Futility Closet - 255-Death on the Ice

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 eccentric cricket to a piggyback landing. This is episode 255. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1914, 132 sealers found themselves stranded on a North Atlantic ice field as a bitter blizzard approached. Thinly dressed and with little food, they faced a harrowing night on the ice. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:40 we'll tell the story of the Newfoundland ceiling disaster, one of the most dramatic chapters in Canadian maritime history. We'll also meet another battlefield dog and puzzle over a rejected necklace. In telling the story of Howard Blackburn, the fisherman caught in a blizzard in episode 209, I mentioned that the Grand Banks of Newfoundland were some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. But the early settlers in that area quickly discovered another resource, harp seals, which produced hundreds of thousands of pups on the ice north and east of the island each February. Seal meat was rich food, the hides made excellent leather for boots and clothing, and the fat made good soap and lamp fuel, so a new industry was born.

Starting point is 00:01:25 For more than a century, the seal hunt was an annual adventure for the men and boys of that region. By the 1850s, they were collecting more than half a million pelts a year in a season measured in weeks. But it was a treacherous business. Ships had to enter an ice field that was shifting constantly and find their way through the pack without being crushed and sunk. Over the years, more than a thousand men lost their lives on sinking ships and on foot, trying to traverse the shifting ice pans to reach their prey. Economically, the hunt quickly produced a society of haves and have-nots. The shipowners grew rich while refusing to provide clothing or safety equipment to the workers.

Starting point is 00:02:00 The typical sealer got $30 to $40 for six or seven weeks of very hard physical work, with little sleep or food, and constant cold and danger. The men lived atop mounting piles of pelts and fat until even their drinking water was fouled with blood, and those who were injured had to recover on their own or die without care. On March 19, 1914, the SSS in Newfoundland made her way out of St. John's Harbor, captained by 29-year-old Wes Keene. The ship was 42 years old, underpowered, and too long and narrow to maneuver safely in the ice fields. And as he picked up the rest of his crew, Keene found that the old hands were pessimistic. That winter was already being called the winter of storms, and there were regular reports of ships

Starting point is 00:02:41 lost at sea or missing with all hands. But the younger men still hoped for a good catch. The seal population was dwindling, but a lucky crew could still kill and skin 5,000 or 6,000 seals a day. The Newfoundland headed to the sealing grounds with a group of other ships, including the Florizel, skippered by West Keene's elder brother Joe, and the Stefano, under their father, Abram Keene, the imperious commodore of the sealing fleet, a strict taskmaster and the only ice skipper ever to bring home a million seals.

Starting point is 00:03:09 The younger ships quickly passed the Newfoundland, and by March 20th, they were quickly into the seals. They had no way to communicate with the Newfoundland when she was out of sight. Unlike the other ships, she had no wireless set. The owners had removed it to save money. Ten days passed before she reappeared. She'd been jammed in the ice and had managed to collect only a few hundred pelts. The brief season was already nearly over. Only a few days remained before the young seals would start to head for the water and swim for the Arctic. Laboriously, the ship managed to work its way far enough north to spot the ships

Starting point is 00:03:41 skippered by Wes Keane's father and brother, who had found the main population of seals on the sheet ice west of the Arctic flows. But now the Newfoundland was jammed again in the ice, too far away to participate. On March 31st, the Newfoundland was still stuck five or six miles southeast of the other ships, so Wes Keane decided to send his men walking across the ice to his father's ship, the Stefano. They'd arrived too late to walk back again, so they'd have to spend the night aboard the Stefano and the Florizel, but he was sure those ships would accept them. The second hand, George Tuff, volunteered to lead the men across the ice. The walk would be warm, so some of the men left behind their heavy jackets, and Tuff brought no compass since he didn't expect to need one. By 10 a.m., the sealers were making their way, single file, toward the Stefano. The ice was the worst Tuff had seen in 18 years, and as they observed the signs, the men grew increasingly concerned about the weather.

Starting point is 00:04:31 When they'd walked about four miles, someone suggested going back to the Newfoundland, and after some discussion, 34 men in the back turned and headed back to the ship. The rest went on, since they were now nearer to the Stefano than to their own ship, though they felt increasing misgivings about the worsening weather. They were right to worry. A blizzard was now attacking Cape Breton and the entire south coast of Newfoundland. By the time Abram Keene took the men aboard the Stefano at 1120, the first flakes of snow were beginning to fall. The Stefano now steamed southwest, heading for a patch of seals. Abram Keene told the Newfoundland's men that he'd put them back on the ice after their lunch. They wouldn't be staying on his ship as they'd expected.

