Futility Closet - 276-An Unlikely Confederate Spy

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from the sounds of shelling to some odd how-tos. This is episode 276. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. As the Civil War fractured Washington, D.C., socialite Rose O'Neill Greenhow coordinated a vital spy ring to funnel information to the Confederates. In today's show, we'll describe one of the war's most unlikely spies and her determination to aid the South. We'll also fragment the Queen's birthday and

Starting point is 00:00:46 puzzle over a paid game of pinball. After this episode was originally released, some listeners objected to our handling of Greenhouse's story, saying that we were treating her too sympathetically when she was defending the institution of slavery. They're entirely right about that. I'd focused on her personal story without being sensitive to its larger implications. I'm very sorry for that oversight. We're presenting the story here as it originally ran, and we'll discuss listeners' reactions to it in episode 279. Rose O'Neill Greenhow was born in 1814 in Montgomery County, Maryland, to an established family of planters. When her father died, she and her sister were still teenagers, and her mother

Starting point is 00:01:31 sent them to Washington, D.C. to live with her uncle and aunt, who ran a boarding house on Capitol Hill. There she learned the social graces and earned the nickname Wild Rose for her vivacity, intelligence, and beauty. Among the many important boarders was John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, whose devotion to the South and to states' rights she adopted as her own political creed. She said later, I am a Southern woman born with revolutionary blood in my veins, and my first ideas on state and federal matters were shaped by the best and wisest man of this century. Through her connections at the boarding house, Rose was introduced to Washington society,

Starting point is 00:02:07 which she quickly captivated, especially the men who found her charming, articulate, and attentive. In 1833, her sister married a nephew of Dolly Madison, who had been the most important woman in American social circles for half a century. Madison became a mentor to both sisters and actively promoted their interests. Through her sister's new family, Rose met Robert Greenhow, a trilingual Virginian who worked as a translator and librarian at the State Department, and their marriage in 1835 elevated her into elite Washington society, where she consorted with presidents, senators, and high-ranking military officers. She helped Robert maintain his position through several administrations, entertaining cabinet secretaries and foreign dignitaries, and building up a network of friends and obligations that

Starting point is 00:02:49 advanced both her prospects and her husband's. They raised four children together, but in 1854, this chapter of her life ended abruptly when she received word that Robert had died in a street accident in San Francisco. Unbroken, she moved into a smaller house but maintained her reign as an influential socialite. She wrote comments on Washington Society for the New York Herald, and in 1856 she encouraged her friend James Buchanan to run for president. When he won, she became one of the most powerful women in Washington, a frequent guest at the White House and renowned as a person who could arrange promotions and favors from legislators,

Starting point is 00:03:23 army officials, and government personnel. By 1858, the struggle over slavery was dividing the country into camps, and as states began to secede, many Southerners packed up and left Washington to join the new Confederate government. Greenhow remained behind, but her sympathies hadn't changed. She was in the gallery weeping when Jefferson Davis said farewell to the Senate. So she was intrigued in the spring of 1861 when Captain Thomas Jordan, a quartermaster in the U.S. Army, visited her to say that he was planning to switch sides and fight for his native Virginia and asked her to help him organize a spy ring in Washington. He needed someone to stay behind and gather information for the South, and he knew of her social connections and political savvy. She accepted, and he taught her a simple cipher that she could use to send dispatches. Then he resigned his commission,

Starting point is 00:04:09 went south, and joined a Confederate unit just 26 miles from Washington, well-positioned to communicate with the spy network. Greenhow found this was a perfect opportunity. Many Southern sympathizers still held important jobs in the executive branch. Officers and government workers were always eager to brag about their importance, and no one imagined that a woman could be a spy. She said she knew almost immediately what was happening in cabinet and military staff meetings, and she could pick up further intelligence simply by reading the papers. She sent her messages along the so-called secret line,

Starting point is 00:04:40 which was a chain of Confederate sympathizers who passed letters, intelligence reports, and other documents across the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers to Confederate officers and officials. As she undertook this work, pressure was mounting for Union forces to attack the Confederates in northern Virginia, and Lincoln ordered General Irvin McDowell to take the important railroads 30 miles southwest of the Capitol at Manassas Junction. The Confederates assigned General P.G.T. Beauregard to protect the junction, but they needed to know details of the coming attack, and Jordan asked Greenhow to get all the information she could. She was able to warn them that McDowell would attack with an army of

