Futility Closet - 311-A Disputed Russian Princess

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 Victorian stick fighting to a horse-powered locomotive. This is episode 311. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1920, a young woman was pulled from a canal in Berlin. When her identity couldn't be established, speculation started that she was a Russian princess who had escaped the execution of the imperial family. In today's show, we'll describe the strange life of Anna Anderson and her disputed identity

Starting point is 00:00:45 as Grand Duchess Anastasia. We'll also revisit French roosters and puzzle over not using headlights. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for 300 years until catastrophic failures abroad in the First World War brought increasing public hostility. In March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II agreed to abdicate the throne, hoping to prevent a civil war, and he and his family went into exile in the Ural Mountains, where they were held in captivity at the Ipatiev House in the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. The civil war couldn't be stopped, and the family became symbols of the old order. During the struggle, it was decided to put an end to the potential

Starting point is 00:01:30 threat that Nicholas represented, and a few minutes after midnight on July 17, 1918, the family were awakened on the pretext that counterrevolutionaries were advancing on the region. They dressed and went to the cellar, where a Bolshevik commandant suddenly read a death sentence and nine riflemen opened fire on Nicholas, his wife, their five children, and four retainers. The fusillade lasted two minutes, and afterward the gunmen went among the bodies, bayoneting any that still showed signs of life. Two weeks later, when the White Army occupied Yekaterinburg, there was no trace of the imperial family. The Bolsheviks admitted to killing Nicholas, but they said that his wife and his son Alexei had been sent away,

Starting point is 00:02:10 and they said nothing about the four daughters. In a clearing in the Tupchaki forest, investigators found jewels, belt buckles, buttons, and other items, but no bodies. Eleven people were thought to have been killed in the Ipatiev house, but the remains had disappeared. Nineteen months later and 1,500 miles away, a police officer was passing along the Landwehr Canal in Berlin one February evening when he heard a splash. His light picked out a struggling figure in the water below, and he raced over the embankment and pulled a young woman to safety. She was small, with dark hair, and seemed to be in her twenties. He asked what had happened, but she refused to speak. He took her to the hospital, but she wouldn't talk to the doctors either.

Starting point is 00:02:54 They gave her a bed for the night under the name Fraulein Unbekannt, which means Miss Unknown. In the days that followed, no one could get any information from her. She refused to give her name, age, or occupation. Her clothing was nondescript and bore no labels, and she carried no identification or even money. She allowed that she had tried to kill herself, but she wouldn't say why. In explaining this later, she would say, can you understand what it is suddenly to know that everything is lost and that you are left entirely alone? Can you understand then that I did what I did? There were some signs of physical violence in her past, but their meaning wasn't clear. She had old scars and many lacerations, though some of these may have been caused by her leap into the canal, and apparently her foot had been pierced at some point. After six weeks,

Starting point is 00:03:34 they sent her to the State Institute for Welfare and Care, commonly called Daldorf, where she remained stubbornly uncooperative and was diagnosed provisionally with a depressive mental illness. When they could make no progress in determining her identity, the police finally left her there, and she remained at Daldorf for 19 months, rarely speaking to anyone. She spent her time reading, and she seemed to follow political events with some interest. The details of what happened next are somewhat confused. Another patient, Klara Poitert, had worked for an aristocratic family in Moscow before the revolution. When speculations about the fate of the Romanovs appeared in the German press,

Starting point is 00:04:09 Poitert began to speak with the mysterious woman and received enough hints to believe that she was a daughter of the Tsar. When Poitert was released in January 1922, the story got out that one of the Romanov daughters had survived the execution, and the woman increasingly began to acknowledge this identity. Under czarist law, Grand Duchess Anastasia did not stand to inherit the throne. Many male Romanovs had survived the revolution and escaped Russia. But Russian émigrés felt much nostalgia for the murdered czar and the lost empire, and even as a figurehead, a surviving daughter would wield sentimental power among the exiles. In May 1922, after 792 days at Daldorf, the woman was discharged and moved in with a former czarist bureaucrat and his wife, who said that they often found her sitting alone, surrounded by photographs of

Starting point is 00:04:55 the imperial family. For the next 46 years, this mysterious woman would pass among various emigres, nursing homes, and sanatoria while the world tried to decide what to make of her. It never quite reached a decision. For every outraged skeptic, there was a devoted supporter, and for every curious omission in her story, there was a surprising demonstration of its authenticity, or at least the rumor of one. For nearly half a century, she managed to remain an enigma.