Starting point is 00:05:09 But Keene told Tuff that he'd put them down two miles closer to the Newfoundland than he'd pick them up, so they could kill 14 or 1500 seals and get back to their own ship before nightfall. This was a grave miscalculation. The men had walked six to seven miles before he'd pick them up, not four to five as he thought. And in the thickening snow, Keene's crew confused the flags they were seeing. Keene was taking the Newfoundland's men a mile farther west than he believed. The upshot was that he put down the Newfoundland's men in a worsening blizzard much farther from their ship than he realized. But he was in a hurry to collect his own men, who were five or six miles to the northwest, and no one dared to question him.

Starting point is 00:05:47 He headed off north at 1150 a.m. These 132 men had expected to spend the night on the Stefano, and now they found themselves alone on the ice in a worsening storm. They were angry at George Tuff, who now insisted they kill seals before they returned to the Newfoundland. The men insisted there was no time for this, but Tuff said it had been Abram Keane's order and he was unwilling to countermand it. They found a few seals, but not many, and finally Tuff agreed that they should make for the Newfoundland. They couldn't see the ship directly, but started walking southeast by east, which they thought was the right direction. They guessed it should take about six hours to reach the ship. At 1245 p.m., the snow was beginning to drift and the ice flows were tilting on a heavy

Starting point is 00:06:23 swell when a savage blizzard struck suddenly out of the southeast. They could hear the Stefano's whistle guiding her own men aboard, but their best hope now was to reach their own ship. At 2.30pm, they found their outbound path from the morning. Now they just had to follow that south to the ship. As visibility dropped, the Stefano and the Florizel picked up their remaining men, leaving only the Newfoundland's party on the ice. Those men thought they were in fine shape. Their ship was only a mile away, the path was well marked, and they had three and a half hours of daylight remaining. But after only a few hundred yards, they spotted something that stopped them cold. It was a crimson flag bearing the number 198. The Stefano had left it there. They'd passed it on the way out after marching four hours from

Starting point is 00:07:04 their ship. They were dog-tired way out after marching four hours from their ship. They were dog-tired, and they were trying to make their way over some of the worst ice in the world. They had already walked two hours to get to this point, and now it was clear that their ship was four times farther away than they'd realized. The author Cassie Brown, who's written an excellent book about all this, says the men could have chosen to stay where they were, but apparently no one thought of it. They could have burned the pelts they had, eaten nearby seal carcasses, and built a shelter of ice and snow. Instead, they started for the Newfoundland, though they knew it would be dark before they reached her. That was a mistake. The snow was too wet to drift, but it was knee-deep and exhausting to walk through. The daylight was fading quickly, and the bad weather would bring dark an hour early.

Starting point is 00:07:43 At the heart of this developing tragedy is the fact that the Newfoundland didn't have a wireless set. Wes Keane was sure that his men were on the Stefano. Through his glass, he'd seen them climb aboard that morning, and he knew his father wouldn't put them off in weather like this. Abram Keane was sure that they'd reached the Newfoundland, since he thought it was close by. So each captain thought the crew was safely aboard the other's ship, and with no way to communicate, they had no way to realize their mistake. It was normal practice for a ship to blow its whistle regularly in a storm, but the Newfoundland wasn't doing this because Wes Keane believed all his men were safely aboard his father's ship. He gave one man permission to give the whistle a blow or two, and that man blew it twice and no more.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Here, as on the Stefano, the men were unwilling to question their orders. Outside, the dusk was falling, and the Newfoundland men struggled south. The snow made it hard to see, and eventually they lost all trace of the path. Either they had wandered astray, or it had been obliterated by the snow. They shouted for the ship, but got no response. Facing a night on the ice now, they broke into three groups to avoid sinking an ice pan by overcrowding it, and set to work building shelters. These were really just walls of ice to block the effects of the wind, but that might equal 30 or 40 degrees of temperature Fahrenheit, which could mean the difference between life and death. Most of them were too exhausted to do it properly, so two of the

