Futility Closet - 274-Death in a Nutshell

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 Nabokov's entomology to a scarf-knitting clock. This is episode 274. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 1940s, Frances Glessner Lee brought new rigor to crime scene analysis with a curiously quaint tool.

Starting point is 00:00:34 She designed 20 miniature scenes of puzzling deaths and challenged her students to investigate them analytically. In today's show, we'll describe the nutshell studies of unexplained death and their importance to modern investigations. We'll also appreciate an overlooked sled dog and puzzle over a shrunken state. And we have a bit of sad news today. This episode was the last one to be made under the supervision of our faithful podcast mascot, Sasha, who was rather determined to be our show's podcast starting in episode nine.

Starting point is 00:01:12 We'll have some more details about the news in the show notes for anyone who wants to know, and we hope at some point to find a new mascot to share our lives and podcast with in the future. Frances Glessner Lee once described her life as lonely and rather terrifying. She was born in 1878 to wealthy parents on Chicago's Prairie Avenue. Her father was a co-founder of International Harvester, the farm equipment manufacturer, and her parents introduced her to theater, art, and music, as well as many prominent intellectuals, politicians, and artists. She was extremely bright and was tutored at home and reared to exacting standards,

Starting point is 00:01:52 but she had few friends and rarely interacted with other children. The house was pathologically private, in the words of one critic. It had few windows facing the street and no front lawn. The industrialist George Pullman, who lived across the street, said, I don't know what I have ever done to have that thing staring me in the face every time I go out my door. That house would have an outsized influence on Frances Lee's imagination. She had the mind of a scientist, but she was taught the love of home and tutored in the mild feminine pastimes of that era, sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, metalwork, and painting.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Her parents loved the handmade objects of the arts and crafts movement, and working with them taught Lee about colors, patterns, and design. But her parents also believed that a woman's place was in the home, and while her brother went to Harvard, they denied her a college education because they said a lady didn't go to school. She resented that throughout her life. She said she wanted to do, quote, something in my lifetime that should be of significant value to the community. But at age 73, she wrote, chief amongst the difficulties

Starting point is 00:02:49 I have had to meet have been the facts that I never went to school, that I had no letters after my name, and that I was placed in the category of rich woman who didn't have enough to do. She was angry and bitter at the doors that had been closed to her because of the circumstances of her birth, and that was compounded by the controlling influence of her parents, which extended into her middle years. At age 23, she married Blewett Lee, a lawyer and law professor at Northwestern University, and her parents built them a house on Prairie Avenue, which again prevented her from establishing a life of her own.

Starting point is 00:03:20 Adding to this, her parents gave the couple money to maintain the lifestyle that Frances was accustomed to and that her husband couldn't support. Their son John wrote, The marriage, instead of being a liberating influence for her, resulted in even tighter ties to her family's control. Benevolent and kindly as such control was, it was nonetheless control. The couple had two children, separated after four years of marriage, reunited to conceive a third, and then broke up for good. The split put a further strain on Lee's relationship with her family, who she felt sided with Blewett, and again she felt herself under her father's thumb financially and lacking the qualifications to support herself.

Starting point is 00:03:56 All of these pressures organized to express themselves in a peculiar and brilliant way. In 1913, she withdrew to the family's thousand-acre estate in New Hampshire and set about making an elaborate gift for her mother, an exquisitely detailed miniature representation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her work was meticulous and exacting. She attended rehearsals to observe the musicians and created dolls for all 90 of them, each with a miniature instrument and sometimes with a case. She balanced sheet music on tiny music stands, bound a little program, and placed a tiny flower into the lapel of each tuxedo jacket. The project succeeded so well that

Starting point is 00:04:30 she found her parents could recognize individual players, many of whom they knew personally. It had taken her two months to make the orchestra. She spent two years on her next effort, a representation of the Flonzeli Quartet. She and her son went to a concert, sat at opposite sides of the house, and took elaborate notes on what they saw, and they got the conductor of the Chicago Symphony to write a miniature score. The quartet were invited to dinner, and at the unveiling, Lee's son wrote, for a moment nobody spoke, and then all four members of the quartet broke out into voluble language. Nobody listened, but each one of them pointed with delight to the eccentricities of the other three.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Quite apart from this, in the early 1930s, Lee also conceived an interest in legal medicine, encouraged by George Burgess McGrath, a friend of her brother, who went on to become a medical examiner and professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. He told her about the need to improve the training of the people who investigated sudden and violent deaths. Forensics was still in its infancy, and there was very little training for investigators, who were liable to overlook or mishandle evidence, and sometimes tampered inadvertently with crime scenes. And in most states, coroners weren't required to have medical degrees. Most of them were undertakers or had been elected for political reasons. Even at the FBI, these investigations weren't approached with real medical rigor. Lee found all of this fascinating, but her father disapproved of her interest,