Starting point is 00:05:20 No one could prove that she was Anastasia, and no one could quite prove that she wasn't. The first question was how she'd escaped the murder of the imperial family. enigma. No one could prove that she was Anastasia, and no one could quite prove that she wasn't. The first question was how she'd escaped the murder of the imperial family. She said that when the killing started, she had hid in the back of the Ipatiev house with a sister, received some blows, and lost consciousness. She had awakened in the care of a sympathetic soldier named Alexander Tchaikovsky. He had taken her to his family's home near Yekaterinburg, and they had tended to her wounds. When the Bolsheviks learned she was missing, the family feared she might be captured, and Tchaikovsky took her to Romania in a cart.

Starting point is 00:05:51 She said she remembered, quote, lying on a heap of straw in a wagon. I did not know who the people were that I could hear talking. I only felt that as the wagon jolted, my head ached terribly, that it was swathed in damp cloths, and that my hair was matted with blood. She had some jewels with her, and they sold these to pay their expenses. She recalled almost nothing of the journey. She maintained that she had had a child by Alexander. She had married him afterward, but he had been shot two years later, perhaps by Bolshevik agents who had been sent to find her.

Starting point is 00:06:20 She left the son with Alexander's family in Bucharest and made her way north to Germany, where, overwhelmed with hopelessness, she had leapt into the canal in Berlin. She left the son with Alexander's family in Bucharest and made her way north to Germany, where, overwhelmed with hopelessness, she had leapt into the canal in Berlin. Her supporters believed this story in part because it accorded with rumors that Anastasia had survived the execution, but here as everywhere the truth was unclear. In 1926, her supporters sent a woman named Gertrude Spindler to Bucharest to try to substantiate it. She spent weeks there and found nothing. The Romanian royal family took an interest in the story but couldn't verify any of the claims.

Starting point is 00:06:50 On the strength of the story, the woman came to be called Frau Anastasia Tchaikovsky, and that's how she became known to the world as word spread through the media during the 1920s. She had come to notice at a time when her story could be promoted through magazines, books, newsreels, films, and documentaries, and as the media chronicled her adventures, she became a living legend. Though her story might seem tenuous, little was known about what had happened that July night. The Soviet authorities were silent, no Romanov corpses had come to light, and there were persistent rumors of escape and rescue. Large quantities of sulfuric acid and gasoline had been delivered to the

Starting point is 00:07:25 Koktyaki forest after the executions, so the theory developed that the bodies had been cut up, doused with gasoline, and burned, and that whatever had remained was dissolved in acid. With no evidence to go on, there was no way to disprove the rumors that one or more of the Romanovs, and specifically Anastasia, had escaped. Russian history was full of mysterious deaths, missing corpses, and intrigue, and the vision of a lost princess fleeing her family's murder made the story too compelling to ignore. Superficially, Tchaikovsky seemed to fit the part. She was the same height as Anastasia and apparently the same age, and, like her, suffered from a foot deformity known as hallux valgus. She had striking blue-gray eyes that

Starting point is 00:08:04 recalled the czar's eyes, and the wound in her foot was said to match the shape of the bayonet blades that the Bolsheviks had used in the war. But there are some strange conflicts as well. She would not speak Russian, Anastasia's native language. She said, although I know Russian, speaking it awakens in me extremely painful memories. The Russians did so much harm to me and my family. There are rumors that the family physician once heard her speak Russian in her sleep and that she'd once exclaimed spontaneously in Russian when playing with some pet parakeets, but the sources of those stories are doubted. She seems to have understood Russian, though she insisted on replying in German,

Starting point is 00:08:39 a language with which Anastasia was less familiar. Tchaikovsky's German was impeccable until the summer of 1925, when a visitor suggested that this cast doubt on her story, and she began to speak it badly. Anastasia would also have known English and French. Tchaikovsky was said to have raved once in English under anesthesia, though that story too has been doubted. And she was not heard to speak French until one morning in Paris in 1928, when she surprised a companion by ordering breakfast in that language. She didn't speak it again for 30 years. If language would not decide the matter, perhaps Anastasia's acquaintances could.