Starting point is 00:08:57 shelters were rather inadequate, but master watch Arthur Mooland drove his men to build a proper wall 30 feet long and turned in at the ends to guard against the wind's shifting. Each group set some equipment ablaze to keep warm and ate what food it had left. They were now in a full-scale blizzard. The walls of ice gave the men only partial shelter, and their fires gradually went out as they ran out of fuel. Near midnight, the snow turned to a torrential rain, which kept up for more than an hour, and then icy air rushed in from the north. The wind picked up, and the up for more than an hour, and then icy air rushed in from the north. The wind picked up, and the temperature fell to 16 above zero, freezing the rain into sleet. With the windchill factor, the temperature was now 20 below zero. The men were wet through,

Starting point is 00:09:34 and soon ice covered their clothing, eyebrows, lashes, and stubble. Some men wore ice to the roots of their hair, but they couldn't remove it because their mittens, too, were frozen lumps. A sealer named Jesse Collins went from man to man biting off the ice and froze his lips in doing so. But he got the men to mind fishing and marching on parade to keep them moving. They said prayers and sang hymns. But the wind shifted to north by west, making their feeble shelters useless. At some point, the snow stopped, but the wind continued at gale force, and the drifting snow was as blinding as the blizzard had been. By dawn, the pans were littered with dead men, including Edward Tippett, his arms frozen around the bodies of his two sons. On the Stefano that morning, the men were

Starting point is 00:10:14 increasingly angry at Abram Keene, but fear of him still kept them from confronting him. From the Newfoundland, where the snow had drifted to 15 feet, Wes Keene could catch glimpses of the Stefano, and he made plans to pick up his men there when the ice had loosened a bit. On the ice, the sealers stayed where they were. The wind would kill them now if they set out looking for their ships. They had gone now more than 24 hours without food and were kept alive by the thought that the whole fleet must now be searching for them. As they circled the pans, hopelessly seeking better shelter, though, some fell through, wetting their feet and legs. They were pulled out by those who were able, but in many cases, shock quickly killed them.

Starting point is 00:10:48 Others simply collapsed of exhaustion, and if they couldn't be bullied to their feet, they died. Most of the men on Thomas Dawson's ice pan were dead. Dawson himself had broken the trail the day before and had now fallen through the ice three times. Utterly exhausted, he insisted on lying down on the ice to sleep. That left only two, he insisted on lying down on the ice to sleep. That left only two living men standing on the pan, which was so thick with bodies that they couldn't find room to walk. They were shifting the bodies to clear a path when one of the two collapsed and died, but the other, John Howlett, somehow found the strength to keep rising. He'd now been without sleep for more than 48 hours. The snow squalls stopped, but the drifting

Starting point is 00:11:23 continued. The men's faces were now blistered and purple with frostburn, and the drifts were waist-deep in places, making it hard to keep moving. They cut clothing from the dead to keep themselves warm. On Masterwatch Arthur Mullen's pan, only two men had died. As more came to him, he set them to work building another shelter. It kept them busy, and if the wind didn't abate, then another night on the ice wasn't impossible. By mid-afternoon, the wind had slackened somewhat and the sun came out, but the wind chill was still minus 20, and the events of the closing day became an unfolding nightmare. George Tuff climbed an ice pinnacle and spotted a ship a couple of miles to the northwest, the Bella Venture. But just when

Starting point is 00:11:59 his men had moved within a quarter mile, the ship turned around and headed north. It had put down some sealers on the opposite side, but no one ever looked in their direction. Tuff realized this meant no one was even looking for them. Several men abandoned hope and died within minutes of learning this. The nightmare went on. Tuff saw the Stefano approach, then steam away. The Newfoundland II was in sight, but she was four miles away and apparently trapped in the ice. Twelve sealers headed for her in three separate groups.

Starting point is 00:12:24 Tuff's party had covered half the distance when the Newfoundland broke free and steamed away from them. Three ships in one afternoon had tempted them with rescue and then abandoned them. They'd had no rest for two days, and now they faced another night on the ice under the cruel northwest wind. All day the windchill factor had been minus 20,

Starting point is 00:12:41 and with the loss of the sun it dropped to minus 30. The second night was an indescribable hell. They saw visions and heard voices. Some sank into despair. Others began to rave. Northward, they could see the lights of the ships twinkling obliviously. Nine men set out to reach them, and all of them froze to death. Others died sitting, standing, singing, and walking.