Starting point is 00:05:47 and it was only after his death that she was fully free to pursue it. And even then, she found that the field of legal medicine had barely been defined, and there was very little published material to guide her. So in 1931, at age 53, she underwrote a salary for a professor of legal medicine at Harvard. Two years later, she created a library of legal medicine there, and in 1936, she established an endowment of $250,000. She hoped that the new department would help to make crime scene investigations more efficient and more accurate by studying the causes of unexplained death and communicating its findings to doctors, lawyers, coroners, and police. It would have been valuable to offer hands-on

Starting point is 00:06:24 investigative training to the students, but there were laws against disclosing the details of unsolved crimes, and anyway, crimes rarely unfolded obligingly during the time period when a training session was taking place. It was here that Lee made a singularly imaginative leap. She decided to make the crime scenes herself. Working at the estate in New Hampshire, she designed 20 dioramas at a scale of one inch to one foot. In each, she depicted the scene of an unexplained death as a challenge to students who would have to study it and come to some conclusion about what had happened. She called these models the nutshell studies of unexplained death, after a well-known police saying,

Starting point is 00:06:59 convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell. She lavished the same exquisite care on the nutshells that she had on her earlier models of musicians. She said she wanted the students to experience what is large in what is small, so she attended to every detail. She wrote tiny letters using a paintbrush with a single hair, whittled clothespins, and printed labels for prescription bottles. She hand-rolled tiny tobacco cigarettes and carefully burned the ends. A miniature coffee pot held its own little strainer and coffee grounds. Tiny lollipops were wrapped individually in cellophane, and a wall calendar included pages for months in the future,

Starting point is 00:07:36 months that the victim would never see. And everything in the models worked. Window shades, mousetraps, whistles, pencils, hinges, doorknobs, and keys. The work was so exacting that she could turn out just three of these models in a year. Her carpenter said that building each one took as long as building a real house, and it cost just as much, about $3,000 in the 1940s. Each scene was a composite drawn from several real crimes, but all the details were authentic, and Lee was fanatical about getting them right.

Starting point is 00:08:04 She talked to police, studied real crime scenes, interviewed witnesses, visited the morgue, and consulted with other model makers and with physicians at Harvard Medical School. She furnished the models with exquisite care. Sometimes dollhouse furniture was good enough for her standards, but often it had to be altered. She reupholstered couches to match the style of their rooms and stripped and repainted tables and chairs. She had one rocking chair remade three times so that it moved accurately. And she stocked her miniature dwellings like real homes. One order she sent to a dollhouse company asked for corn on the cob, a dictionary, bathroom scales, kitchen tools, a dishpan set, and a mix master. Where possible,

Starting point is 00:08:41 she could repurpose some items. A Cracker Jack prize was used as a toy rocking horse, a Benzedrine inhaler became a fire hydrant, and a necklace charm became an egg beater. She made the corpses and their clothing herself, painting the faces in appropriate tones to indicate length of decease and, where applicable, cause of death. She knitted their stockings and clothing using needles normally used for lace making and thread unraveled from fabric,

Starting point is 00:09:04 and she complained constantly from fabric, and she complained constantly that the faces and attitudes of her figures were not realistic enough. The finished models varied in size from a shack measuring 8 inches by 14 to a three-room dwelling that was 30 inches square. None was more than three feet high. In one, a woman lies face up in a bathtub, her face under a running spigot. In another, a man lies face down in a log cabin, Lee wrote, and financial status of those involved, as well as their frame of mind at the time the death took place. Not all cases shown are crimes. Some are accidents. Some are deaths due to natural causes. Some, because of inexpert or careless investigation, remain undetermined. In fact, she favored enigmatic cases to drive home the point that every clue should be considered. A murder might be staged to look like an accident or a suicide. A suicide might appear to be an accident, and an accident

