learn that there are so many topics that I didn't know much of anything about.

Starting point is 00:17:18 And that definitely included saguaro cactus. And a little side note here. included saguaro cactus. And a little side note here, when I tried checking, I learned that the correct plural of cactus is cacti or cactuses or just cactus. Good to know. Whichever plural you prefer, these plants are an iconic image of the American Southwest and grow as a single tall column that can also have side arms. Saguaro's can live 150 years or more and grow to be over 40 feet or 12.2 meters tall. The tallest recorded Saguaro was one near Cave Creek, Arizona, that was actually 78 feet or 23.8 meters tall. So they can get pretty big.

Starting point is 00:17:57 And because they store water for their later use, a fully hydrated Saguaro can weigh between 3,200 and 4,800 pounds, or 1,500 to 2,200 kilograms, so you really wouldn't want one of these falling on top of you. Because they are rather slow-growing, stealing mature specimens to sell can be quite lucrative, to the point that, as Joseph said, the rangers at Saguaro National Park in Arizona have had to start microchipping some of the park's saguaros in hopes of deterring thieves. And it would seem to be quite fitting for a would-be thief to have been trapped under one of these majestic plants, but I was also unable to find any reports that this has actually happened, though there are reports of these cactus falling

Starting point is 00:18:39 on people in other circumstances. For example, in 1982, David Grunman was out cactus plugging, which is an illegal activity that involves shooting or sometimes blowing up a cactus, usually a Saguaro, and he died when the Saguaro that he'd been shooting it fell on top of him. This event was even turned into a song by a Texas band called the Austin Lounge Lizards. And in 2012, a Yuma, Arizona city worker was quite severely injured after a 16-foot-tall Saguaro cactus fell on him while he was trying to fix a water leak in a subdivision. He was in intensive care for several days with back, leg, and internal injuries and 146 cactus spines embedded in his skin. I had a hard time finding

Starting point is 00:19:24 much follow-up on the story, but from what I could find, he did survive, though it sounded like it was a long recovery for him, so don't tangle with Swaros. Although Swaros are often used as an emblem of the American Southwest in pop culture and product logos and commercials, I learned that they actually only grow in just one area of the Sonoran Desert, which means that they are only native

Starting point is 00:19:48 to just a part of Arizona and Mexico and a little bit of California, despite what you might see in Western movies or on product labels, such as the logo of the old El Paso brand. El Paso is in Texas, and as the title of a song by the Texas-based band Reverend Horton Heat says, ain't no suaro in Texas, and as the title of a song by the Texas-based band Reverend Horton Heat says,

Starting point is 00:20:06 ain't no suaro in Texas. The puzzle in episode 227 was about how Scott Richards' phone screen sometimes went black when in landscape mode, and how he'd been able to solve the problem without even touching the phone by removing his polarized sunglasses. Simone Rose wrote, Dear PodSquad, When I heard your puzzle about a man's phone turning off sometimes while he held it in landscape mode, I thought I knew exactly what it was because it happened to me. When I first got my Galaxy S8, I didn't realize how sensitive the off button was, and when I held my phone in landscape mode, the heel of my hand often triggered the button. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, and I solved it without touching my phone.

Starting point is 00:20:47 In fact, by not touching my phone. The problem was permanently solved when I got a new case that made pressing the off button more difficult and less likely to happen accidentally. Thanks for the interesting puzzles, as always. And Daphne Eftihia Arthur, who tells people that Daphne, long Greek middle name Arthur, is also acceptable, wrote, Dear Podcatter and Podcasters, I had my iPad screen stay completely black one afternoon when I tried to wake it up on a sunny day,

Starting point is 00:21:15 and after a fair bit of panic, finally realized I should try looking at it without my sunglasses. If I understand correctly, all LCDs are polarized as a side effect of how they work, but I should be heading to bed right now, not starting a Wikipedia dive to check that. If I understand correctly, all LCDs are polarized as a side effect of how they work, but I should be heading to bed right now, not starting a Wikipedia dive to check that. And yep, Wikipedia does confirm that liquid crystal display technology does use polarizing filters as part of how it works. This is actually kind of important in some contexts, as Daphne goes on to say, The YouTuber MentorPilot, a commercial pilot who makes videos about various aspects of flight, piloting, and airlines, did a video about why pilots cannot wear polarized sunglasses. It's because most modern jets have glass cockpits, instrumentation on various LCD