Starting point is 00:13:02 Tom Dawson, who had somehow survived lying down to sleep on the first night, did it again on the second. John Howlett piled dead bodies around him to keep off the wind. At last the sun came up. In the log of the Newfoundland, Wes Keane reported for the first time some doubts about the safety of his men. He tried again to reach the Stefano, but his ship was trapped again in the ice. On the ice, Arthur Mooland could see the Belaventure, the Stefano, the Florizel, and the Newfoundland. He suggested to George Tuff that they try to reach the Newfoundland before she got free. They had struggled to within two miles of her when Tuff finally gave out. He was ice blind and could barely see, and he'd wet his feet several times during the night. As the men tended to him, Moulin looked again toward the Newfoundland. He

Starting point is 00:13:42 could see the ship, but maddeningly, the men on it were looking toward the Stefano, not in his direction. But then, for no very clear reason, Wes Keane swung his glass around the ice field, spotted Mooland and his men, and realized to his horror that his sealers had spent two days and nights on the ice. He leapt up to send a distress signal to the other ships, but he had no flares or wireless set. The international distress signal was a black ball hoisted above his ensign, so in desperation he raised a bucket of coal above a flag. To his relief, the other ships recognized the signal and sent word around by wireless, and together they finally sent men out to the survivors with blankets and food. Even during the rescue, the tragedy continued. Some of the survivors were so weak that they

Starting point is 00:14:21 died even as they were being fed. One of them, in a delirium, turned and ran from his rescuers. When men from the Bellaventure approached Alfred Maidment and asked his name, the effort of answering killed him, and he dropped back dead. Tom Dawson, amazingly, was alive. Still buried under bodies, he dreamed of the daughter of his friend Abram Parsons, secondhand of the Bellaventure. She told him, Cheer up, Tom, Papa is coming.

Starting point is 00:14:44 And he woke in time to see her father walk up. And Arthur Mooland walked back to the Newfoundland, climbed the side of the ship unaided, passed into the cabin, ate a light meal, went to his bunk, asked to be roused in three hours with another meal, and went to sleep. When Abram and Wes Keene finally met, anything that was said between them was said in private. Newfoundland's total crew had been 189 men. They found 69 bodies and 112 answered roll call. That left eight men missing. They had probably fallen into the water.

Starting point is 00:15:14 The crew practically mutinied against Abram Keene, whom everyone blamed. He insisted he had put down the Newfoundland's crew only four miles from their own ship. In truth, it was closer to eight. He had stopped sounding his own whistle at 8 p.m. the first night and had told his son Joe he was sure the Newfoundland's crew were safely aboard their own ship. The news of the disaster reached St. John's by telegraph on the evening of April 2nd and spread quickly across the island. Hundreds of people lined the waterfront two days later as the Bella Ventura steamed through the narrows with corpses on its deck. A reporter with the Evening Telegram wrote, the vision sent a shudder through the narrows with corpses on its deck. A reporter with the Evening Telegram wrote,

Starting point is 00:15:47 The vision sent a shudder through the crowd. The bodies had been laid there just as they were brought in from the ice, many of them with limbs contracted and drawn up in postures which the cold had brought about. In an inquiry held in 1915, no one was held legally responsible for the tragedy, but Wess and Abram Keene were found guilty of errors in judgment, as was George Tuff, the officer in charge of the sealers on the ice. A commission recommended that all ships thereafter carry wireless sets, barometers, and thermometers, and in 1916 the government prohibited sealers from being on the ice after dark. Alec Harvey, representing the Newfoundland's owners, admitted that the ship's wireless set had been removed because it wasn't giving returns for the

Starting point is 00:16:22 money invested. Asked whether he thought of it as a safety device, he said, the safety of the crew was not thought of at all. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. We always appreciate all the different ways that many of our listeners help the show. Thank you. Patreon also gives us a good way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like outtakes, peeks behind the scenes, extra information on some of the stories, and updates on Sasha, our slightly spoiled feline mascot. You can learn more about our Patreon campaign 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. John Levine wrote, Dear Sasha and assistants, the story in number 248

Starting point is 00:17:39 about Smokey the dog found in a foxhole in New Guinea reminded me of another war dog story. dog found in a foxhole in New Guinea reminded me of another war dog story. In September 1918, near the end of World War I, American soldier Lee Duncan was sent to inspect the ruins of a German encampment near Verdun in northeastern France. He found a German shepherd and her litter of very young puppies and somehow managed to bring them all back to the U.S. base. At the time, few Americans had ever seen a German Shepherd, although they were familiar in Germany, and the adult was a working dog, carrying messages for the Germans.