Starting point is 00:10:04 might look like murder. She wanted to encourage her students to appreciate the value of autopsies and lab tests, and the importance of communication among the medical examiner, police, and forensic investigators at the scene of a crime. The first models were presented in 1945, when Harvard inaugurated the Frances Glessner Lee Seminars on Legal Medicine. She organized every aspect. She felt that training police officers was especially important because they were the first to arrive at a crime scene and needed to learn to preserve evidence. Also, she wanted to improve communication among police officers, forensic investigators, medical experts, and prosecutors, and to integrate their work. She said, my whole object has been to improve the administration of justice,

Starting point is 00:10:42 to standardize the methods, to sharpen the existing tools, as well as to supply new tools, The seminars were held twice a year and lasted a week. 25 to 30 police officers attended, and Lee invited speakers from around the world. Her friend, the novelist Earl Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, said, Her friend, the novelist Earl Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, said, Invitations to attend are as sought after in police circles as bids to Hollywood by girls aspiring to be actresses. The seminars addressed every aspect of a murder investigation, including estimating the time of death, identifying victims, interrogating suspects and witnesses, and autopsy. And the participants undertook a training session in which they analyzed two dioramas for 90 minutes.

Starting point is 00:11:29 For each, they were given a slip of paper that briefly described the scene at the time of its discovery and included names, dates, and the first statements obtained from witnesses. Then they were asked to decide whether the death had resulted from a murder, a suicide, or an accident. As in real police work, this was tricky. Lee warned the students that the witness statements they had been given might be true, mistaken, or deliberately false. For example, in the scenario called Burned Cabin, a young man has escaped a fire at night that he says has killed his uncle. But the young man is fully dressed, which seems to undermine his claim that the fire was an accident. Lee had taken that detail from an actual crime that had taken place in 1943. She told the students each model is a tableau depicting the scene at the most effective moment,

Starting point is 00:12:07 very much as if a motion picture were stopped at such a point. The inspector may best examine them by imagining himself a trifle less than six inches tall. He's seeking only the facts, the truth, in a nutshell. The officers took notes as they would at a real death scene and made verbal reports to the class, drawing attention to clues. They commonly offered hypotheses as to how the victim had died and supported those with details, but they weren't supposed to regard the scenes as whodunits. Lee said, the nutshell studies are not presented as crimes to be solved. They are rather designed as exercises in observing and evaluating indirect evidence, especially that which may have medical importance. The policemen loved the seminars. Many said that the knowledge they gained and

Starting point is 00:12:43 the contacts they made served them throughout their careers. Some later credited them for promotions. Lee said about organizing training courses for police schools in states around the country. That was an impressive success for a woman who had no formal training and who'd got involved in legal medicine only in her 50s. She said, Men are dubious of an elderly woman with a cause. My problem is to convince them that I am not trying to butt in or to run anything. Also, I have to sell them on the fact that I know something of what I am talking

Starting point is 00:13:09 about. Clearly she did. In time, she earned the epithet, the godmother of forensic science. And it just occurred to me in researching this that as unhappy as her early life was, it was sort of necessary to lead her to this peculiar success. She had to go through all of it, I think, for the idea of the dioramas to occur to her in the first place, for her to have the skills to pursue it. With the emphasis on home and home life, I mean, because all of her crime scenes, it sounds like, take place in a home. Yeah, pretty much. She's not doing public places or streets or other places where people could considerably commit crimes, but with this emphasis on the home, but her scientific analytical mind. And to learn the skills to do all this meticulous, tiny work.