Starting point is 00:05:13 35,000 soldiers, and Beauregard had time to summon reinforcements and win the battle, dashing Lincoln's hopes of a quick victory. Afterward, Beauregard said he'd had, quote, the most accurate information of which politicians high in council as well as war department clerks were the unconscious ducts. Jordan sent Greenhow a message from Manassas that said, our president and our general direct me to thank you. We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy owes you a debt. Greenhow boasted afterward that, quote, the southern women of Washington are the cause of the defeat of the Grand Army. In the weeks that followed, she continued to send reports to Beauregard,

Starting point is 00:05:49 at least nine coded messages, some with military information from Union sources and some with intelligence from her collaborators and local newspapers. Security was increasingly tight throughout the Capitol, but her informers stayed busy, and she sent messages to the South almost daily. She was able to get verbatim reports of Lincoln's cabinet meetings and the minutes of private conversations of George B. McClellan, McDowell's successor. McClellan once presented his plans at a war council and found that they were known to the enemy the next day. As she continued to gather information for the South, Greenhow recognized the danger of capture, so she sent away her daughter

Starting point is 00:06:22 Layla to Ohio so that only her youngest daughter, known as Little Rose, remained with her. That was fortunate. That summer, 1861, someone who knew her sympathies reported unusual activity around her house to the Assistant Secretary of War, Thomas A. Scott, and Scott brought in Alan Pinkerton, founder of the famous detective agency. Pinkerton was now directing counterintelligence operations in Washington, and Greenhow would be his first official challenge. His operatives saw her receiving senators, congressmen, and other prominent men, many of whom had been entrusted with sensitive information. The crisis came on the night of August 22nd, when Pinkerton stood on the shoulders of two of his agents and peered through the blinds into Greenhouse Parlor. There he saw a tall Union officer giving a map of fortifications to Greenhow

Starting point is 00:07:06 and pointing out some particular points and positions. The two of them left the room holding hands and returned an hour later. They kissed, and he left. Pinkerton followed the officer without even putting his boots on. The man fled into a provost marshal station and ordered four soldiers to grab Pinkerton, but it was no use. Pinkerton managed to get a message to Scott, who quickly put the officer to rights. Scott asked him, Did you see anyone last night who is hostile to our government? The officer said, No, sir,

Starting point is 00:07:33 I did not. Scott said, Are you quite sure of that? The man said, I am, sir. And Scott said, In that case, you are under arrest. Surrender your sword at once. Greenhow was charged with being a spy and furnishing the insurgent generals with important information relative to the movements of the Union forces. Pinkerton claimed that she maintained secret agents throughout Washington and throughout the country and had arranged special alphabets, numbers, and ciphers to communicate with them. She was placed under house arrest, and Pinkerton's men began to ransack her house. Among other things, they found several pages of notes about military preparations

Starting point is 00:08:06 and a seven-page copy of orders from the War Department giving an organizational plan to increase the size of the regular army, as directed by President Lincoln. In the kitchen stove, they found burned scraps of incriminating letters. But Greenhow was a ferocious and resourceful opponent, even in captivity. They kept her in the parlor during the search, but at one point she asked to go to her bedroom to change her clothes. There she managed to destroy several documents, including the cipher she'd used to communicate with Manassas. Gradually,

Starting point is 00:08:34 other women who'd been arrested on the same day were conducted to her house, which became known as the House of Detention for Female Rebels, or in the press as Fort Greenhow. She would remain imprisoned in her own house for five months, interrogated every day, and kept under continual observation. Even under those close conditions, though, she found inventive ways to communicate with the Confederates. In her memoir, she describes conveying information by a little bird, of writing peculiar square dispatches, and of a peculiar vocabulary of colors, which, though not a very prolific language, served my purpose. That last one seems to refer to tapestries she made with colored yarn following

Starting point is 00:09:10 a code that had been sent to her from the outside. The little bird may have been Little Rose, but it's not clear. She wrote, I leave this as an antiquarian speculation. One innocent-seeming letter that she sent to a correspondent read, Tell Aunt Sally that I have some old shoes for the children, and I wish her to send someone downtown to take them, and to let me know whether she has found any charitable person to help her take care of them. That meant, I have some important information to send across the river, and wish a messenger immediately have you any means of getting reliable information. That knowledge may have included details about troop strength and military plans that she'd learned from visitors and even from the guards themselves. Being locked in her house seemed only to redouble Greenhouse's defiance and resourcefulness.