Starting point is 00:18:10 Duncan kept two of the puppies, which he named after some popular French dolls. He brought them back to the U.S. and home to California, where one of them had a long movie career. You've probably heard of him. The toy after which he was named was called Rin Tin Tin. I've always wondered where that came from. It's such an unusual name. Yeah, there were two dolls, Rin Tin Tin and Nanette, and he named his two puppies after them.

Starting point is 00:18:35 So Rin Tin Tin, who would go on to become a world-famous Hollywood star, was found by Lee Duncan in a mostly destroyed dog kennel, one of just a small number of canine survivors of American shelling, and was brought back to base and housed with his little family in an empty oil barrel. Duncan was a shy and solitary man who had spent five years in an orphanage as a child when his mother couldn't care for him, but he always had a deep emotional connection with dogs and apparently an unusual ability to train them.

Starting point is 00:19:05 Rinty, as Duncan nicknamed him, besides being very trainable, also had an unusually expressive face. For example, in the 1925 film The Clash of the Wolves, he has to convey that he believes he's leaving his pack to die, and from what I read, he really sells it. Starting his career in the era of silent movies, so where nobody was speaking, Rin Tin Tin was seen as being the equal of any of the other actors. He appeared in 27 films where he received his own salary, separate from Duncan's as his trainer, and he actually earned more than most of his human co-stars. For example, in the 1924 film Lighthouse by the Sea, Rinty earned $1,000 a week, while the lead human actor, William Collier Jr., was paid $150 a week. And incidentally, when I was looking up this film,

Starting point is 00:19:52 I learned that Anne Frank had watched it from a rented reel with her friends for her 13th birthday as she was a big fan of Rin Tin Tin. Now that we're talking about it, I don't know that I've ever actually seen a film. I know the name and there's all these stories about it. I don't know if I've ever actually seen a movie. No, I don't think I have either. But Rintonton was really enormously popular in his time. At the first Academy Awards in 1929, only a last minute rule change prevented him from winning the award for best actor after he received the most votes. When he died in 1932, there were breaking news bulletins, and the next day, an hour-long program about him was broadcast across the U.S. Newspapers around the country carried obituaries, magazines wrote articles about his life,

Starting point is 00:20:36 and a special news feature on him was shown to movie audiences. By this time, Duncan had already been training some of Rinty's descendants, and there were different versions of Rin Tin Tin in film, radio, and then television for many years. But Duncan was very affected by his beloved pet's death and wrote a poem to him that ended with, A real unselfish love like yours, old pal, is something I shall never know again, and I must always be a better man because you loved me greatly, Rin Tin Tin. Susan Orlean published a book in 2011 about Rin Tin Tin, and The Guardian reports that she asked Duncan's daughter Carolyn if she had ever felt any sibling rivalry with her father's dogs. Carolyn laughed and said, no, there was never any rivalry. The dogs came first. That sounds bitter. No, there was never any rivalry. The dogs came first.

Starting point is 00:21:26 That sounds bitter. John also addressed in his email Greg's comments in episode 248 with regards to red versus blue, about how in the U.S. those colors are associated with particular political parties. John said, oddly, the U.S. has the colors opposite from everyone else. In the UK, the conservatives are blue, labor is red. In Canada, the conservatives are also blue, the liberals are red, and the New Democratic Party, which is to the left of the liberals, is orange. In Australia, the Liberal Party, which is liberal in the classical sense of unregulated markets and is quite right-wing, is blue, labor is red. You get the idea. The Green Party is always green, of course. Similarly, Claire Hennessy wrote, Good day, Sharon, Greg,

Starting point is 00:22:10 and Sasha. I just finished listening to episode 248 and thought I would drop you a line about your comments about red states and blue states. We in Australia have our federal election this weekend, so your comments reminded me that the United States is one of only a few countries that refers to conservative states as red and more liberal-leaning states as blue. This is an interesting link about colorism. bizarre from an Australian perspective to see your Republican Party represented by red as this is traditionally the color of the labor movement and workers' rights. Here is an interesting link about colors and political associations around the world. Keep up the good work. And Claire sent a link to a quite extensive Wikipedia article on political colors. I hadn't realized that many colors are associated with particular political ideologies or parties, and many countries use

