Futility Closet - 289-The Johnstown Flood

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from Mark Twain's handbills to Raymond Chandler's titles. This is episode 289. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1889, a dam failed in southwestern Pennsylvania, sending 20 million tons of water down an industrialized valley toward the unsuspecting city of Johnstown. In today's show, we'll describe some of the dramatic and harrowing personal stories that unfolded on that historic day.

Starting point is 00:00:49 We'll also celebrate Christmas with Snoopy and puzzle over a deadly traffic light. The city of Johnstown lies in a narrow valley in southwestern Pennsylvania, at the confluence of the Little Connemaw and Stony Creek rivers, which drain more than 600 square miles of the state's highest elevations. Fourteen miles above the city, at the top of a winding gorge, lies South Fork Creek, where in 1889 a dam stood, holding back a reservoir amid the mountains. The dam had been built in the 1840s, and it had been maintained poorly. In 1875, the cast-iron sluice pipes at its base had been removed and sold for scrap, leaving no way to drain the reservoir to make repairs, and when the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had bought the reservoir in 1879, the dam had only been patched. The club had an impressive role of members, including Andrew

Starting point is 00:01:41 Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. They would sail and fish on the reservoir, which they named Lake Connemaw, and they modified the dam to accommodate their preferences. In 1881, the lake was stocked with a thousand black bass shipped in from Lake Erie, and screens were placed over the dam's spillway to keep the fish from escaping downstream. Later, the crest of the dam was lowered to improve wagon access to the clubhouse. Throughout all this, the maintenance backlog continued to be neglected. None of this caused any particular problem until May 30, 1889, when torrential rains began to fall across the Connemaw Valley. The rivers rose and the local people prepared for high water as they'd done many times before.

Starting point is 00:02:21 But by the morning of the 31st, the reservoir was rising steadily toward the crest of the dam, which stood 72 feet high and more than 900 feet across. By noon, water was spilling over the top. J.P. Wilson, superintendent of the Argyle Coal Company, went to Emma Ehrenfield at the South Fork Telegraph Tower and had her send a message down the valley. The dam is getting worse and may possibly go. By the time engineer John Park arrived to tell her that the dam must burst within a few hours, the telegraph poles had been washed out west of Mineral Point, and she had no way to warn Johnstown what was coming. At 3.10 p.m., the dam gave way, and 20 million tons of water leapt into the South Fork Valley.

Starting point is 00:03:01 Engineer John McMaster later calculated that it entered the valley with the same velocity and depth as the Niagara River as it reaches the falls. Club president Elias Unger wrote, it seemed to me as if all the destructive elements of the creator had been turned loose at once in that awful current of water. Immediately below the dam, George Fisher, who had fled his house with his family only minutes before, saw everything he owned disappear in an instant. The torrent advanced like a wall, full of dam chunks, trees, boulders, fence posts, logs, and the remains of Fisher's house. At Lamb's Bridge, George Lamb heard the roar, tried to save two pigs, gave up, and reached the hillside with his family in time to see his house rise 60 feet on the face of the torrent, roll briefly, and then smash to pieces on a nearby hill. At the village of South Fork, the wave crashed into a mountain, picked up an iron

Starting point is 00:03:51 bridge, and bent it, and set out down the industrialized valley of the Little Connemara River toward Johnstown, nine miles away. A mile below South Fork, the valley narrowed, squeezing the front of the wave to a height of 70 feet. It roared through an oxbow and smashed into a stone viaduct that carried the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad across the river. Debris piled up against this arch, forming a second dam until the flood had mounted to a height of 80 feet and began to pour over the top. When the viaduct collapsed under this pressure, the water leapt forward again, its power renewed by the momentary check. under this pressure, the water leapt forward again, its power renewed by the momentary check. A modern analysis suggests that its flow rate here was more than 15,600 cubic yards per second,

Starting point is 00:04:36 roughly equal to the average flow of the Mississippi River. The village of Mineral Point, a mile or so downstream, was completely erased. 16 people were killed, and many found themselves riding their rooftops downstream. Telegraph operator William Pickerel looked out from his tower and saw one of them, a man named Chris Montgomery. Montgomery called up to him, Mineral Point is all swept away and the people swept away and my whole family is gone. Pickerel said, is that so? Do you know anything of my family? Montgomery said, no, I don't. I think they were all drowned. Happily, Pickerel found out afterward that they had survived. Just down river, work train number two had been clearing landslides caused by the big rain. Engineer John Hess said that the sound of the approaching flood came to him like a hurricane through wooded country. He said the lakes broke, put on the steam,