Starting point is 00:09:14 In autumn 1922, it was arranged that she meet two courtiers who had known Anastasia well. They talked in her presence about walks, trips, parties, and other events that would have been well known to the princess, but she made no response. One of them declared afterward that she couldn't be Anastasia. He said, Not a single feature of her face reminded me of the Grand Duchesses, nor of any of the imperial family. But her supporters said that he and other skeptics had ulterior motives. Alexei Volkov, Empress Alexandra's former groom of the chamber, visited her in Berlin and said,

Starting point is 00:09:45 The Grand Duchess had a much rounder face and had a fresher complexion. The features I now see do not remind me of the Grand Duchess. She was able to answer some of his questions but quickly grew tired and made no further effort to prove her identity. It was Volkov's opinion that she got her knowledge from reading. He said one can prove this by the fact that she was not able to cite a single detail outside those which had appeared in the press. In 1932, Prince Sigismund of Prussia and Prince Friedrich of Sax-Aldenburg tested this by drawing up a list of 18 questions about incidents that had taken place before the war, questions so obscure that only the real Anastasia could answer them because the events had never been publicized. For example, when one stood in front of and facing the lodge at Spawa, on which story and in which side were the rooms

Starting point is 00:10:30 of Count de Friedrichs? Her answers convinced them, but this is less impressive than it sounds. She had asked for time to think and then held the list for five days, and in fact answers to two-thirds of the questions had appeared in print, some in memoirs that she likely had access to. It was never revealed how many questions she had answered correctly. That would actually be kind of challenging. I mean, by the dates, it's more than a decade later, and they're trying to come up with... I mean, I wouldn't be able to answer this question about facing the lodge, which side, for something that I hadn't seen for like 15 years. Like, that would be really hard to come up with specific questions. That no one else would know the answers to. That no one else would know the answers to.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Well, you have to know the answers yourself as the questioner, but they can't have appeared anywhere in print. Yeah, that's the thing. They have to be so obscure. And then she'd have to remember them from years and years ago. So if she could, I suppose, just have said, sorry, I don't. I just don't remember that. Yeah. And that's a perfectly respectable answer, I suppose, just have said, sorry, I don't, I can't remember that. I just don't remember that, yeah. And that's a perfectly respectable answer, I would think.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Psychology couldn't add much to the picture. The facilities in which she stayed would sometimes administer psychological tests. They tended to find her high-strung and emotional, but sane. Lothar Nobel of Berlin's Momsen Clinic wrote that she showed no signs of mental deficiency nor any evidence of suggestion or influence. Also, quote, it seems to me impossible that the numerous and apparently trivial details she recalls can be attributed to anything other than her own experiences. Also, from a psychological point of view, it seems unlikely that anyone engaged for whatever purpose in acting the part of another would behave as the patient does in displaying so little initiative in achieving her aims. In 1928, she checked into a hotel on Long Island using the name

Starting point is 00:12:09 Mrs. Eugene Anderson. This evolved into Anna Anderson, the name by which she's generally known today. By that year, only two Romanov cousins had accepted her, and that autumn, the Romanovs in Denmark issued a statement rejecting her claim. They wrote, Our sense of duty compels us to state that the story is only a fairy tale. The memory of our dear departed would be tarnished if we allowed this fantastic story to spread and gain any credence. In the ensuing strife, Anderson had a nervous breakdown and was sent to the Four Winds Rest Home in Katona, New York, where she would stay for more than a year. During this time, opinions hardened. Some people forgot about her, and others grew more ardent in their support or opposition, and warring books were

Starting point is 00:12:49 published about the validity of her claim. Ten years now had passed since the execution, and the public still had reached no conclusion. She returned to Germany in 1931 and disappeared into obscurity as Anna Anderson. But two years later, as various heirs began to circle around the fortune that the Tsar was presumed to have left in Europe, she emerged to launch a lawsuit to prove finally that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. That fight would drag on for decades, with hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pages of testimony. Anderson generally positioned herself above the fray, referring to the legal contention as a matter of pride. She said, I know perfectly well who I am. I don't need to prove it in any court of law. But as the fight wore on and her identity remained in doubt, her behavior became increasingly erratic.