Starting point is 00:13:47 Yeah. She had to have all of that in order to actually make this real. And the work had a personal meaning for her as well. She said, The relationship which has developed between the state police students and me is a truly unique one. They all call me mother, and to me, they are all son. The students gave her cards on Mother's Day, and they described her as gracious, a mother figure, and a friend. In 1946, the first alumni of her program founded an organization called Harvard Associates in Police Science,

Starting point is 00:14:19 which still meets annually to review the material and discuss new techniques and procedures. By 1949, 2,000 doctors and 4,000 lawyers had been trained at the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine, and Lee's seminars had attracted thousands of detectives, coroners, state troopers, insurance agents, district attorneys, and reporters. She finally had to stop working when her eyesight failed, but she had a radio installed in her room so that she could still listen to police reports, and she continued to correspond with police chiefs and to champion reforms in the coroner system. She died in 1962. Five years later, in 1967, the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine closed for financial reasons, and the Nutshells were moved to the Medical Examiner's Office in Baltimore. But the police seminars are

Starting point is 00:14:58 still held twice a year, and they still follow Lee's practice of inviting speakers, holding a banquet, and running a training session with the original dioramas, which the participants still praise. Baltimore Police Detective Ruganzu Howard told the London Times, the most valuable thing I took away is that things are not always what they seem. His colleague Robert Ross said, it really is like a puzzle, and that's what makes it real, because in a real investigation, it's like that. You walk into a house, and you don't know what's evidence and what's not, so you have to look at everything. In 1949, Alan Moritz, the head of the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine, had said, the amazing truth is that in most localities in the United States, official medical investigation of unexplained deaths is so casual and inexpert

Starting point is 00:15:38 that clever murderers often go free. Frances Lee had set out to change that, and her dioramas helped to show the importance of preserving an accurate record of a crime scene at the moment of its discovery. In that spirit, panoramic cameras are used today for that purpose, and soon 3D-printed images of crime scenes may be added as well. Corinne May Botts, a Baltimore photographer who spent seven years researching Frances Lee's nutshells, says that though forensics is widely known today through television programs and even high school courses, Lee's dioramas are still valuable because, quote, the ability to properly identify, evaluate, and preserve evidence at the crime scene remains a critical part of an investigation.

Starting point is 00:16:35 In episode 268, the main story was about Ferdinand de Mara, the great imposter, who took on the roles of a number of professions, including that of a surgeon. Terry O'Brien wrote, I was wondering if you were aware he appeared on screen in a cheesy 1960 movie, The Hypnotic Eye. He appeared as a surgeon wearing a surgical mask, so his face was never shown, although he was shown in the publicity stills for the movie. The producers of the movie asked him to appear in a cameo role because one of the actresses, Mary Anders, was friends with Tony Curtis, who was working on The Great Impostor, based on the life of Damara, in a nearby studio. Damara was on set at the time, which is how the producers encountered

Starting point is 00:17:10 him. He only appears briefly in one or two scenes. I enclosed a scan of the publicity still. There is another one where he is wearing his surgical mask. So Wikipedia says that in 1960, as a publicity stunt, Damara was given a small acting role in the horror film The Hypnotic Eye, and it does look like a pretty bad movie. The summary description on IMDb is, A mysterious hypnotist is suspected by the police for being responsible for a wave of female mutilation victims, and it has a rating of 5.8 out of 10 stars.

Starting point is 00:17:44 In the cast, Damara is listed as DeMara in the role of hospital doctor and under his bio it says, Robert Crichton wrote two books about him, one of which, The Great Impostor, 1959, was developed into a movie with DeMara played by Tony Curtis, although the story became fictionally embellished around Curtis. This notoriety got DeMara one acting role in the movie The Hypnotic Eye. While he was a convincing actor in real life, he did poorly on film.

Starting point is 00:18:10 And I thought that was a little amusing that maybe he did better actually performing as a surgeon in real life than he did just trying to pretend to be one in a movie. There is something fitting about that, sort of pretending to be someone else. And John Wood from Edmond, Oklahoma, wrote about Damara. While listening to the most recent episode, I realized that the story sounded very familiar. My wife and I have recently started watching through the show MASH from the beginning. The episode Dear Dad Again, in season one, features a character named Adam Casey, who, while appearing to be a fantastic

Starting point is 00:18:45 surgeon, is found later to be a fraud. Looking this up in a fan wiki, it does indeed appear that Captain Casey is based on Ferdinand DeMara. I enjoy the show and love when the stories you do seem to coincide with other things in my life. MASH was a rather popular American television series that aired from 1972 to 1983 and was set at a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War of the early 1950s. And it makes sense that they would have thought of having a character based on De Mara on the show as one of his most famous exploits was his posing as a surgeon during the Korean War, though that was for the Royal Canadian Navy rather than the American Army.