Starting point is 00:09:52 Pinkerton wrote, She has not ceased to lay plans, to attempt the bribery of officers having her in charge, to make use of signs from the windows of her house to her friends on the street, to communicate with such friends and through them to the rebels. Confederate records show that Thomas Jordan was still receiving dispatches from her four months after she'd been arrested. And she was aware that her situation could serve as valuable propaganda in the South. She sent a harsh letter to William Seward, the Secretary of State, complaining about her poor treatment, and managed to get a copy of this to a Richmond newspaper, which published it

Starting point is 00:10:23 under the headline, Letter from a Southern Lady in Prison to Seward, the Cowardly Atrocities of the Washington Government. That got her moved to the old Capitol Prison, but she was still as fierce as ever. As they removed her from her house on January 18, 1862, she said to one of the guards, I trust that in the future you may have a nobler employment than that of guarding defenseless women. In the prison, they put her in a room facing the yard to keep her from talking to Confederate sympathizers in the street. She made imperious demands, treated the guards like servants, and complained about the laundry. A fellow prisoner wrote, Mrs. Greenhow enjoys herself amazingly. Finally, in March, in order to get rid of her, a military commission recommended that she be exiled to the Confederacy, and in May, the North let her go, on condition that she remain in the South for the rest of the

Starting point is 00:11:08 war. That made her a hero among Southerners, who received her with adulation in Richmond, and Jefferson Davis recognized her publicly and awarded her $2,500. He made her a courier to Europe, where she met with Queen Victoria and Napoleon III, promoted Confederate bond issues, and published her memoir, which sold well throughout Europe. Though she was popular, she found that European governments were reluctant to support her cause. She left Little Rose at a convent school in France and headed home on a British steamer in August 1864. She died in a sudden and senseless way. Her ship was approaching Wilmington under attack by a Union gunboat when

Starting point is 00:11:45 the captain spotted another vessel dead ahead. He swerved to avoid it and ran aground. Greenhow feared being captured and imprisoned again and asked to be rowed ashore. The captain resisted, but she was firm and she got into a lifeboat with two seamen. Almost immediately, the boat overturned in high seas. The other passengers struggled back to the boat, but Greenhow was wearing a heavy silk dress and fastened to a chain around her neck was a valise containing $2,000 in gold sovereigns, proceeds from her book that she had planned to give to a Southern relief fund. A few hours later, a Confederate sentry discovered her body on the beach before Fort Fisher. Among her effects was a note she had written to Little Rose. It read, London, November

Starting point is 00:12:25 1st, 1863. You have shared the hardships and indignity of my prison life, my darling, and suffered all that evil which a vulgar despotism could inflict. Let the memory of that period never pass from your mind, else you may be inclined to forget how merciful Providence has been in seizing us from such a people. She was buried in Wilmington with full military honors, and her grave was marked with a cross that read, Mrs. Rose O'Neill Greenhow, a bearer of dispatches to the Confederate government. On each Confederate Memorial Day, well into the 20th century, the Wilmington Light Infantry fired a volley over her grave. her grave. but the backbone of our support is our Patreon campaign, because that gives us an ongoing source of support so that we can commit to the amount of time that the podcast takes to make.

Starting point is 00:13:30 Patreon also gives us a way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and extra discussions on some of the topics we cover. 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 again to everyone who is a part of Futility Closet. In episode 269, we discussed how Queen Elizabeth's birthday, despite actually being in April, is officially celebrated in a variety of months in different countries, and that in Western

Starting point is 00:14:13 Australia, the date might even be a different one than for the rest of the country. James Nichols of Exploding Rats fame wrote, In episode 269, it was mentioned that in Western Australia, the Queen's birthday is not a fixed holiday, but is proclaimed each year by the state governor, and speculation was had over whether this means it could move around. As an inhabitant of Western Australia, I can confirm that it does, albeit only slightly. It is held each year on the last Monday of September or the first Monday of October, depending on how the weekdays match up with the calendar in any given year. or the first Monday of October, depending on how the weekdays match up with the calendar in any given year. Complicating matters further, the holiday can be observed on a different date in regional parts of the state. Typically, this is to provide a day off for an important local event,