Starting point is 00:13:34 She didn't get a home of her own until 1949, a former barracks a few miles outside the Black Forest. It needed extensive repairs and only one room was heated, but it gave her a measure of personal security. She filled it with clutter, and within a decade it was unlivable. In 1960, she moved to a chalet nearby and filled that with clutter, too. She took to burying dead cats and dogs in the garden, and the area began to smell. In 1968, the town authorities ordered her to clean up the property, and she barricaded herself inside the chalet for three days. When she stopped responding to inquiries, the fire department broke down the door and found her on the floor, dehydrated, emaciated, and nearly unconscious, among 60 cats. One witness said it was incredible, signed photographs of the emperor and empress, letters from the crown princess of Prussia, a handkerchief that had belonged to Empress Alexandra,

Starting point is 00:14:25 from the crown princess of Prussia, a handkerchief that had belonged to Empress Alexandra, the most extraordinary mementos scattered haphazardly about the floors, lost in a wasteland of dog and cat mess and rotting food. She spent seven weeks in the hospital and then made her way to America, where she married a history professor named Jack Manahan. At 49, he was nearly 20 years her junior, but he was wealthy and their marriage gave her a name and permitted her to live indefinitely in America. Unfortunately, Manahan was eccentric too. Their house in Charlottesville, Virginia was surrounded by firewood and sacks of garbage. There was a tree stump in the living room and she cremated dead pets in the fireplace. The legal battle finally reached its conclusion on February 17, 1970, the 50th anniversary of Anderson's rescue from the canal. By that time, it had become the longest trial in German history.

Starting point is 00:15:11 And, somehow inevitably, even all that deliberation didn't settle the matter. The courts ruled that Anderson's claim that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia was neither established nor refuted. As the Manahans' living conditions deteriorated, so did their health, and Anna was put first into a psychiatric ward and then into a nursing home. By that time, her weight was down to 60 pounds. When she died of pneumonia in 1984, the Commonwealth of Virginia granted her one last courtesy. Her death certificate lists her name as Anastasia Nikolaevna Manahan. Her parents are Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra of Hessen-Darmstadt, and her occupation is royalty. She had first been identified as Anastasia in the autumn of 1921,

Starting point is 00:15:54 and she'd maintained that position for 63 years, essentially her entire adult life, but the validity of her claim had never been decided. Seven years passed, and then the Soviet Union fell. Investigators unearthed the acidified remains of Nicholas, his wife, and three of their daughters near Yekaterinburg, and in 2007, the bodies of the remaining two children were found as well. DNA testing confirmed their identities. The entire family had been killed in 1918. There was no possibility that Anastasia had survived. So who was Anna Anderson? In 1927, the Tsarina's brother had hired a private detective to investigate the mysterious claimant's identity, and he'd suggested she was Franciszka Skanskowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. Genetic tests now put that likelihood at 98.5%. Skanskovska had been working

Starting point is 00:16:47 in a munitions factory in 1916 when she dropped a grenade. One of her co-workers had died in the explosion and she herself had suffered serious injuries. She had been declared insane that September and disappeared around the start of 1920. Even if we accept that Anna Anderson was Franziska Skanskovska, it's still not clear whether she was a deliberate fraud. She may have been delusional, or perhaps the trauma of the grenade blast had induced her to adopt a new identity, or possibly her various defenders had simply found it expedient to support her in this identity for reasons of their own. She herself had not put forward the idea that she was a Romanov princess. That had come

Starting point is 00:17:25 from Clara Poitert in the Daldorf Asylum, and she had gone along with it. Doing so had brought her acceptance and support when her own resources were very low. But who she really believed she was can never be known now. The main story in episode 63 was about how in 1915, rainmaker Charles Hatfield was purported to have caused extreme flooding in San Diego. And then I did a follow-up on the topic of cloud seeding to increase precipitation in episode 305. Paul Lloyd from The Rhonda Whales wrote, This week's episode's discussion of cloud seeding reminded me of this article in The Guardian.