Starting point is 00:05:19 and raced the train backward downstream toward the next town, East Connemaw, blasting his whistle continuously. He reached the town just two minutes ahead of the flood, East Connemaw, blasting his whistle continuously. He reached the town just two minutes ahead of the flood, ran up Railroad Street to his house, gathered his family, and raced up the hill. The whistle kept blasting until the engine was swept downstream. In the Connemaw yards, the Reverend T.H. Robinson was sitting aboard the Day Express. He wrote later, all at once a shrill, long whistle sounded from an engine nearby. Everyone wanted to know what it meant. I said to a lady sitting near me, I presume there is no danger. But looking out of my car window, I saw a huge mass of trees and floodwood and water about

Starting point is 00:05:55 200 or 300 feet away, moving toward the train. He jumped out and sprinted into the town, where the streets were full of running, shouting people. He wrote, I ran to the second street, and hoping I might be safe, I turned and looked. The houses were floating away behind me, and the flood was getting round above me. I ran on to the third street and turned again. The water was close behind me, the houses were toppling over, and the torrent again pushing round as if to head me off. He kept running uphill and turned again to see a railroad car break loose and set off down the river toward Johnstown with two men atop trying to keep their balance and some unknown number of passengers inside. The wave hit Front Street and set buildings falling one on top of another.

Starting point is 00:06:35 Some seemed to bounce and roll before joining the surge downstream amid locomotives from the roundhouse. At least half of East Connemaw was destroyed. townhouse. At least half of East Connemaw was destroyed. 30 locomotives, some weighing 80 tons, were scattered up to a mile downstream, and one locomotive boiler was carried all the way to Johnstown. The death toll isn't known exactly, but at least 22 passengers from the Day Express were killed. Next was Woodvale, which looked like a prim New England town transplanted to Pennsylvania. Maple Avenue was considered the most beautiful street in the valley. The town was home to a thousand people, a woolen mill, a tannery, two schoolhouses, and several churches. Unlike East Connemaw, it received no warning of what was coming, and after five minutes, all that remained was part of the woolen mill and one wall of the

Starting point is 00:07:19 flour mill. 255 houses had been removed, along with every tree and telegraph pole. Three hundred fourteen people had been killed, about one person in every three. With this destruction behind it, the flood approached Johnstown with a roar like thunder, driving a wind and a dark mist before it. When it arrived at 4.07 p.m., it was standing 36 feet high at the center and carrying a rolling welter of accumulated wreckage, bridges, furnaces, locomotives, houses, farm machinery, and telegraph poles. A man who watched its arrival from Johnstown Hill wrote, in an instant the deserted street became black with people running for their lives. An instant later, the flood came and licked them up with one eager and ferocious lap.

Starting point is 00:08:00 The whole city was one surging and whirling mass of water, which swept away house after house with a rapidity that even the eye could not follow. The course of the flood was as unreasoning as the freaks of a madman and as cunningly devised as the blows of an armed maniac running amok. The ordinary life of the city was shattered at once into a thousand desperate dramas. Sixteen-year-old Victor Heiser was leading a pair of carriage horses out of his family's stable when he heard, quote, a dreadful roar punctuated with a succession of tremendous crashes. He saw his parents standing in the second floor window of his house, his father motioning urgently to him to climb onto the stable's roof. He had just done so when the flood hit Washington

Starting point is 00:08:39 Street and he saw his boyhood home crushed like an eggshell and swept away. Under his feet, the stable was torn from its foundation and began to roll. He stumbled and crawled to keep his footing, managed to jump to the roof of one neighbor's house, then clung to the eave of another. He wrote later, For years thereafter I was visited by recurring dreams in which I have lived over and over again, the fearful experience of hanging with my fingernails