Starting point is 00:21:57 screens instead of separate mechanical gauges. They do need sunglasses up there above the clouds, just not polarized ones. And I found Mentor Pilot's video on sunglasses in which he said just what Daphne summarized and recommended a video by another pilot, Captain Joe, for a fuller explanation. In his video, Captain Joe explains unpolarized versus polarized light and polarized sunglasses and how such sunglasses will interfere with pilots being able to see all the LCD monitors and screens in the cockpit if the pilots tilt their heads at all, which would be a much less than ideal situation since some of those monitors and screens can be kind of important. So short version, polarized sunglasses and liquid crystal displays do not mix well, and this can be a pretty important point to know if you plan to fly a plane. I think there are some high-end sports cars, and for all I know,

Starting point is 00:22:50 you know, boats and other vehicles that have glass cockpits as well. I mean, anything that uses an LCD screen will be an issue with polarized sunglasses, yeah. That's something to think about. And Eugene Chang wrote, the phone puzzle from episode 227 reminded me of a recent news story about another phone that didn't work. I tried to make a puzzle out of it myself, but the facts are a little too esoteric to expect anyone to actually guess the answer. But I thought you'd enjoy the story. Apparently, high concentrations of helium can shut down iPhones and Apple Watches, usually and thankfully only for a few days. The helium can seep into a tiny chip, which is critical to keeping time on the phone. When it does, the phone shuts down and usually starts

Starting point is 00:23:30 working once enough of the helium escapes. And Eugene sent an article from ifixit.org titled iPhones are allergic to helium. Recently, a system specialist at a hospital near Chicago started getting calls that employees' cell phones and Apple Watches weren't working. Forty different devices were impacted, which was a rather surprisingly high number to all stop working at the same time. But also, all of them were made by Apple. No one seemed to be having problems with their Android phones, which seemed even more strange. This happened during the installation of a new MRI machine and was eventually traced back to a liquid helium leak in the new machine. According to the iFixit article, Apple's user guide for the iPhone and Apple Watch says,

Starting point is 00:24:13 Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near-evaporating liquefied gases such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. And suggests that if your phone is impacted, you should let it air out for a week before you try to charge it or turn it on. Apparently, the issue is due to a specific type of timing oscillator that Apple is using in its newer products. Eugene sent links to a couple of YouTube videos that explain the phenomenon and demonstrate how you can temporarily kill your iPhone with helium. One by Applied Science tested how low of a concentration of helium could shut down an iPhone and discovered that just a 2% concentration of helium was enough to do it.

Starting point is 00:24:54 So, yep, another reason that phone screens can go black on you, but I think Eugene was right that that just would have been too esoteric to try to guess as a puzzle. It does sort of sound like a puzzle, though. It does, but I don't know that I ever would have guessed that. No, no, no. Neither would I. And I unfortunately didn't get a chance to run this before the holidays, but Callie Bunker sent an update to episode 227's story

Starting point is 00:25:17 about the ship that used to bring Christmas trees across Lake Michigan to Chicago. Christmas greetings to Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. I was flying back to Chicago from a work trip listening to your podcast and was delighted to hear the Christmas tree podcast. The only Christmas sweater I own is red with a small ship on it that says the Christmas tree ship purchased at a Goodwill in the upper peninsula of Michigan, one of the most charming places on earth, the UP, but the Goodwill is a close second. I live and work in Chicago on Clark and Lake, right where the Christmas tree ship used to dock. When my co-worker mentioned

Starting point is 00:25:50 that there is a plaque for the Christmas tree ship across the street from my work, I had to go snap a photo to share this happy coincidence with you all. Please enjoy this photo of the Christmas tree sweatshirt bought in the UP and traveled down to Clark and Lake in Chicago, just like the Christmas trees of long ago. From a fellow lover of quirky history facts and fun tidbits, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. And of course, we'll have a photo of Callie in her Christmas tree ship sweatshirt and the really nice plaque also commemorating it in the show notes for anyone who wants to see. I was really glad she said that because in all my reading about that story, no one had ever mentioned the plaque. I didn't know there was one.