Starting point is 00:18:17 There was also a BBC Radio 4 documentary about it. So this was interesting. On August 15, 1952, the village of Linmith in Devon in southwest England experienced one of the worst flash floods ever in Britain as nine inches of rain fell in 24 hours. More than 30 people died and many homes, buildings and bridges were damaged or destroyed. In 2001, the BBC reported that they had uncovered evidence that RAF experiments with cloud seeding were linked to the flooding. An August 30, 2001 BBC article entitled Rain Making Link to Killer Floods said, 35 deaths in the infamous Linmouth flood disaster came only days after RAF rainmaking experiments over southern England it has emerged. over southern England it has emerged. 90 million tons of water swept down the narrow valley into Linmouth on 15 August 1952, destroying whole buildings. Now a BBC investigation has confirmed that secret experiments were causing heavy rainfall. The article noted that there were

Starting point is 00:19:18 rumors of planes circling before the flood and said that the Ministry of Defense has denied knowledge of so-called cloud seeding experiments during early August 1952. Tony Speller asked to see Ministry of Defense files when he was MP for North Devon under Margaret Thatcher. He said, I could never find anything of any consequence except the fact that papers were clearly missing for the significant years. The British government had initiated Operation Cumulus, which was jokingly referred to as Operation Witch Doctor by some of those involved, that was operational from 1949 to 1952. It does seem that Operation Cumulus was involved in experiments in cloud seeding and that the project was suspended after the Linmouth flood, and there has been some controversy as to whether some of their cloud seeding, and that the project was suspended after the Linmouth flood,

Starting point is 00:20:05 and there has been some controversy as to whether some of their cloud seeding might have been responsible for that flood. It's unclear to me that there is definitive evidence that cloud seeding had occurred near Linmouth before the flood, and as I noted in episode 305, in addition to the lack of consensus about the degree of effectiveness of cloud seeding in general, it's even more difficult to attribute any particular event to seeding, as you can't say what would have happened without the seeding. Philip Eden, a prominent British meteorologist who wrote several books on British weather and climate, weighed in on the BBC's 2001 Radio 4 program after it aired, saying, the BBC's 2001 Radio 4 program after it aired, saying,

Starting point is 00:20:48 Any meteorologist with a rudimentary knowledge of cloud seeding could explain why it is preposterous to blame the Linmouth Flood on such experiments, and went on to say, Scientists involved in rainfall stimulation were only interested in seeding individual cumulus clouds, those cauliflower-shaped clouds, usually less than a mile across, which sometimes produce showers which may last 10 or 20 minutes. Injecting modest amounts of dry ice or silver iodide into such a cloud stimulates the production of ice crystals in the cloud, which in turn accelerates the rain-making process. But the cloud has to have sufficiently vigorous updrafts to spread the chemical throughout the cloud. This in turn means

Starting point is 00:21:25 that the cloud may have eventually produced rain in any case, and the seeding merely caused it to happen earlier. For this reason, there has never been unequivocal evidence of how successful these rain-making programs have been. Eden went on to note that the storm that caused the 1952 flood was not localized to the Linmouth district, but that heavy rain fell over a much larger region. He says that similar weather conditions have triggered serious flooding in southwest England in the past, and that Linmouth had experienced devastating floods in previous centuries. He said, the August 1952 depression was several hundred miles across, and the prolonged heavy rain associated with it was caused by the So I'm not going to claim to have any authoritative answers here, but I did think it was interesting that a 2008 BBC article on the topic used much softer language than their 2001 article

Starting point is 00:22:26 had, saying things like, questions are still being asked, and among the theories is that the rain was caused by experiments to artificially create rain. Nine inches of rain in 24 hours is a huge amount. That is a huge amount. So if that were caused artificially, that shows an amazing power, you know, of artificially causing rain, and you'd think we'd see more instances of it since then if that were really the case. Yeah, and as I reported in the previous episode on cloud seeding, it's not thought that cloud seeding is that strongly effective usually, which is I think what Philip Eden was trying to say too. Right, we'd have heard about it if that were the case. We'd have heard about it if that were the case. In episode 292, I discussed some recent locust swarms that were causing devastation in parts of East Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Alex Wood wrote, The UN Food and Agricultural Organization tracks locust problems. Good to know. And Alex sent a link to the Locust Watch website of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, where they post updates on current locust infestations, including color-coded maps showing the current and forecasted conditions in locust-prone countries. So a good resource for anyone who wanted to follow the situation more closely. Other resources on the site include an FAQ to answer any locust questions you might have, such as what the difference is between locusts and grasshoppers, basically locusts are a kind of grasshopper, to how many eggs a female desert locust can produce, as many as 158 at a time, and the ability to lay at least three times in her lifetime, which according to another answer is three to five months, and a number of locust