Starting point is 00:09:02 dug deep into the water-softened shingles, knowing that in the end I must let go. He fell backward into the flood and landed by a lucky chance on a piece of the stable roof, which now set off on an odyssey through the stricken city. He passed the family of Musante, the Italian fruit dealer of Washington Street, racing by on their barn door. The four of them were packing their possessions absurdly into a Saratoga trunk that stood open on the door beside them. Victor's raft sped on and lodged momentarily in a mound of wreckage between the Methodist church and a three-story brick building. He was dodging a rain of trees, beams, and other debris when a freight car reared up and threatened to crush him. But at that moment, the brick building broke apart and his raft, in his words,

Starting point is 00:09:43 shot out from beneath the freight car like a bullet from a gun. He went surging across the park, passing more people he knew. Stout Mrs. Fenn was balancing astride a barrel of tar. The hostler who worked for Dr. Lee was kneeling on a roof, naked and praying. The raft crossed Main Street and had reached Lincoln when its course shifted from west to south. He raced across the Stony Creek about half a mile and passed into the Kernville section of town, where he was able to join a group of people on the roof of a brick building. When he had seen the oncoming flood from the roof of his father's stable, he had looked at the time on his pocket watch to see, as he said, just how long it

Starting point is 00:10:18 was going to take for me to get from this world over into the next one. Now in Kernville, he checked his watch again. It was still running, and it told him that only 10 minutes had passed since he'd seen his home collapse. On Franklin Street, the Reverend H.L. Chapman was wearing bedroom slippers when he opened his front door to see a boxcar rolling down the pavement in front of the parsonage. A man was standing on it. As it passed, the man grabbed a limb of the tree in Chapman's front yard, swung himself onto the roof of the front porch, and stepped through an upstairs window directly over Chapman's head. The man was a ticket agent for the B&O station on Washington Street. When he'd heard the sound of the approaching flood, he'd climbed onto the car to see what was happening and been carried

Starting point is 00:10:56 along with it down Franklin and across Locust too rapidly to escape. Chapman realized that the reservoir had failed and shouted for everyone to run for the attic. His wife, their seven-year-old granddaughter, and Mrs. Brinker, a neighbor from across the park, all ran up the front stairs while Chapman ran into his study to turn off the gas fire. He had turned to go back into the hall when the front door burst open and a wave flooded into the house. He ran into the kitchen and up the back steps with the water right behind him. He found the others in the attic with the ticket agent and two young men who had jumped in from a passing roof. They had to shout to hear each other over the noise.

Starting point is 00:11:31 They could hear other buildings bumping into theirs, and the roar of the water was continuous. Mrs. Chapman later wrote, We all stood there in the middle of the floor, waiting our turn to be swept away, and expecting every minute to be drowned. When our porches were torn loose and the two bookcases fell over, the noise led us to think the house was going to pieces. But it held together.

Starting point is 00:11:50 At length, Chapman went to the window to look out on what he called a scene of utter desolation. Darkness was falling, but he could see the chimneys and gables of Dr. Lowman's house across the park standing in a lake now 30 feet deep. He could see no sign of any other house on the park. To the left, where Main Street had been, he could see the silhouettes of the bank and the Presbyterian Church standing in the water. He saw no light anywhere and no people. He thought, everyone is dead. Mrs. Brinker said, look out and see if my house is still standing, and if it isn't, just don't say anything. He looked out and didn't say anything. The four-story Hulbert House was the finest hotel in town.

Starting point is 00:12:26 It was probably regarded as a safe haven because of its brick construction, but it collapsed almost immediately. Of the 60 people inside, only nine got out alive. One of them, G.B. Hartley of Philadelphia, said, Strange as it may seem, we were discussing the possibility of the dam breaking only a few hours before it really did. We were sitting in the office shortly after dinner. Everyone laughed at the idea of the dam giving way. No one had the slightest fear of such a catastrophe. Hartley had been sitting in the second floor parlor with some other guests when

Starting point is 00:12:53 they heard the shouting in the streets, followed by some loud crashes. They ran for the stairs. He wrote, the scene in the hotel is beyond imagination or description. Chambermaids ran screaming through the halls, beating their hands together and uttering wild cries to heaven for safety. Frightened guests rushed about, not knowing what to do nor what was coming. Up the stairs we leapt. Somewhere, I do not know when or how it was, I lost my hold of Miss Richards' hand. I really cannot tell what I did, I was so excited. I still rushed up the stairs and thought Miss Richards and Mr. Benford were just behind, and I had reached the top flight of stairs and just between the third and fourth floors when a terrific crash came. He found himself looking up into the sky. Somehow the hotel's

