Futility Closet - 315-Beryl Markham's Unconventional Life

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 an unsolvable puzzle to the temperature of hell. This is episode 315. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Beryl Markham managed to fit three extraordinary careers into one lifetime. She was a champion racehorse trainer, a pioneering bush pilot, and a best-selling author. In today's show, we'll review her eventful life, including her historic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1936.

Starting point is 00:00:43 We'll also portray some Canadian snakes and puzzle over a deadly car. When Beryl Markham was 16 years old, a clairvoyant told her, you will always be successful, but you will never be happy. It wasn't clear what success would mean for her. She'd grown up in such unique circumstances. She'd been born in 1902 into the fox-hunting upper class in the English village of Ashwell. But when she was still a toddler, her father had bought land in colonial British East Africa,

Starting point is 00:01:17 what is now Kenya, hoping to farm and raise horses. The family started a farm there at Njoro, overlooking the Rift Valley. Beryl's brother was sent home with health problems, and her mother soon followed, but Beryl fell in love with Africa and embarked on an almost comically colorful childhood. Each morning, a half-tamed zebra would trot into her bedroom and nuzzle her out of sleep, and at age nine, she was attacked by a playful lion. A neighbor's wife managed to teach her to read, but she had no patience for proper education and would rid herself of governesses by putting spiders in their beds.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Instead, while her father worked on the farm, she roamed the wilds on her own. She spent vastly more time with her African friends than with Europeans, learning to speak their languages and accompanying hunting parties as they scoured the bush for game, often barefoot and carrying a spear. hunting parties as they scoured the bush for game, often barefoot and carrying a spear. Uniquely, she occupied two cultures. If she had stayed in England, she would have been raised in traditional Edwardian county society. If she'd been born African, she wouldn't have been allowed to join her male friends in their hunting pastimes. But because she was not properly of either world, she was accepted in both, and she became fiercely independent and self-reliant. She was accepted in both, and she became fiercely independent and self-reliant.

Starting point is 00:02:27 Especially, she loved the horses. Even as a child, she could quiet a horse by touching it. By age 11, she was riding out alone on her father's racehorses. She wrote later, There is no phase of my childhood I cannot recall by remembering a horse I owned then, or one my father owned, or one I knew. It was said there was no horse she couldn't ride. Her Swahili nickname was She Who Cannot Fall Off a Horse. She spent two and a half years at a school in Nairobi,

Starting point is 00:02:51 resented the discipline, and was expelled. That was the only formal education she ever received, but by now her father had more than 80 horses and a reputation as the best trainer in the country. She rejoined him, helped in the stables, and spent her spare time riding and traveling to races, where their horses eventually took every major trophy. Her father had a rare talent for bringing out the best in horses, and he was passing it on to her. These happy times came to an end in November 1920, when her father had to sell the farm after a punishing drought. He took a position as a trainer in Peru, but she elected to stay in Africa, having entered a brief marriage to a neighboring farmer. She asked her father whether he thought

Starting point is 00:03:29 she was expert enough to train thoroughbreds professionally. He said yes and left her a filly as a parting gift. His confidence was well placed. By age 18, through hard work and exceptional talent, she had become the first female licensed racehorse trainer in Africa and possibly in the world. When her marriage ended shortly afterward, she moved become the first female licensed racehorse trainer in Africa and possibly in the world. When her marriage ended shortly afterward, she moved to a farm on the floor of the Rift Valley, where her continued successes made her the toast of society. There, in 1927, she met Mansfield Markham, heir to a British coal mining fortune. They married and settled on a farm near Njoro, where she could now afford to buy top-class horses.

Starting point is 00:04:09 She might have devoted her life to training if it hadn't been for a chance encounter along the road one day when she came upon a man working on a car. They got to talking, and he mentioned that if his farm succeeded, he was going to get an airplane. He'd flown one in the war and had got to like it. He said, when you fly, you get a feeling of possession that you couldn't have if you owned all of Africa. You feel that everything you see belongs to you. All the She said, but never had the courage to seriously imagine. She later called this man destiny with pliers in his hand. She wrote, he had been lavish with a stranger. He had left me a word, tossed me a key to a door I never knew was there and had still to find. His name was Tom Campbell Black, and soon he was teaching her to fly in a gypsy moth biplane. She wrote, her propeller beat the sunrise silence of the Athie planes to shreds and scraps.