Starting point is 00:24:01 recipes from different countries, including a photo of Mexican locust tacos for anyone who has culinary inclinations in that direction. You want to try that? No, I am not that brave. In episodes 262 and 265, I covered the trial of a French rooster named Maurice, two of whose neighbors were suing over his early morning crowing. The judge ruled in Maurice's favor in September 2019, and the case was seen as symbolizing France's urban versus rural divide and was just one example from recent years of conflicts that have arisen

Starting point is 00:24:35 from people who were raised in cities objecting to some of the traditional noises of more rural areas, with these cases causing trouble for rural mayors or ending up in the courts. And Jonathan Meir helpfully let us know that there was a recent update to this story. So it turns out that legislation has actually been proposed in France designed to define and protect the sensory heritage of the French countryside. This law would introduce a new legal concept of sensory heritage to classify some sounds and smells, such as roosters crowing or frogs croaking, or the smell of manure or chickens, as being an intrinsic part of rural life and thus protected from legal actions often brought by vacationers

Starting point is 00:25:16 of neo-rurals who cannot stand this kind of nuisance. The proposal was approved unanimously by the French National Assembly in January and is now awaiting a vote by the Senate, which has been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. I imagine if the law does get passed, it would be a help to mayors who, for example, get demands from vacationers to stop the morning ringing of church bells, as well as for the legal system, where, for example, there has been a seven-year battle over the noisy frogs in someone's backyard pond. Atlas Obscura reports that some rural mayors have been so fed up with conflicts with vacationers that they've been posting signs in their villages to warn that visitors will have to contend with bells and roosters and the like, with one such sign reading,

Starting point is 00:25:59 if you can't handle that, you're in the wrong place. To the point. I wonder if the law specifically lists particular sounds and smells and things, or if it just sort of broadly says if these things have that character, then they're protected. I think it did list, I did look at it very quickly, and I think it did list some, I guess it would be impossible to produce an exhaustive list of... It's a tricky bill to write. Yeah. And for a more specific rooster update, I'm sorry to report that Maurice, the rooster

Starting point is 00:26:30 whose trial started this whole topic for us, died in May from natural causes, but his owner has already adopted a Maurice too. And while looking into this story, I came across news reports from August about another French rooster named Marcel that was making news,

Starting point is 00:26:45 although his story was a much more unhappy one. Marcel, who lived in a small village in southern France, was shot dead by a neighbor who was annoyed by the birds crowing. The neighbor, who is said to have admitted to the shooting, has been charged with several offenses, including animal cruelty and the unlawful use of a weapon, and is scheduled to go on trial in December. Wow. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate getting your comments,

Starting point is 00:27:11 feedback, and follow-ups. So if you have any of those that you'd like to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation and he has to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Jewel Ann Wakeman in rural Pennsylvania who says, my name is pronounced like it looks

Starting point is 00:27:40 as long as you don't assume that I forgot to put an I in my own name like almost every teacher I ever had growing up. So Jewel Ann's puzzle is, I always drive with my headlights on except when I'm wearing sunglasses. Why? Except when I'm wearing sunglasses. So if you're wearing sunglasses, you would turn the headlights off. That is correct. So Jewel drives even during the day with headlights on. Yes. Yes. Normally.

Starting point is 00:28:12 Unless she's wearing sunglasses. So let's say she's driving without sunglasses. Okay. And has the headlights on and for some reason decides to put the sunglasses on. Yes. She might do that. Yes. She would turn off the headlights?

Starting point is 00:28:26 Yes. Do any of you know more about the sunglasses? We had one of these where they were polarized or something. Oh, that's true. No, it does not matter. So all they were doing is just- Just imagine standard sunglasses. Wow.

Starting point is 00:28:39 That's a very interesting- Does that have something to do with the dashboard? Yes. So, okay. So when she turns on the headlights, there's some indicator on the dashboard that the lights are on. Uh-huh. Is that right? Possibly.