Starting point is 00:13:34 roof had been lifted off. It was floating beside the building. He climbed out onto it with five other survivors, and they floated off. Behind them, the walls fell in, and the hotel was gone. Near the corner of Vine and Market Streets, Ludie Masterson and her husband were leaning out their second-floor windows and talking to their neighbors when the flood struck. The neighbor's house was turned upside down as if by a giant hand. Of the twelve people inside, six were killed. For their part, Ludie wrote, My husband took our little girl in his arms and we ran to the attic, the water following us up the stairs. I cannot say when our house was carried away, for I was not conscious that it Ludi wrote, all the houses about us had. The two of them rescued 27 people over the next few hours, crowding them into the attic. One of them was their mailman, Joseph Hipp, who'd been swept

Starting point is 00:14:29 down from his home in the borough of Connemaw. The flood brought a train of such coincidences. Lawyer James Walters was carried on a spinning roof from his home on Walnut Street to Alma Hall in the center of town, where he was thrown through a window into his own office on the second floor. Mr. and Mrs. Abram Mangus were floating downstream in their house when a baby drifted near their attic window and they rescued it. Eventually, they escaped the house and climbed over mounds of debris and into the window of the Union Street schoolhouse, Mrs. Mangus gripping the baby's shirt in her teeth like a cat carrying a kitten.

Starting point is 00:15:00 A woman cried, That's my baby, and took him before they could even learn his name. A woman cried, that's my baby, and took him before they could even learn his name. And Jacob Swank discovered a four-room frame dwelling in his backyard at 625 Napoleon Street. When no one claimed it in the months that followed, he began to rent it out. Both houses were still standing and in good repair as late as 1964. From Johnstown, the flood could not proceed further down the valley because 30 acres of debris had piled up against a seven-arch stone railroad bridge that spanned the Connemara River. Eventually, a break opened in the embankment and the water level began to go down, but only slowly as water, mud, and

Starting point is 00:15:33 debris were still pouring in from above. And by 6 p.m., the debris at the bridge had caught fire, possibly because burning coal stoves within the mass had set fire to oil from a derailed tank car. As many as 80 people were trapped inside the burning mass, and their screams could be heard during the night. George Swank, editor of the Johnstown Tribune, watched this from the window of his office. He wrote that the fire burned, quote, with all the fury of the hell you read about, cremation alive in your own home, perhaps a mile from its foundation, dear ones slowly consumed before your eyes, and the same fate yours a moment later. Altogether, the flood killed 2,208 people and destroyed 1,600 homes.

Starting point is 00:16:12 Fully a third of the dead were never identified. Four square miles of Johnstown were completely destroyed, and property damage totaled $17 million, about half a billion dollars today. An army of relief workers descended on the town, and Clara Barton and the American Red Cross arrived within days to help with the cleanup and rebuilding, their first major peacetime relief effort. The disaster made headlines around the world, and more than $3 million in donations came from around the United States and from 18 foreign nations. The main political question was whether the South Fork Fishing and

Starting point is 00:16:43 Hunting Club was culpable for the disaster because it had modified the dam and failed to maintain it. In the end, the flood was deemed an act of God, and neither the club nor any of its members was held legally responsible. An 1891 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded that modifications that the club had made to the dam had not caused the disaster, but in 2015, engineer Neil Coleman and his colleagues re-examined the issue. They wrote, a properly rebuilt dam would not have overtopped and would likely have survived the runoff event, thereby saving thousands of lives. Public resentment over the club's seeming evasion of responsibility paved the way for the acceptance of strict liability in American law, so that today the owners would be held responsible for the consequences of their

Starting point is 00:17:24 actions without the victims having to prove that they've behaved negligently. Johnstown lawyer Ronald P. Carnevale Jr., who studied the legal aspects of the 1889 flood, said in 2014, if it had happened today, there's no doubt in my mind, the club would have been responsible for all of the losses. I have an update to the Toxoplasma gondii topic that I've covered in Episodes 219 and 226. T. gondii is one of the world's most common parasites and is the cause of toxoplasmosis. While the parasite can infect most warm-blooded animals, including humans, it can only reproduce inside the gut of a cat. And what I've been covering about it on this show