Starting point is 00:05:07 We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft and how a craft can be master of an element. As with horses, she found she had natural ability. She was flying solo after eight hours of instruction, and though she was still married, the two of them entered a long-term affair. She told friends he was the love of her life. To accumulate flying hours, she bought her own two-seater biplane and had it repainted in her horse racing colors, blue and silver. In it, she flew to Njoro and beyond, sometimes flying passengers.

Starting point is 00:05:35 In the air, her horizons expanded enormously, and with them her ambition and confidence. In April and May 1932, with only 127 hours in her logbook, she flew to England, a journey of 6,000 miles crossing the Sudan, Egypt, the Mediterranean, and Europe. This was only five years after the very first flights between Kenya and England had even taken place. A few months later, she flew back again. In September 1933, with just under 1,000 hours in the logbook, she became the first woman in Kenya to earn a commercial pilot's license. Soon she was working as an aerial big game spotter for hunting safaris, the first pilot to scout game from the air on a commercial basis. She would search for any game on a client's trophy list, including lion, buffalo, and rhino, but she specialized in elephants. She would drop meticulous directions to the hunters in a leather message bag describing the animal,

Starting point is 00:06:24 herd size, density of the bush, and distance from the hunting party, and giving a precise compass bearing to reach it. In 1935, she was, so far as she knew, the only professional woman pilot in Africa. She wrote, I was my own employer, my own pilot, and as often as not, my own ground engineer as well.

Starting point is 00:06:41 She ferried tourists along the Mombasa coastline and delivered mail and supplies to the gold mines of Kakamega. She offered an aerial taxi for residents upcountry, and she flew doctors and medical supplies to isolated farms and outposts. And she did all this at a time when airfields were essentially non-existent in Africa, so she often had to land in forest clearings and open fields. Her ambition reached its peak in March 1936, when she flew to England and set her sights on a non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic. Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart had both done this flying west to east,

Starting point is 00:07:14 but no one had yet done it the hard way, east to west, against the prevailing winds. It was important that someone make the trial, because any commercial air service across the Atlantic would be expected to link London to New York, and no one had yet proven this was possible. She'd be flying a single-engine monoplane called the Messenger. The journey would cover 3,600 miles, 2,000 of it over open ocean, and because she was flying west, the Knight would be traveling with her. Campbell Black told her, if you misjudge your course only a few degrees, you'll end up in Labrador or in the sea, so don't misjudge anything. Ordinarily, the plane's range was 660 miles. She had several extra fuel tanks fitted, including two in the cabin, to take on the 255 gallons of gasoline she'd need to reach New York. That raised the range theoretically to 3,800 miles, but it also

Starting point is 00:08:01 increased the plane's weight by 1,900 pounds. To be sure of getting off the ground, she chose a mile-long runway at Abingdon near Oxford. She and Campbell Black spent hours on her training regime and pre-flight planning. He introduced her to Jim Mollison, who'd made an unsuccessful attempt at a westward crossing of his own in 1932 and knew the conditions she would encounter. On September 4, 1936, she was ready to go. Her friend Brian Lewis gave her a life jacket, the Scottish mechanic gave her a sprig of heather, and Mollison loaned her the wristwatch he'd worn on his own flights across the Atlantic. Campbell Black was away when she left, apparently assuming she would wait for better weather. She took off and headed west toward