Starting point is 00:23:05 some kind of color scheme, such as the U.S.'s red and blue. This can get rather more colorful in countries that have several parties, as each has its own associated color. As John and Claire noted, red usually symbolizes left-wing ideologies and has traditionally been associated with socialism and communism, dating back to the use of a red flag in the French Revolution of 1848. Nowadays, the association of red with more radical ideologies has actually led some more moderate or center-left parties to adopt pink instead of red. In the UK, the Conservative Party's colors were historically red, white, and blue, but after the Labour Party started using red, the Conserv conservatives moved to using blue alone, and this seems to have spread to other countries.

Starting point is 00:23:50 So yeah, the U.S. has it backward for most of the rest of the world. That must be confusing because U.S. politics are sort of, you know, they affect other countries more than the reverse. So even if you remember to make the reversal, you still have to. So it's like Claire said, you always have to think about it backwards when you look at a map. On this topic, Tucker Drake wrote, hello, Sasha's servants. So we've gone from being assistants to servants in one episode. That's a new love. By now, you've probably gotten a dozen emails on why certain colors are associated with American political parties. On the off chance that you haven't, allow me to

Starting point is 00:24:20 link you to the Wikipedia article on the subject. Basically, it boils down to random chance in the 2000 election. Many networks alternated between using red and blue for a particular party, with some years Republicans being blue, Democrats red. Then in the next election cycle, the colors were swapped. Until that is the very contentious year of 2000, when it took longer than usual to sort out who was going to be America's next president. After that, the colors assigned to the parties in 2000 just kind of stuck, and here we are. So thanks, Tucker, you were the only one to send this follow-up. Unlike most of the rest of the world, in recent decades, the political

Starting point is 00:24:56 parties in the U.S. weren't consistently associated with particular colors until the 2000 presidential election. The lack of consistency of the colors actually meant that before 2000, the states who had voted for the Republican or the Democratic candidate were colored differently between the different news media. So some networks and newspapers would show the states the Republican candidate had won as red, while others would color them blue. This could be a little confusing, and eventually the media decided to all use the same color scheme, meaning that during the historic 2000 election, which took over a month to be settled, everyone ended up using red for Republican and blue for Democrat, leading us to where we are

Starting point is 00:25:33 today. It's funny that we didn't even standardize until 2000. That's pretty recent. Yeah, I was thinking as I was working on this, I was realizing it actually took me several years to remember the associations, because when we grew up, the parties weren't associated with any particular colors. So it had never occurred to me to think of parties as having colors. That's odd. Tucker went on to say, Interestingly enough, Gene Sharp, who founded the Albert Einstein Institution, an organization dedicated to peaceful revolution, has said that for a peaceful revolution to be successful, it must associate itself with a color. The particular

Starting point is 00:26:10 color need not matter, just that the folks leading the organization have a singular color to rally behind. A 2011 BBC News article written by the director of a documentary on Jean Sharp called the now late Sharp, the world's Foremost Expert on Nonviolent Revolution. Sharp's central point was that the power of dictatorships derives from the obedience of the people, so that if the people become less consenting, eventually a regime will crumble. In his books, Sharp listed a variety of what he called nonviolent weapons that oppressed people can employ, and he argued that as soon as you choose to fight with violence, you're choosing to fight against your opponent's best

Starting point is 00:26:49 weapons. One of Sharpe's key steps on the path to revolution is use colors and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance, which made me think about colors and political parties. Does having consistent colors help to unify their resistance? And if so, is that something that you necessarily want in more democratic forms of government, where you could argue that at least sometimes compromise or consensus building might be more productive? That's a good point, unfortunately. So now, yeah, I wonder. So now that we're like red and blue, and so we're so starkly different, and we're associated with these differences.