Starting point is 00:19:31 The Damara-inspired character of Adam Casey appears in the 18th episode of the show and aired in February of 1973. Apparently in the show, after the character's deception is caught and he is told to leave the hospital, he admits that he has posed as a number of professions, such as a lawyer and an engineer, as he has the talent for them, but he doesn't have the patience or drive to pursue formal qualifications. By the end of the episode, the character is already posing in another role as a chaplain. I used to watch MASH. You said there was 73? Yes. So that was one of the earlier ones.

Starting point is 00:19:57 Yes. But it was on forever in reruns, and I think I can just barely remember that episode. Oh, really? I mean, I didn't know who DeMar was at the time, but that's really interesting. John also sent an update to the story of the 1925 serum run to Nome that we covered in episode 46, about a desperate attempt to use a relay of dog sleds to stave off a deadly diphtheria epidemic. John said, I saw today that Disney has apparently made a movie about the 1925

Starting point is 00:20:26 serum run to Nome. The film will star Willem Dafoe and will be out December 13th on Disney+. I don't have much more information, but a first look of Dafoe as Seppala has been released. Here are a couple of related links. And we do often hear that some of the stories we cover have been made into movies, and sometimes we don't mention it on the show because the movies are usually pretty fictionalized versions. But we did get a good bit of email after episode 46 from people who apparently very fondly remember the 1995 animated film Balto, which focused on one of the particular dogs involved in the serum run. focused on one of the particular dogs involved in the serum run. Interestingly, the new film is called Togo, after another of the dogs that featured in the story, and Defoe will play Togo's owner, Leonard Seppala. The movie Balto was a rather imaginative take on the story of the serum run, so I guess we'll have to see how true to life Togo tries to be. But it's nice to see that Togo

Starting point is 00:21:21 is getting some attention. Balto certainly deserved a lot of credit for his role in The Feat, but he seemed to receive a disproportionate amount of the media coverage at the time, and he even had a statue erected of him in Central Park. As I mentioned in some follow-up in episode 47, Balto starred in a short documentary from 1925 titled Balto's Race to Nome, for which IMDb lists the full cast of the movie as Balto playing himself. And he made guest appearances in several other short films in the 1920s and 30s. And as I said, a number of people remember him today from his more recent film and its sequels. But while the animated movie and the 1925 documentary seem to credit Balto for the whole serum run, it was actually Seppala and Togo

Starting point is 00:22:06 who covered the longest, most dangerous leg of the run, nearly twice the distance of any other team, so it's nice to see him getting his own movie. And while looking into this, I did see that there was another movie released just last month about the serum run called The Great Alaskan Race, which seems to have focused primarily on Leonard Seppala and his story, but it also appears to have been rather poorly reviewed. It has a score of 29 out of 100 on Metacritic, and as usual, it seems to be somewhat fictionalized. So we'll just have to hold out hope that Togo does better. Yeah, it's still good to hear that almost a century later that Togo's getting some more credit. It's interesting

Starting point is 00:22:46 though, it's such a good story in itself. I mean, it's just such a good story but they feel like, well, we have to make it a better story or a different story or change things. You could just tell the story. Yeah, especially in that case, you're right. A lot of the time they fictionalize them because it's not dramatic enough

Starting point is 00:23:02 or it's not quite a good enough story. It's rare that real life kind of organizes itself to make a satisfying drama. But in this case, it really did. It really did. The main story in episode 63 was about rainmaker Charles Hatfield, who was hired by the city of San Diego to relieve a four-year drought. After he started his work in January 1916, torrential rains caused some of the most extreme

Starting point is 00:23:25 flooding in the city's history. Courtney Fawson wrote, Hi Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. I'm a big fan of your podcast. As a college student, my hallmates and I enjoy thinking through your lateral thinking exercises. This is a bit of a throwback because I've been working through your archives, but in episode 63, I noticed a striking similarity between the story and a movie I had seen. In It Happens Every Thursday, there is a man who tries to create rain, just like Charles Hatfield did. And just like Hatfield, it began to rain and wouldn't stop.