Starting point is 00:08:40 Ireland, where she was glimpsed flying over Castletown and then headed off over the ocean battling a 40-mile headwind. The newspapers had said she would have the advantage of a full moon, but the weather remained terrible and she had to fly by instruments throughout. She wrote later, I wouldn't have imagined that there was an expanse of desolation so big in the whole world as the waste of sky and water I saw go past me from the time I left Abingdon. It was fog, rain, sleet, for hours on end. If I climbed, it was sleet. If I dropped, it was rain. If I skimmed the sea, it was fog. I couldn't see anything beyond my wingtips. Her team had estimated that each tank of fuel in the cabin would last four hours, so she

Starting point is 00:09:16 was surprised when the engine coughed and died. For 30 seconds, the plane dropped through the storm while she grappled with the petcocks. She was only 300 feet above the waves when she got the next tank open and the engine exploded to life again. For the next 19 hours, she flew blind in a cramped cockpit in which she could barely move. She wrote later, You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. Being alone in an airplane for even so short a time as a night and a day,

Starting point is 00:09:44 irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but the size of your small courage, nothing to wonder about but the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind. Such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. At daybreak, a ship, the SS Sparndum, spotted her a few hours from the American coast, and soon she was circling a Newfoundland lighthouse and heading into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From here, she hoped to make her way past New Brunswick and Maine to New York, but she would have to stop at Cape Breton to refuel. But as she approached the island, her engine began to shudder and cut out, and 12 minutes from the airport, it died for good. She put down on what she thought was a solid surface, but it turned out to be a peat bog. The plane nosed over, and she was thrown into the windshield.

Starting point is 00:10:34 When a fisherman found her floundering in the mire, she hadn't slept in 40 hours. He took her to a telephone, and she called the airfield to call off a search. Because she hadn't reached New York, she'd considered that her bid had failed. But of course, she'd reached North America. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic from east to west and the first person to make a solo nonstop crossing in that direction. The next day, with a bandage on her forehead, she was flown to a civic reception in Halifax and from there to Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, where a rapturous crowd welcomed her. The following days were filled with interviews, lunch a rapturous crowd welcomed her. The following days were filled with interviews, luncheons, and dinners. She got a motorcade up Fifth Avenue,

Starting point is 00:11:09 Amelia Earhart said she'd done a splendid job, and Jim Mollison wired, thank God you saved my watch. But her joy was stopped by news that Tom Campbell Black was dead. He'd been taxiing to a takeoff position at Liverpool Airport on September 19th when an incoming RAF bomber had struck his plane. No one else had been injured, but he had been killed. Steaming back to England aboard the Queen Mary, she stood at the rail for hours, staring at the vastness of the ocean. She told a friend later that if she'd first crossed the Atlantic by sea, she'd never have dared to fly across it. After the flight, her life was anticlimactic. She was as poor as ever, and while her exploit had cemented her reputation as a pilot,

Starting point is 00:11:47 it brought no serious offers of work. When she couldn't find a fulfilling job in England, she returned to America in 1939. There, she completed a memoir, West with the Night, about her life in Africa and her flight across the ocean, and she divorced Markham and married an American writer and editor, Raoul Schumacher. When the book came out in 1942, it was acclaimed by critics, but it sold only moderately well, overshadowed by America's entry into World War II, and it quickly went out of print. In 1950, she returned to Kenya

Starting point is 00:12:15 without Schumacher, who eventually divorced her. In Africa, she trained horses in Kenya, South Africa, and Rhodesia, and won the Kenya Top Trainers Award five times, and the Kenya Derby six times. But she spent her money unwisely, and by the early 1980s was living in a cottage on the grounds of the Nairobi racecourse. There, in 1982, her life took a stunning final turn with a letter from an American restaurateur named George Guttekunst. He'd been reading the letters of Ernest Hemingway, and had been intrigued by a note that Hemingway had written to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, in 1942. It was about her book. It said, she has written so well and so marvelously well that I was simply ashamed of myself as a

Starting point is 00:12:56 writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pigpen. But this girl can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. He wrote, I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book. Guttekunst had tracked down a copy of the book himself and had loved it so well that he'd recommended it to North Point Press in Berkeley, which had secured the rights and would be republishing it in the spring. On its reappearance, the book was hailed as a lost masterpiece. It sold more than a million copies, boosted by a television documentary and by Sidney Pollack's 1985 film Out of Africa,