Starting point is 00:28:56 And so if she's wearing sunglasses, that indicator would appear differently to her? Is that what we're? No. That's not it? That's not it. I don't know how that would work. You look like it's some warning that the car is on fire. Okay, but you're saying there is an indicator. Is that important? No. No, it's not. That's not it. That's not it. It's not like some...

Starting point is 00:29:17 It's not the importance of an indicator that goes on. Okay, but something... When she's wearing the sunglasses, something appears differently to her. Yes. Is it the actual beams themselves, like the actual effects of the headlights? No. That's different, that's causing the problem she's trying to avoid. Okay, but it's not something on the dashboard either. Well... No, is that wrong?

Starting point is 00:29:40 Yeah, back up, because you asked if it had something to do with the dashboard, and I said yes. You said yes. I said yes, but it's not like an indicator that the lights are on. Oh, when you turn on the lights, the whole dashboard is illuminated, right? In most cars, I think. But I can't believe it's so bright that she... Yeah, no, that's not it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:30:00 Well, what else happens when you turn on your headlights? An indicator comes on showing that the lights are on, and I think the whole dashboard lights up. That's not correct. No, that's not. At least not for her car. Maybe I'm just wrong. Well, why would you want... Okay, so let's just follow that through anyway.

Starting point is 00:30:18 So some change happens in the dashboard. Yes. So if the lights are on, she doesn't wear them. If she puts them on, she'll turn it off. So that means she wants to avoid a case where the lights are on and she's wearing sunglasses. Sunglasses, yes. And it has something to do with the dashboard. Well, okay.

Starting point is 00:30:41 And it's not to do with them being polarized. So would you say broadly that it has something to do with the appearance of the dashboard to her when she's wearing sunglasses? Yes. She wants to avoid whatever that is. I guess so, if I understand you. Right, because we said if she's driving with the lights on and then puts the sunglasses on, she'll want to turn the lights off. Yes. So I guess I'm asking, is that the reason? Because it would cause some problem if she wore the glasses while the lights were on. Because the dashboard would...

Starting point is 00:31:10 Is this a safety issue? Yeah, I guess you'd say so. So it's appearing like an appearance of something like the, I don't know, the gear shift or the instruments, the speedometer or something like that? Nothing specific. Does she have a condition I need to know about? No. Would this affect someone else in the same way?

Starting point is 00:31:31 Would it affect me if I were driving her car? Yes. And had her sunglasses? Yes. So let's say I was doing that. Okay. I put the headlights on. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:40 And I put the sunglasses on. Yeah. Then this effect obtains whatever it is. Yeah. You had something kind of backwards earlier when you made an assumption and I said that wasn't it. You just had it backwards. You said, all right, it's something to do with it.

Starting point is 00:31:58 And you said it's not anything specific, any specific instrument. It's not any specific instrument. It's just what happens to your dashboard when you turn the headlights on. I feel like that ought to be obvious with this much evidence, but I'm not. And it doesn't have to do with the specific sunglasses

Starting point is 00:32:14 or anything specific about the dashboard. And we've said the dashboard doesn't illuminate. Right, it doesn't. The opposite happens. It dims. Oh. Because the car thinks it's nighttime and it dims the dashboard when you put the headlights on. I had that. Yeah, totally backwards.

Starting point is 00:32:33 Julianne said she grew up in Canada where most cars have daytime running lights, which she always thought were a good idea, even for the daytime. But that her American car, when you put the headlights on, it thinks it's dark out, so it dims the dashboard light. So if she has her sunglasses on, then she can't see anything on the dashboard display. And then she said, post-script, after telling my husband this puzzle,

Starting point is 00:32:54 he showed me that you can lock the display into the bright position. Oops, I guess I could have been doing that instead of turning off the headlights, but then I wouldn't have had this fun puzzle to submit. Wow, I didn't know that either. So thanks to Julianne for that puzzle. And if you have any puzzles for us to try,

Starting point is 00:33:08 please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll not only help support our show, but also get outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet, see our website for the link at our website you can graze through greg's collection of over 11 000 delightful distractions browse the futility closet

Starting point is 00:33:51 store 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 futility closet.com.com. All our music was written and performed by the phenomenal Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 311-A Disputed Russian Princess

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