Starting point is 00:23:56 There was property damage, and the townspeople wanted the character who had supposedly incited the rain to pay for it all. The major difference is that in the movie, the character began trying to convince people he hadn't actually caused the rain, as it had started before he began his process. I just found that so interesting, since many times in the podcast, you say that these stories would make great movies, and this one was a subplot of a movie. Keep up the good work. So, learning that there was a 1953 movie with a subplot that mirrored

Starting point is 00:24:23 the Hatfield story was a surprise to us. It's a cute twist that the character in the movie definitely didn't want to take the responsibility for the rain, and that is a difference from Hatfield, who definitely did want the credit for his hard work at rainmaking. He had claimed he was working 17 hours a day to bring on the rain, and he wanted as well to be paid his promised $10,000. Though his situation turned tricky when the city wanted to saddle him with the millions of dollars of damages that the rain had caused. And for those who don't remember back to episode 63, in the end, in Hatfield's case, after two trials, the rain and

Starting point is 00:24:55 flooding was deemed to be an act of God, so Hatfield neither got paid nor was held liable for the damages. I don't know the outcome of the subplot in It Happens Every Thursday, but Courtney sent YouTube links to the movie for anyone who wants to find out. That is another one that sort of lends itself to a movie, you know, just naturally. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate reading everybody's feedback, comments, and questions. So if you have anything that you'd like to add, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And if anyone has ever struggled to say your name correctly, please send me some tips to help me out. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Starting point is 00:25:40 I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation, and he has to guess what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Diana Gabbard, who sent it to Greg, Sharon, Sasha, and Doug. Da-dee-da-dum. So, very comprehensive. Diana's puzzle is, since 1942, there's a corner of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, which no longer belongs to the United States. Why? Oh, wow. That's our state.

Starting point is 00:26:06 I had to know this. Since 1942. Yes, I didn't know it, if it makes you feel any better. Is the date significant? Yes. So this is connected with World War II? Yes. Something that happened in World War II?

Starting point is 00:26:15 Yes. Look how much progress you've made already. Well, yeah, but what could that be? I mean, the war didn't really reach Ocracoke. I wouldn't have thought Ocracoke Island. Does this have to do with... All right. What could that be? I mean, the war didn't really reach Okra... I wouldn't have thought Okra Cook Islands. Does this have to do with... All right.

Starting point is 00:26:33 Some memorial, some memory of the war, some commemoration, would you say? I'd say that's in the ballpark, yeah. You know, a monument or something that's there. Yeah. Let's say that's at least in the ballpark and i don't know exactly what you mean so i uh but that's at least close if not you know what i mean well if this isn't getting me anywhere if this is connected with the war uh-huh i guess all i'm saying is this connected with some event that took place in the war, I guess, in Europe? No. Does it involve American, what would you say, fighters?

Starting point is 00:27:12 No. No? Does it involve fighters of other nations? Yes. Are they buried there? Yes. Some specific nation? Should I go into this?

Starting point is 00:27:23 No, no, that's actually it. The land is permanently leased to Great Britain because four English sailors who died in World War II are buried there. And it's because the U.S. Navy wasn't prepared for World War II and the Atlantic seaboard was very vulnerable to German submarines,

Starting point is 00:27:38 which ended up sinking hundreds of U.S. merchant ships. And it got so bad that North Carolina's outer banks were dubbed Torpedo Alley. Many of these merchant ships were headed to Great Britain with food and war supplies, so a fleet of British ships came to help defend them while the U.S. Navy tried to ramp up, and the HMT Bedfordshire was hit by a torpedo on May 11, 1942, killing all 37 British sailors on board for the bodies washed up near Ocracoke and a small plot of land was turned into a British cemetery for them. It will be leased to Britain as long as they are buried there so that they are technically buried on British soil. There's a yearly ceremony for

Starting point is 00:28:13 the sailors attended by representatives of the British Royal Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, and there were plaques commemorating the ship and its crew with some lines from the British World War I soldier Rupert Brooke. If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. Oh, that's nice. Isn't that really sweet? So thanks to Diana for a sadly fatal but really touchingly sweet puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us,

Starting point is 00:28:39 please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. If you would like to become one of our wonderful patrons who help support the show and get bonus material such as outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show, then check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us page at our website at futilitycloset.com. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 quirky curiosities, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast with links and references for today's topics.

Starting point is 00:29:23 If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All of our music was written and performed by the illustrious Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 274-Death in a Nutshell

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