Starting point is 00:13:34 which is based on Isaac Denison's memoir of the British enclave in which both women had circulated. In the film, Markham is represented by a character named Felicity. This late success sustained Markham for the remaining years of her life. I have to add that it also raised some controversy as to the book's authorship. Some critics contended that it had really been written by Markham's third husband, Raoul Schumacher. The argument is that Markham was too poorly educated and too little read to have produced such impressive prose, and that allusions and idioms in the text would not have come to her naturally. I'm not going to settle that here, but biographer Mary Lovell has shown that Markham had submitted 18 chapters of the book before she'd even met Schumacher, and after the book's publication she'd continued to produce short stories and magazine pieces, whereas he published only three

Starting point is 00:14:19 stories in a very different style. Markham said, he helped me at the end. He was very good at that sort of thing, very clever, but I wrote the book myself while he was away. He wasn't even there. I will add that I don't think this charge would even come up if Markham had been a man. There are plenty of male writers, including Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, who had little education, and no one says that left them incapable of writing well. In the glow of this late success, Markham died in August 1986 in Nairobi Hospital of Pne of pneumonia following a broken hip. A service of Thanksgiving in London the following month marked the 50th anniversary of her flight. Her friend George Bathurst Norman said,

Starting point is 00:14:55 Around Beryl, life was never dull. Like a comet passing through the firmament, she lit up all around her. None who came into contact with her could fail to recognize the genius of a truly remarkable person. I like to think that the place where she is now is a happier and more interesting place because of her presence. Kwaheri Beryl, God bless you and Godspeed. Thank you. button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. And thanks so much to everyone who has sent us donations. If you'd like to provide more ongoing support for our show, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to some bonus materials, like outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link at our website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show. We really couldn't do this without you. The main story in episode 308 was about how Nicholas Winton helped to get hundreds of threatened children out of Czechoslovakia by

Starting point is 00:16:25 train in 1939. Jordan Barnes wrote, I have just listened to the latest episode on Sir Nicholas Winton and wanted to let you know about the reputation he and his brother have within the British fencing community. The Winton brothers were excellent fencers, and in 1938, Nicholas was chosen for the British fencing team. He had hoped to compete in the 1940 Olympics, but the games were cancelled on account of the war. However, in 1950, Nicholas and his younger brother Bobby organized a fencing competition to bring together communities from different regions of the country. The Winton Cup is now an annual competition held in their honor, and the prize trophy they donated is still in use to this day.

Starting point is 00:17:04 This year's competition was understandably cancelled, but otherwise it is the most popular team fencing competition nationwide. I will link a few pages for you to read at your leisure. So it's clear from what Jordan sent that Sir Nicholas and his brother Bobby are definitely known in the British fencing community. The British fencing website called Nicholas an extremely keen and well-decorated fencer, and the brothers are both remembered for establishing the Winton Cup, though it seems that fencing was even more of a lifelong passion for Bobby, who served for over 50 years on the executive committee of the British Amateur Fencing Association and thus significantly helped shape the sport. Still, it's an interesting little glimpse into a different side of Winton.

Starting point is 00:17:46 Yeah, this came up in my research, but I didn't have time to pursue it. But I didn't realize they were competing at such a distinguished level. Yeah. Fred Kearns wrote, Your podcast number 308 concerning Nicholas Winton interested me very much. I first became aware of this man by curiosity about his statue, which is on one of the platforms at Maidenhead Railway Station. I used to live in the area and travel through Maidenhead Station to visit customers in London. The whole business of rescuing children from Czechoslovakia is of particular interest to me, as my wife is Jewish. We both come from Ireland, from Belfast. Her family originated in Lithuania, and they were trying to get to America to escape the pogroms. This was in the late 19th century. The ship dropped them off in Belfast in Northern Ireland, telling the family

Starting point is 00:18:30 that this was America. As they knew no English, they knew no better. Almost penniless, they scavenged wood from crates used to bring tobacco to the Gallagher cigarette factory and set up a furniture business. They did very well at it, and by the middle of the 20th century, had a thriving business and were well-to-do. The other reason that this is of particular interest to me is that my wife, Sally Hyman, now runs a charity which houses refugees in Greece. I am the charity's secretary. We are a very small charity, and we are currently housing approximately 18 families. Over the years we have been operating, we have housed nearly 50 families.