Starting point is 00:18:17 is the research into whether T. gondii causes behavioral changes in infected hosts, and if so, what kind. The research on this topic has been a lot clearer in rodents than in humans, and previous research has suggested that T. gondii cysts in the brains of mice seem to make the mice specifically less avoidant of cats than are non-infected mice, which would be very helpful to a parasite that basically needs the mouse to be eaten by a cat. It did seem to be pretty remarkable that the parasite was able to selectively reduce the fear of felines and rodents, and one researcher in the field said, for 20 years, T. gondii has served as a textbook example for a parasitic adaptive manipulation,

Starting point is 00:18:56 mainly because of the specificity of this manipulation. But the latest update that I saw seems to show that T. gondii might not be quite that sophisticated after all, and may just make mice less fearful and less avoidant of predators or other potential threats in general, as well as generally more likely to explore, which is all still potentially helpful to the parasite's goal. William Sullivan, a microbiologist doing research in this area, is quoted in an article in Science as saying, It doesn't make the parasite look to be this genius that many people thought it was. Sullivan says that the latest research suggests that T. gondii has found a way to invade rodents' brains enough to alter their behavior to the parasite's benefit, but not enough to actually

Starting point is 00:19:36 kill the host before it can be eaten, making it a kind of sweet spot for the parasite. And he says, in a way, that is kind of mad genius. The recent studies in this area seem to bolster the idea that the behavioral changes induced by T. gondii result from inflammation due to an immune response provoked by parasitic cysts in the host's brain, and both the number of cysts and the level of neuroinflammation were positively correlated with the amount of behavioral changes seen in infected mice. And this might help explain why research into behavioral effects of T. gondii in humans is more inconsistent and much less clear-cut, as it seems to produce smaller and fewer brain cysts in healthy humans than it does in mice,

Starting point is 00:20:14 and likely doesn't cause the same amount of neuroinflammation. But if it does end up that T. gondii does cause behavioral changes in humans, Sullivan's latest research suggests that at least in mice, the changes can be reversed with anti-inflammatory drugs. So good to know that there might be treatment options if it turns out that parasites are indeed trying to control our brains. I wonder if, I mean, if it's not T. gondii, whether there are other parasites that do affect human behavior to a greater extent that we don't know about. Yeah, that's true.

Starting point is 00:20:42 That's true. I think this is the one that's been looked at the most. Certainly there are parasites that affect other animals know about. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think this is the one that's been looked at the most. Certainly there are parasites that affect other animals' behavior. Yeah. The main story in episode 277 was about the Mad Trapper of Rat River, who led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a rather dramatic chase in the Northwest Territories, starting in December 1931. In episode 283, I covered some follow-ups to the story from a

Starting point is 00:21:05 couple of our Canadian listeners, including about the Mad Trapper pub in Golden, British Columbia, which, despite its name, was intended to be a more decorous kind of gathering place. Sam Dick sent us another follow-up on the story from the Northwest Territories. Hi, Greg and Sharon. It was interesting to hear the story of the Mad Trapper of Rat River in episode 277. I live in Inuvik, which is the community created to be the new regional center after Akhlavik had flooding issues in the 1950s, though some people in Akhlavik had other ideas about relocating their entire community, so they stayed. Akhlavik's official motto is, never say die. I've always

Starting point is 00:21:39 found the story to be interesting. While I'm not sure how I feel about the man and his actions, a lot of the early white trappers were not good people, to put it mildly, I can appreciate his accomplishments and spirit. I can see the Richardson Mountains from the parking lot of my building, and I can't imagine crossing them in the way he did and somehow living. Driving across them on the highway is challenging enough sometimes, but I've always found it amusing how he's become a folk hero. One of the bars in Inuvik is named the Mad Trapper, as is the bowling alley in Whitehorse and the late winter festival in Aklovik. While it's by no means an unsafe place, it is the licensed establishment in town where a bar fight is most likely to break out. Since the RCMP still serve as the local police force here,

Starting point is 00:22:18 you could say that the Mad Trapper continues to cause trouble for the RCMP. Thank you for giving me something to keep my mind occupied while traveling. So I thought that was interesting, how the Mad Trapper has become rather a folk hero in the area and is still so well-remembered 90 years later, especially given how little was actually ever known about him. But maybe that just adds to the mystique. Yeah, as I remember, he was kind of a folk hero even back in the Depression when this was unfolding.