Starting point is 00:26:28 It was really nice too. So thanks so much to everyone who sends us their updates, comments, and feedback. The follow-up we get from our listeners really helps add to so many of the topics we cover. So if you have anything you'd like to send, please send it to 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 work out what is actually going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Peter Bartholomew. When a Spanish drug gang killed Francisco Holgado's son,

Starting point is 00:27:08 he started a high-profile campaign to press the authorities to bring the killers to justice. The gang, enraged at the publicity, resolved to have him killed. He agreed to the assassination and they ordered it done. Why did he do this?

Starting point is 00:27:21 For more publicity. Solved. That would do it. Oh, that's not it. Was he dying of something anyway? No. Because I thought if he knew he had a limited lifespan. Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:33 When you say he agreed to the assassination, did he believe he was going to be dead at the end of it? No. Ah. Was it like some kind of a trap? No. Okay. Using himself as bait. Hmm.

Starting point is 00:27:48 Okay. Is his occupation important? No. So he's not like a member of the law enforcement or anything himself? No. I mean, you say Spanish. This took place in Spain? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:58 Is that important somehow? No. No, this could happen anywhere. Is the time period important? No. Anything about this man's identity important? What a question. Does he really exist? Yes, he exists. Okay, shouldn't make assumptions. I'm going to say no to the identity question. Okay, so there's nothing specific about his identity

Starting point is 00:28:18 that I need to worry about? No. And he is a single person that exists? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Like one individual. Okay. Hmm. Why did he agree to the assassination, but he did not believe that he was going to end up dead? Did he believe that this would somehow contribute to his goal of having his son's killers brought to justice?

Starting point is 00:28:44 No, I would say no to that no that's interesting because that was his goal right he was trying to get justice uh brought against the murderers of his son yes is that correct so this is what he wants ultimately but he doesn't believe that this assassination attempt is going to promote that that's's right. But he agrees to it anyway. Does it matter who he believes is going to try to assassinate him? Yes. Does it matter how he believes they're going to try to assassinate him?

Starting point is 00:29:14 No. So it matters who. Is it because he wants to meet the person? No. Does he know who the killer is of his son, or killers, either singular or plural, of his son? I guess I don't know that, but we can say yes if it simplifies it.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Okay. Well, I just didn't know that. Maybe that was germane, like he knew the specific identity that played into this. Does he know who was going to attempt to assassinate him? Yes. He does know that? Yes. Sorry, I nodded because you can't see that. I does know that. Yes. Sorry, I nodded. I guess you can't see that.

Starting point is 00:29:51 I can see it, but the verbal confirmation is good. Is it one person that he believes is going to try to assassinate him? Yes. Is it himself? Yes. He agrees to assassinate himself. No, he agrees to commit suicide. He agrees to assassinate himself. No, he agrees to commit suicide. He agrees to assassinate himself.

Starting point is 00:30:07 He agrees to assassinate himself because he's pretending to be somebody else. Yes. So he's dealing with these drug dealers, the drug gang, in the guise of being a hired assassin or something along those lines. Basically, yes.

Starting point is 00:30:21 That's very well done. Frustrated at the lack of movement in the case, Holgado decided to infiltrate the gang himself. While keeping up his public pressure during the day, at night he put on a salt-and-pepper wig, altered his voice, and began presenting himself as a low-level criminal named Pepe. One day, as they sat in a car about 100 yards from his own home,

Starting point is 00:30:38 a gang member told Pepe he was enraged at the publicity and planned to kill Francisco Holgado. Thinking quickly, Holgado told him not to risk trouble and that he'd commit the murder himself. He said, I took it upon myself to kill myself. Thanks, Peter, for sending that. I guess that's a clever way to keep yourself from actually being killed, right? Because if they think he's going to be doing it, they won't hire somebody else.

Starting point is 00:30:58 Exactly, yeah. So it was involuntary to kill himself. He saved his own life. That's pretty clever. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons who help support the show

Starting point is 00:31:19 and get bonus materials such as extra discussions, outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, the Futility Closet podcast. Then check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of our website at futilitycloset.com where you can find that link or a donate button if you prefer. At the website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 10, 000 concise curiosities browse the futility closet store check out 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

Starting point is 00:31:55 or comments for us you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com our music was written and performed by my very special brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 231-The Halifax Explosion

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