Starting point is 00:19:04 Many of these have moved on and are now in various countries in Europe. One family is even in Ireland. I'm not telling you this in hopes of publicity, although if you did give a mention to Cribs International, that would be wonderful, but to explain my interest and to perhaps mention to people that this kind of work is still going on. Thanks for your wonderful and fascinating work. Long may it continue. So we'll have a link to the Cribs International website in the show notes for anyone who's interested. On their website, this organization calls itself a UK registered charity providing homes in Greece for pregnant refugee women and families with new babies.

Starting point is 00:19:51 And it is a good reminder that there are various groups with similar humanitarian aims to Nicholas Winton's. Yeah, it sort of carries on his legacy. As for the statue of Winton, it's of a man sitting on a bench near the railroad track, reading a large book about the children he saved and the trains they used. I'll have links in the show notes to a BBC article that has a photo of a 101-year-old Winton sitting next to the statue of himself on the bench, and to the Maidenhead Heritage Center website that also has a photo of the statue without the real Winton next to it, as well as one of a moving commemorative statue at the Prague main train station, depicting Winton carrying one child while standing near another and a large suitcase. Train stations are good locations for statues like that, not just because they're appropriate, but because it'll expose a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have heard about them.

Starting point is 00:20:27 Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I'd only thought about how it was appropriate to his legacy, but you're right. That way, many people are going to see it as they travel through. In episode 303, I discussed the Narcissus Snake Dens in Manitoba, Canada, that contain what's believed to be the largest concentration of snakes anywhere in the world. Rebecca Emanuel, listening from the St. Louis area, sent an email with the subject line, another futility closet coincidence. Only two days after I listened to episode 303, I drove past a U-Haul van with this graphic. Coincidence? Bader-Meinhof phenomenon? Either

Starting point is 00:21:02 way, I have never been so excited to see a giant picture of snakes. Unlike many others, I still have a daily commute. Thank you for providing fodder to enrich my brain during my drives. And Rebecca sent a link to the image she'd seen on a U-Haul moving van that will of course be in the show notes for anyone who's interested. It's a large and to me somewhat disturbing depiction of a number of snakes rearing up that says, emerging from winter dens, 150,000 red-sided garter snakes begin mating and feeding rituals. What drives one of the world's largest concentrations of vertebrate species to telescope in striking spectacle? Learn more about Canada's snake dens at uhaul.com. So it seems that what Rebecca saw was part of U-Haul's Super Graphics program that was started back in 1988 as America's and Canada's Moving Adventure.

Starting point is 00:21:53 Images representing each U.S. state and Canadian province were created for U-Haul trucks, while their trailers had images for some individual cities. These originally depicted something that was commonly associated with each place, such as Mount Rushmore for South Dakota and the Space Shuttle for Florida. In 1997, the Super Graphics Campaign changed to Venture Across America and Canada, which was intended to highlight less well-known facts or mysteries connected to the different locations, such as the Snake Dens in Manitoba. The information provided on the U-Haul site about the snake dens was actually surprisingly comprehensive, and although I had read a certain amount on the subject for episode 303, there was significant information that I hadn't seen before. For example, I had said in episode 303 that as the snakes emerge from the dens in the spring,

Starting point is 00:22:39 they form what are called mating balls, in which a female snake is surrounded by as many as 100 males trying to mate with her. The supergraphics information says that sometimes some of the male snakes exhibit female behaviors and release the same kind of pheromones that the females do, causing other males to create a mating ball around one of these, what the site calls female impersonators. A couple of researchers who have studied this behavior think that they've figured out why some of the male snakes do this, and it has to do with the very low body temperature that the snakes have when they first emerge from their brumation, or the reptilian version of hibernation. A low body temperature causes a snake to move more slowly, and as garter snakes don't