Starting point is 00:14:57 such as the horse racing held at Marble Bar each year in July. This year, for instance, the towns of Port Hedland and Carrartha celebrated on August 5th, Newman on August 19th, and Marble Bar on July 8th, while the rest of the state celebrated on September 30th. Taking this into account, there's probably no way to accurately calculate how many birthdays the queen has had. Keep up the great work. So different towns are setting their own dates for this holiday. I guess that can be convenient to have a floating holiday like that, as James said, so that you can give everyone a day off for some local event, although that doesn't really make it very much about the Queen. And thanks, James, for the helpful pronunciation tips for the names of the towns. Bob Ogden, another of our Western Australian listeners,

Starting point is 00:15:39 similarly let us know that the regional areas of the state set their own dates and pointed out how this year, even with several dates being chosen, none of them were actually in April. He also helpfully included a website for the government department responsible for proclaiming the dates each year, which I found interesting as it showed how granular the setting of this holiday can get. So this year, for example, in the Shire of East Pilbara, the part of the local government district that is within 150 kilometers of the town site of Newman celebrated the Queen's birthday on August 19th. While the part of the East Pilbara local government district that is within 150 kilometers of the town site of Marble Bar, but not within 150 kilometers of the town site of Newman, celebrated it on July 8th. So you have to know exactly where you're situated on a map to know if it's a holiday for you or not. I wonder how they established those distances. Like, I have so many questions now. Yeah, I was also wondering if you could have a situation where, like, if there's a building in the wrong place, like part of the building is celebrating the holiday and part of it isn't. On a rather different topic, Elliot Kindle wrote,

Starting point is 00:16:48 Hello, Futilitarians. I was just listening to episode 270 and your discussion of arsenic in wallpaper. I was reminded of the famous Oscar Wilde witticism delivered during his final illness. My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go. I guess a person really might be done in by wallpaper. Wilde eventually died in November 1900 in the supposedly very shabby Hotel del Sass in Paris. If the hotel wasn't well maintained, it seems possible that his room might have had arsenic-containing wallpaper left over from its heyday. Maybe he was more right than he realized. Thanks as always for the entertaining content.

Starting point is 00:17:28 And thank you, Elliot, for the pronunciation help, both for your name and for the French. I can find French pronunciations a bit challenging, as I'm sure our French-speaking listeners can probably tell. Oscar Wilde died an outcast and impoverished in what was at that time a very cheap Paris hotel on November 30th, 1900 at 46 years old. And apparently when colorful figures died back in the days before diagnostic tests and better medical understanding of various conditions, speculation would immediately flare up as to possible interesting causes of death. As we discussed in episode 270, for Napoleon that was arsenic poisoning and in Wilde's case it was syphilis. And the syphilis theory was rather popular for almost 100 years after his death. The less sensational but much more likely cause was a chronic infection of the middle ear that had spread to his brain and or its membranes. Or possibly, as Eliot suggested, the floral wallpaper that apparently plagued Wilde so much

Starting point is 00:18:20 contributed to his decline. I never thought of that before. I mean, I've heard that line, but I never connected it to him. Maybe he was actually right. As for the wallpaper, I read that it was replaced on the 100th anniversary of Wilde's death, so apparently it outlasted him by quite a bit. And how bad was it, actually? An article in The Atlantic from 2016 quotes novelist Ann Patchett as saying, Oscar Wilde's last words were reportedly, this wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.