Starting point is 00:27:24 It just emphasizes the opposition and the difference between people. Isaac Dickman-Waz sent an update to the puzzle in episode 248 and the pronunciation tip that his last name rhymes with paws like the things at the end of Sasha's legs. Hi, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. Darren and Sasha. I just finished listening to your episode about Smokey the dog and its lateral thinking puzzle, which hinged on a menu written in Braille, then happened across this story about a young man in California who was working with local restaurants to make their menus more accessible to blind patrons. Love the show. Listening every week is one of my highlights. Thanks for all you've taught me. And Isaac sent a link to an article from May about a blind high school student in Monrovia, California who has been working to create braille menus for local restaurants so that visually

Starting point is 00:28:11 impaired customers can order more independently. It was a nice little story and it prompted me to look into the topic a bit where I learned that the social media post that had prompted the puzzle about how an 18 year old and her family were so excited that she was offered a Braille menu for the first time, had gone viral and hopefully helped raise awareness of how rare Braille menus are. From what I read, even some of the larger restaurant chains that offer Braille menus tend not to update the Braille versions as often as the regular menus, so that even if they are available, the Braille menus are often out of date. I did see several articles, though, similar to the one that Isaac sent, about people, often students, working in their local area to get Braille menus into some of the restaurants, or articles about specific restaurants starting to offer Braille menus because of specific customers.

Starting point is 00:28:58 And I saw an article from the Australian ABC from last year about how rare Braille menus are in that country, too. So perhaps it's time for more of us to be aware of this issue and hope that more restaurants will end up enabling their visually impaired customers to read their own menus. Yeah, I'll confess I hadn't even thought about this issue until it came up for us. Me too. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really appreciate all the emails that we get. So if you have any questions or comments for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:29:35 It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from Jeff and Emmett Moxon. A man is out shopping for his wife's birthday, in particular for a necklace. He goes to a nearby shop and sees a beautiful necklace that he knows for certain his wife would love to have. The necklace is within his price range, and bringing this particular necklace home is sure to make her happy on her birthday. However, he does not buy the necklace. Why? Does he know that somebody else is going to give her happy on her birthday. However, he does not buy the necklace. Why? Does he know that somebody else is going to give her that necklace? No.

Starting point is 00:30:12 Okay. Does it have to be a necklace for this to make sense? Yes. Okay. It has to be a necklace. So it couldn't be like he saw a smartphone that she would love for her birthday. Like, it needs to be a necklace. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Let's back up. Did this really happen? Do you know? I don't think so. Okay. I mean, probably somewhere sometime in the world. So there is a man. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:41 Does it matter where this man lives? No. And he has a wife. Yes. And she has a birthday coming up. Yes. And she is alive. Yes. Okay. Just checking. That would be a very good reason not to buy a necklace. And he wants to buy her a necklace for her birthday. Does he still intend to buy her a necklace for her birthday? Has anything changed his mind about that? You mean after he sees this one? Yes.

Starting point is 00:31:08 I'm going to say maybe not. Maybe. Okay. So he is shopping specifically for necklaces for his wife's birthday. Yes. For necklaces, plural, like he doesn't have one particularly in mind? That's right. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:22 And he sees this necklace and he thinks, gee, my wife would love this necklace. That's right. Okay. And he sees this necklace, and he thinks, gee, my wife would love this necklace. That's right. Has she previously owned it? Yes. He's in a pawn shop. She's pawned the necklace that he bought her previously or something, and so he realizes that... No. No?

Starting point is 00:31:44 Keep going. He's in a pawn shop, and he sees a necklace that he realizes used to be his wife's, and she has apparently pawned it. No. It was stolen from her. Yes. And he thinks, if I bring her back this stolen necklace, that's not much of a gift, because it's already her necklace.

Starting point is 00:32:06 No. Did they know it had been stolen? Yes. So why wouldn't he want to buy it? Because they've already put in for the insurance on it. And so it would be insurance fraud. No, that doesn't make sense. Because she's already replaced it?

Starting point is 00:32:22 No. Do they know who stole it? No. Okay. So what's he going to do next? Report it to the police. They need it for evidence. That's right.

Starting point is 00:32:32 Jeff and Emmett write, The shop the man goes into is a pawn shop, and the necklace he sees is a family heirloom that was previously stolen from their home. He cannot buy the necklace because he has to inform the police of its whereabouts before he can get it back for her as it's stolen property. Ah. So thank you, Jeff and Emmett. Thank you. because he has to inform the police of its whereabouts before he can get it back for her as its stolen property. So thank you, Jeff and Emmett. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:32:51 And we are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles. So if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our listeners. If you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of 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 00:33:23 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 penguin-themed shirt or a mug or a pillowcase. Learn about the Futility Closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered.

Starting point is 00:33:41 If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All of the music in our show was written and performed by my very talented brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 255-Death on the Ice

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