Starting point is 00:23:19 have any defenses against predators other than being able to move rapidly, a cold snake is more vulnerable to becoming dinner for a crow or other bird. A snake that can get a lot of other snakes to form a ball around him will have both increased protection from predators and a means of warming up more quickly. Researchers found that if they warmed up these female impersonators to at least 28 degrees, I'm presuming Celsius, then they stopped acting like females after three hours, while those with a body temperature of 10 degrees were still attracting male attention after five hours. So it's a way to keep warm.

Starting point is 00:23:53 It's a way to keep warm and to keep the birds off of you, right? If you've got 100 other snakes around you, you're a lot less likely to be eaten. That makes sense. It's a good behavior, but it makes me wonder why don't all the male snakes try doing it? There will be a link in the show notes for the main Super Graphics page for Venture Across America and Canada so that if you live in the U.S. or Canada, you can check out what Super Graphic was chosen for your state or province or territory.

Starting point is 00:24:17 Some of them can be a bit surprising until you read some of the text that accompanies them, like a giant squid for Newfoundland with the text, The first recorded encounter with the world's largest invertebrate took place off the coast of Newfoundland. What secrets of the deep were revealed with the discovery of the giant squid? Or a camel for the Yukon because apparently camels migrated from North American origins across a now submerged land. Or what looks like a zebra for Idaho because the Hagerman horse grazed Idaho's ancient savanna over three million years ago. Fossils indicate this zebra-like species continued to evolve until 10,000 years ago when all traces of the creature suddenly vanished.

Starting point is 00:24:59 America's first horse. Was it a zebra? Was it a horse? The answer is, spoiler alert, apparently they still don't know. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate how much we learn from our listeners. So if you have anything that you'd like to add, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And I still appreciate those pronunciation tips. I still appreciate those pronunciation tips. 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 try to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:25:41 This puzzle comes from Marie Nearing with some minor rewording by me. Today, newer cars are generally safer than ever before. But purchasing a new car caused the death of one man's mother-in-law. How? The purchasing of it caused her death. No, no, not that literally. The car caused her death? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:02 So did he? Yeah, all right. Would you call this an accident? Yes. He didn't intend to kill her. Correct. By buying a car. Correct.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Okay. Would you say she was killed by the car? No. Like run down or? No. No. Okay. Was it the expense of buying the car that somehow caused this? No.

Starting point is 00:26:27 Man bought a car. Man bought a new car. Are there other people involved? There are, but not in a way that you need to figure out. His wife is not involved. His wife actually was involved, but not in a way that's going to help you solve the puzzle. Sorry, I'm just being technically correct here. Nobody else needed to have been involved.

Starting point is 00:26:44 Let's go with that. Okay. It's just, this is a true story. So in the story, the wife was actually involved. Okay, so the mother-in-law died after the car was bought. Yes. Later in time. Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:56 So he goes and buys a car. Yes. Brings it home. Yes. And at some time after that, his mother-in-law died. Yes. And it wasn't directly related to the car. It wasn't killed by the car.

Starting point is 00:27:08 It wasn't killed by the car, but I would say it was directly related to the car. If he hadn't bought the car, she wouldn't have died. That is correct. Well, where do you go with that? I don't want to have to guess our cause of death because we'd be here a long time. Yeah, it might be not obvious.

Starting point is 00:27:26 I'm sorry. I asked you if it was an accident and you said... You would call it an accident. Yeah, it definitely wasn't deliberate. Yeah. Was the car traveling at the time of her death? Moving at the time of her death? I think actually at the time of her death it was not moving. But shortly before that it was?

Starting point is 00:27:44 Yes. Although that's not really relevant. It didn't need to have been moving. Oh. Wow. Okay. Could this have happened if he'd never driven the car?