Starting point is 00:18:47 Either it goes or I do. That would be funny, except I once had a hideous case of food poisoning in Paris at L'Hôtel where he died. Truly, the wallpaper was as bad as the oyster I had eaten. Nathan Richard wrote about the puzzle from episode 270, and it will not include a spoiler to the answer. I just got done listening to episode 270. During the lateral thinking puzzle concerning something man-made and full of water,

Starting point is 00:19:17 Greg made the offhand comment that no one would make a lake. That's not true. I live not far from Grand Lake St. Mary's, which was at one time the largest man-made lake in the world. It was constructed alongside the Miami and Erie Canal to serve as a reservoir for the canal system. Below are a couple brief links that give a quick history of the digging of the lake and the reasons for it. I thoroughly enjoy the podcast. Keep up the good work. So during the puzzle, Greg was trying to figure out something that had been built and filled and asked if it was something like a lake and then said, you wouldn't build a lake. This is actually a good example of one of us saying something during the solving of a puzzle that we then shake our heads over later. Greg did know that people do sometimes build lakes. We even used to live near an artificial lake ourselves

Starting point is 00:19:57 many years ago. Doing the puzzles live on a microphone does sometimes overload our brains a bit. It really does make me much more sympathetic, though, for the people you sometimes see giving a really bad answer on a game show. Yeah, that's true. But I found the story of Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio rather interesting. As Nathan said, it was once the world's largest artificial body of water, and it was hand-dug by 1,700 German and Irish immigrants between 1837 and 1845. It served the Miami and Erie Canal, which was part of an important waterway

Starting point is 00:20:29 between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River until the advent of the railroads in the 1870s. The part that I found most amusing was that the pay for what I can only presume was rather arduous and unpleasant work was about 30 cents a day plus a jigger of whiskey, which was intended to fend off malaria and increase morale. I can't speak to whether whiskey does actually increase morale, but I felt fairly sure that it wouldn't prevent malaria. I did do a bit of a search just to make sure I wasn't ignorant of some reason that it would, and found a journal entry from July 10, 1863, by a private D.L. Day with the 25th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, who was currently serving at Hill Point, North Carolina, and who noted that day

Starting point is 00:21:11 that whiskey rations had been ordered as a preventative for malaria. So apparently this wasn't an uncommon belief, at least in 19th century America. And Private Day seemed to find that the whiskey did help with morale for his men as he said, commanders of companies deal out the whiskey to their men, consequently I deal out to mine and when I wish to reward any of my braves for gallant and meritorious conduct, I manage to slop a little extra into their cups. That keeps them vigilant and interested and gallant. That still, all the same, I'm just boggled that they dug a lake by hand. I guess

Starting point is 00:21:46 back then, there's no other way to do it, but just imagine that with the shovels, I guess, and picks, how much work that would be. Yeah, no, I know, and for 30 cents a day, and your jigger of whiskey. Yeah, oh my gosh. And just for the record, Day's definition of meritorious conduct that got his men extra whiskey consisted of bringing in watermelons, peaches, and other subsistence of which they somehow become possessed. So apparently that's what managed to earn you extra whiskey, at least in one company during the Civil War. That's meritorious. While I wasn't able to find any factual basis for the idea that whiskey would prevent malaria,

Starting point is 00:22:22 I did happen to learn that the cocktail of gin and tonic was born out of an actually effective malaria preventative, quinine. In the 19th century, quinine was given to British citizens living in tropical colonies, such as in India, to both treat and prevent malaria. Quinine is quite bitter, and so it was mixed with other ingredients such as soda and sugar to make the daily dose a bit more palatable. Some companies

Starting point is 00:22:45 then started commercially producing tonic water, or a carbonated water containing quinine. This eventually came to be mixed with gin, possibly because soldiers in India were also being given a daily gin ration, and the new cocktail became rather a fixture for some. According to an article in Slate, Winston Churchill once said, the gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives and minds than all the doctors in the empire. Oh, and just in case anyone is curious or needs to know for like a trivia contest or something, currently the largest artificial lake in the world is Lake Kariba, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Good to know. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us.

Starting point is 00:23:27 We really appreciate the comments and follow-ups that we get. So if you have something that you'd like to add, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's happening, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from a fact that I heard on the podcast, no such thing as a fish. Why was someone hired in 1976 specifically to play a game of pinball? Does it have something to do with the Olympics? No. Interesting thought. Olympics. No. Interesting thought. Well, then is the date important?

Starting point is 00:24:12 The specific year is not important. I think I would just note that this is very unlikely to happen today. Okay. Someone was hired specifically to play a game of pinball. To play a game of pinball. Was this to promote something, anything? No. A pinball? That'd be a real easy puzzle. Okay. Do I need to know the identity of the person? No. Someone was hired, or their occupation? No. So someone was hired to play a game of pinball? Yes. Was this to set a record? No. Do I need to know who hired them? Would that help me? I don't know that you'd be able to guess that. All right. And by pinball, we mean that what I think of as a conventional pinball game. Yes. And they did this?