Starting point is 00:22:43 I guess maybe because it was so mysterious, at least in part, that kind of lends some mistake to the whole thing. Yeah. And I have a follow-up to episode 21 and the story of how the World War II German fighter ace Franz Stiegler chose not to shoot down the severely damaged bomber and its wounded crew flown by the American pilot Charlie Brown. Rebecca Darmus wrote, Kia ora, Greg and Sharon, I'm working as a temp doing boring data entry work and I've recently

Starting point is 00:23:09 discovered your podcast and it has been a mental lifesaver. I recently went back and started listening from the beginning and episode 21 really struck a chord with me. The story of Charlie Brown and Franz Stiegler bears a similarity to the Christmas song Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen from 1967, in which the Bloody Red Baron meets our hero Snoopy in the sky and has the opportunity to reach for the trigger and put out his lights. Snoopy was certain that this was the end when the Baron cried out, Merry Christmas, my friend. Details differ, like it not being Christmas and the Bloody Red Baron actually forcing Snoopy to land. However, the general theme is very similar.

Starting point is 00:23:44 I thought this was a really obvious connection, particularly the renaming of Charlie Brown and the Bloody Red Baron actually forcing Snoopy to land. However, the general theme is very similar. I thought this was a really obvious connection, particularly the renaming of Charlie Brown slash Snoopy, both characters in the same cartoon strip, but my searches on the internet don't seem to show many other people making this connection. Possibly this is because while the song is one of the most popular Christmas songs in New Zealand, where I am from, it is almost unheard of anywhere else in the world. This is in itself crazy to me,

Starting point is 00:24:09 as it's not Christmas if I don't sing along to Snoopy's Christmas. But having spent the past three Christmases abroad, I can assure you that I have encountered no one who has heard it, yet it's possibly the most common Christmas song to play on New Zealand radio stations. As I write this, it occurs to me that very possibly there was more than one kind-hearted German pilot with a similar story. However, the Charlie Brown slash Snoopy connection was just too weird for me not to write to you. If you have a spare three minutes to listen to the song, I'm sure you'll appreciate the similarities too, and maybe add another favorite to your Christmas playlist. There are other songs about Snoopy in the same series, but this is the relevant one. With greatest thanks for your amazing work. And Rebecca sent a YouTube link to the song that we'll of course have in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:24:46 The song actually did sound familiar to me, so I know I've heard it before, though not in quite a long time, I think. But I found it really interesting that a novelty song by an American group about an American cartoon character was such an enormous hit in New Zealand and is still quite popular there. and is still quite popular there. Wikipedia says that Snoopy's Christmas topped the singles charts in 1967 in both New Zealand and Australia and is thought to be the biggest selling overseas single in New Zealand in the 20th century. When it came out, it was the fastest selling single at the time in New Zealand and they just couldn't keep up with the demand in the record shops as more than 100,000 copies of the single were sold just in December. I did see multiple references to the enduring popularity of the song in New Zealand at Christmastime, and it's apparently hit the New Zealand chart several times over the decades, though it wasn't popular in most of the rest of

Starting point is 00:25:34 the world, and from what I saw, it didn't even chart in the U.S. when it came out. As often happens with things that are quite popular, there do seem to be those who love to hate the song. An article on the New Zealand news website Stuff from December 2014 says, Snoopy's Christmas, a festive favorite in New Zealand since it first topped the charts back in 1967, has again found itself heading certain worst Christmas songs lists. Surely directing such malevolence at a children's favorite about a cartoon beagle promoting peace to all the world and goodwill to man is Dickensian mean-spiritedness at its worst. Those heroically working in retail at this time of year, dosed several times daily with Snoopy's Yuletide aerial mission by in-store sound systems, would probably disagree. But either way, this novelty song by the Royal Guardsmen has

Starting point is 00:26:22 probably been a part of our New Zealand Christmas for as long as many of us can remember. Similarly, I found that a poll of readers of the New Zealand Herald in 2007 found Snoopy's Christmas to be the overwhelming favorite for the worst Christmas song of all time, although they note that some readers actually named it the best. So apparently there are some strong feelings on this subject in New Zealand. I'm trying to think what there could be about that song that would make it resonate in New Zealand. I guess that's what you were saying. I just can't begin to think why an American novelty song would just catch on like that. Well, you know what? I was thinking when I was thinking about this a little bit that most Christmas songs, at least here in the US, involve winter or snow. And I'm thinking,