Starting point is 00:28:02 If he had never driven the car? Yes. This still would have happened if he'd bought this car. Just bought it. Just bought it, drove it home, put it in the garage. Would she still have died? If he had never driven it, yes. Was the mother-in-law driving the car?

Starting point is 00:28:18 No, but his wife was with the mother-in-law as a passenger. Was his wife somehow confused into thinking this was not the new car and she was familiar with another car, something like that? No. But if he had never bought this car, if they still had his old car, presumably his mother-in-law would not have died. Even if the same events happened, like the wife drove the mother-in-law somewhere where they were going?

Starting point is 00:28:40 Correct. The car got into an accident? No. Or some mishap? No. No. Did the mother-in-law die into an accident? No. Or some mishap? No. No. Did the mother-in-law die in the car? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:47 And the car itself was fine, would have looked fine to all appearances. Was there some, I don't know, like a gas leak or something in the car? Something along those lines. Some defect in the car? No, you wouldn't say a defect in the car. Some safety measure? You wouldn't say a safety measure, but... Something, some mishap happened in the car.

Starting point is 00:29:10 Some mishap happened in the car, but you wouldn't blame the car for it. Was she doing something unwise herself? The mother-in-law? No. No. Right. She was presumably just sitting in the passenger seat being driven. Is this the fact, so it was a new car, like a late model car.

Starting point is 00:29:36 Yes. Some recently made car. Yes. So it has maybe some feature that's found in new cars as opposed to older ones? Presumably, yeah. It would be hard to guess what the specific feature is, though, but you were kind of on the right track with a gas leak, only it wasn't a gas leak in the car.

Starting point is 00:29:52 The car itself wasn't at fault. Nothing was wrong with the car. But it wasn't something she did. It was not something she did, no. And it's not something attributable to the car. It's not something attributable to the car. The man's occupation is actually relevant, although it might be hard to guess what it is,

Starting point is 00:30:10 but it's relevant to the puzzle. And does that have to do with the make of the car? No. He didn't buy the car for work. He did buy the car to use in his job, and that directly contributed to his mother-in-law's death. Okay. So his job involves traveling.

Starting point is 00:30:28 His job does involve traveling. I'll see if this helps you. I know this is kind of a weird puzzle, but he was a delivery man for Dippin' Dots, which is a kind of ice cream snack. So he had to transport those around in his car. I don't know if that's going to help you or not. His mother-in-law died. Yes. Okay, so was there something in the car that was designed to keep these cold?

Starting point is 00:30:56 Yes. And so is that related to what killed her? Yes, yes. He had coolers full of dry ice in the car, but how does that relate to a newer car being the problem? Was it an electric car? No. A newer car.

Starting point is 00:31:16 Something to do with the power. No. And you say it's nothing to do with safety measures in the car. Right, right. So there are coolers, I guess, electrically powered coolers in the car. No, they're just coolers full of dry ice. Oh, right. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:33 I should just tell you, this is too hard to guess. It's just that the new car had better sealing. It was better sealed, better insulated. And the dry ice is toxic. See, so this actually happened in Washington State in 2018. Because dry ice turns into it's a solid form of carbon dioxide, and it turns into carbon dioxide gas, which in an enclosed space is toxic as it displaces oxygen. And the car was so well sealed.

Starting point is 00:31:59 It was so well sealed for it because of the older models were just more leaky and less insulated. But her daughter wasn't. Yeah, the man actually found the wife who was driving, both the wife and the mother-in-law, unconscious and got help for them. And the older woman unfortunately died. And the county sheriff's spokesman said, quote, he recently got a new car, the newer car probably had better sealing. So this had never happened in his old car. That's terrible. So thanks to Marie for that unfortunately fatal puzzle,

Starting point is 00:32:27 but maybe one that will serve as a useful warning to someone else. Don't keep dry ice in your car. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:57 While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 11,000 bite-sized distractions. Check out the Futility Closet store, Check out the Futility Closet 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 futilitycloset.com. All our music was written and performed by Greg's incredible brother, Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 315-Beryl Markham's Unconventional Life

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