Starting point is 00:24:45 Yes. And, okay. Was that the whole requirement, just to play the game? Did they have to play it for a certain amount of time or something like that? Not a certain amount of time. They needed to play the game well. But it wasn't setting out to set a record? Correct.

Starting point is 00:25:00 Is the location important? No, I'll tell you. It was in New York City. Someone decided to play a game of pinball in New York City. Yes. And that is relevant, but for reasons you'll never be able to guess on your own until you put it into you know it. Are there other people involved? Peripherally.

Starting point is 00:25:15 But not that I need to dig out. Well, he was going to be playing the game in front of other people. But his identity is important. Not his specific identity. I don't think you would have heard of the person. Okay. Is there some history, some past that I need to figure out? Play a game of pinball.

Starting point is 00:25:40 It's not to... All right, so he played it. You said it wasn't for a certain length of time, but you said there was some other goal. Yes, there was a goal. And if it wasn't time, was it to reach a certain score? But that would be like setting a record. Right, yeah, that's not exactly it.

Starting point is 00:26:04 Could this have been done by anyone? No. No it couldn't have no it couldn't have they hired this person specifically to do it they did because this person was an unusually good pinball player yes was this okay but it wasn't a promo it's like if you're going to promote like a restaurant or something you could hire someone to do it just to bring people in right this was not a promotion but he needed to be a specific a particularly good pinball player to do this just to bring people in. Right. This was not a promotion. But he needed to be a particularly good pinball player. To do this. Yes. But it wasn't to set a goal.

Starting point is 00:26:29 Correct. I mean, to set a record. That's correct. Okay. In playing the game, did he accomplish some ancillary, I don't know what to call it, a goal somehow? He did accomplish the goal that he was hired to accomplish. Which wasn't related to the game itself is what I'm asking.

Starting point is 00:26:45 Did something else happen? Like he brought in people to watch it. No, no. It was related to the game. It's related to pinball directly. All right. So when he finished playing the game, he'd done something, he'd accomplished something related to the actual table, the game itself?

Starting point is 00:27:02 Yes. That then had effects. Yes. That then had effects. Yes. That then had effects? Yes. Was it to, did it increase the monetary value of the? No. Well, how would, did it have something to do with just physically the wear or the effects

Starting point is 00:27:17 of playing the game on the? No. No. Or using electricity or something? No. No, no, no. I mean, this was very specific to pinball. No. Or using electricity or something? No. No, no, no. I mean, this was very specific to pinball.

Starting point is 00:27:31 Like, you couldn't replace the pinball machine with anything else and have this still make any sense. A very good pinball player in 1976 was hired to play a game. One game? One game. Of pinball. Yes. And he did. Yes. And I'll tell you, he played it in front of the New York City Council members.

Starting point is 00:27:41 Specifically. He was hired to play it in front of them. Oh, was this to prove a point of law? Yes. Like, sometimes this comes up with regard to whether a game counts as a game of luck or skill. That's exactly it. He was hired to prove that pinball was a game of skill rather than of chance. Pinball machines, when they were first patented in 1871, were originally a game of random outcomes, and as such, they were banned in some places in the U.S. And even after the addition

Starting point is 00:28:10 of new features like flippers, which were introduced in 1947, some of the bans remained in place. So in 1976, Roger Sharp, who was considered to be one of the best pinball players in America, was hired by the Music and Amusement Association to help overturn the ban on pinball in New York City. So in front of cameras and reporters, Sharp demonstrated to the city's council members in a Manhattan courtroom how the machine could be played with skill. And when one council member refused to be persuaded, Sharp argued that if he could say in advance where he could make the ball go on his next turn, then they would have to

Starting point is 00:28:44 acknowledge his use of skill. He did, and the council overturned the ban. That's a good story. We can always use more lateral thinking puzzles, so if anyone has one they'd like to have us try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our awesome listeners. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 compendious amusements.

Starting point is 00:29:24 Check out the Futility Closet store if you might like a penguin-adorned apron or 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. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by my phenomenal brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 276-An Unlikely Confederate Spy

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