Starting point is 00:27:03 well, those actually wouldn't really be appropriate in New Zealand or Australia, right? So there aren't a lot of Christmas songs, at least that they play here, that don't refer to winter. That's a good point. But if there's something else about it that people know, please let us know why it's so popular in New Zealand. As Rebecca mentioned, there were several Snoopy songs by the Royal Guardsmen, with the first being Snoopy vs. the Red Baron from 1966, which was quite a hit in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:27:30 And I definitely remembered it when I listened to it while writing this, though I wouldn't remember it from 1966, so I'm thinking it must have been on the radio for many years here. The article on Stuff says that the Royal Guardsmen were six rather young men from Florida, with most of them still in high school when the group formed in 1965. Their aim was to be a cover band that performed high-quality live versions of current hits in local clubs. A record producer gave the lyrics to Snoopy vs. the Red Baron to some different local bands with the goal of releasing a record of the best treatment of the song. And according to Stuff, the Royal Guardsmen unenthusiastically submitted what they termed a hokey arrangement, since this wasn't what they actually wanted to be doing. But to their surprise, the producer liked it, released it as a single, and it shot up the American charts. And apparently, a West Coast tour to promote the song had to be delayed until the band members who were still in school went on their Christmas break.

Starting point is 00:28:23 As for Rebecca's thoughts on Snoopy's Christmas, I did see that there are some who seem to think that the song is actually a reference to the Christmas truce of World War I that we covered in episode 134, and which Rebecca wouldn't have gotten to yet when she wrote to us. Though I do see the parallels that Rebecca noticed to the Franz Stiegler story, so maybe it manages to combine both. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. Your follow-ups and comments really add to the variety of the show. So if you have anything that you'd like to add, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:29:10 I've adapted this from an idea sent in by listeners David and Becky Prusner. In 2009, the city of Oswego, Illinois, began using efficient LED bulbs in its traffic lights. As a result, a woman died. How? Oh my. You would say that her death was attributable somehow to the LED bulbs? Yes. And would you say it was attributable to the bulbs as opposed to a change, the fact that something had changed? Like, um, hmm, I'm trying to think how to express this like if there had been a change to a different kind of bulb just because something was changed that was the problem it's more that there was a change rather than what it was changed to

Starting point is 00:29:56 no i'd say it's the fact that they're using leds in particular okay uh did this have anything to do with some kind of like a a medical condition that she might have had? Like, you know, epilepsy that was triggered by certain types of lights or, you know, some neurological condition? No. No. Was there some kind of a visibility problem with the new lights? Yes. There was some kind of a visibility problem.

Starting point is 00:30:22 In general? What do you mean by in general? Okay. A visibility problem that would have been a problem for pretty much everybody, at least under certain circumstances. Yes. As opposed to like one particular woman

Starting point is 00:30:36 or one particular motorist or something. That's right. Yes. Okay. Did it have something to do with the fact that LEDs aren't hot? So like they wouldn't melt snow or they wouldn't meltet that might accrete on them otherwise or something like that? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:50 But that's not it. It's kind of like that, but not exactly that. Yeah, that's basically it. There'd be a visibility issue because if it was sleeting or something, the ice would just accumulate and then you couldn't see the traffic light. You couldn't see what it was. Yeah. David and Becky write, while hot incandescent bulbs melt snow, the energy efficient LED bulbs did not.

Starting point is 00:31:13 Snow accumulated in the sockets of the traffic lights, obscuring the red lights. People could not see the obscured lights and blindly ran the lights, causing traffic accidents that injured people and killed this one woman apparently in Illinois. the lights, causing traffic accidents that injured people and killed this one woman, apparently, in Illinois. Now, traffic lights with LED bulbs have longer hoods to block the snow for the top red light, fewer surfaces for snow to accumulate, and they also have tiny warmers activated by freezing temperatures. Wow.

Starting point is 00:31:36 Thanks, David and Becky. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. us to try, 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

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Futility Closet - 289-The Johnstown Flood

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