Futility Closet - 323-The Blind Traveler

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 a devoted Yorick to a forlorn Struthiomimus. This is episode 323. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. When a mysterious illness blinded him at age 25, British naval officer James Holman took up a new pursuit, travel.

Starting point is 00:00:34 For the next 40 years, he roamed the world alone, describing his adventures in a series of popular books. In today's show, we'll describe Holman's remarkable career and his unique perspective on his experiences. We'll also remember some separating trains and puzzle over an oddly drawn battle plan. From his earliest youth, James Holman had felt the urge to travel, as he put it, to explore distant regions, to trace the variety exhibited by mankind under different influences of different climates, customs, and law. Born to an Exeter apothecary in 1786, he'd been intended for a genteel existence as an Anglican

Starting point is 00:01:19 cleric, but a scandal at his school led his parents to withdraw him and set him on a more welcome course in the Royal Navy. After a year and a half at a naval prepar his school led his parents to withdraw him and set him on a more welcome course in the Royal Navy. After a year and a half at a naval preparatory school, he enlisted three weeks after his twelfth birthday and boarded the Royal George on December 7, 1798. By then his ambition had expanded. He wrote, I felt an irresistible impulse to become acquainted with as many parts of the world as my professional avocations would permit, and I was determined not to rest satisfied until I had completed the circumnavigation of the globe. His career started promisingly, but after several years aboard ship he began to develop a

Starting point is 00:01:56 deep ache in his joints, which was diagnosed as rheumatism due to the cold and wet. It's not clear what the illness really was, but it forced him out of the Navy at age 24, and a year later, to his great dismay, it blinded him. He consulted many doctors, but none could help. The Navy declared him unfit to serve and put him on half pay. His parents couldn't support him as they were still raising three younger siblings. He wrote later, The certainty that my case was beyond remedy determined me to seek, in some pursuit adapted to my new state of existence, a congenial field of employment and consolation. His first goal was to become self-sufficient. He taught himself to navigate with a walking stick and found he could distinguish his surroundings by the quality of its taps,

Starting point is 00:02:40 and he learned to use a noctigraph, a device designed to permit writing in the dark by imposing guides to keep each line straight. He was able to join a charitable organization called the Naval Knights that supported seven naval officers at Windsor Castle. That gave him shelter and, with his naval pay, just enough money to live on. But where most of the knights were elderly or disabled, Holman was 26 years old and restless. He requested leave, first to attend medical lectures at the University of Edinburgh, and then, on the advice of his doctors, to visit the Mediterranean, which they hoped might alleviate his pain.

Starting point is 00:03:16 The doctors had probably imagined he would sail there, but Holman was too poor to do so, nor could he afford to hire a nurse or pay a relative to come with him. But he was eager to go and resolved to travel overland across France using public transportation. He crossed the Channel on his 32nd birthday, October 15, 1819, and set off, poor and alone, into a country whose language he did not speak. He wrote, Behold me then, in France, surrounded by a people, to me strange, invisible, and incomprehensible, separated from every living being who could be supposed to take the least

Starting point is 00:03:51 interest in my welfare or even existence. He found he liked this. It satisfied his thirst for collecting information, it gave him a purpose, and it distracted him from his pain. And it threw him in among real people, overcoming difficulties and learning the language, rather than just surveying the country from familiar ships and ports as other travelers did. On the road from Bordeaux to Toulouse, he even took exercise by tying a cord to the coach and walking behind it. He wrote, I then followed in this way on foot for several miles, to the no small amusement of the villagers, who laughed heartily and even shouted after me. He spent the winter in Toulouse and arrived at the coast only the following summer. From there,

Starting point is 00:04:30 he considered returning to Windsor Castle, but by now he'd tasted enough of the unknown to want to keep going. He applied for an extension of his leave and went on to Nice, then Genoa, gaining confidence with every mile. At Rome, he visited Trajan's Pillar, the Palatine Hill, the Tarpeian Rock, and Monte Testaccio on a single day, exhausting his guide. The sights might be denied to him, but he, as well as anyone, could enjoy the sounds, the texture of the reconstructed monuments, and the imagined splendor of the past. At Naples, he climbed Vesuvius, which was then threatening to erupt, and reunited with an old naval shipmate, in whose company he now traveled north. By the time they reached Florence, Holman needed a new passport. He observed that the Rhine, then passed from Cologne through Utrecht to Amsterdam. From here, Holman finally returned home while his friend headed north.

Starting point is 00:05:30 When Holman reached England, he'd visited six countries in 700 days. He wrote up his adventures using paid scribes and published it in 1822. The journey had been such a great success that he began to think seriously about his vow to circle the world. Most circumnavigators in those days would choose to head west because it was easier to get civilian transport in that direction. That would mean going first to North America and then finding some combination of ships to go around Cape Horn into the Pacific, and then probably to the penal colony at New South Wales, perhaps returning to England aboard a prison transport ship. That would be expensive, and Holman's income was still fixed at 84 pounds a year, less than a sixth the salary of a government clerk. But he thought he might be able to accomplish his goal by heading east. By traveling overland through imperial Russia, he could get

Starting point is 00:06:19 almost a third of the way around the world, making his way in carts and sledges as the peasants did. He could minimize expenses by lodging cheaply and foregoing guides and translators, trusting himself to learn the necessary languages as he had in Europe. It might take two years to reach the Pacific coast, but from there he could hitch a ride on a whaler to the Sandwich Islands, then find another ship to take him into the Atlantic. He could arrange to pick up his accumulated back pay somewhere in the Americas and then explore South America and Africa before heading home. The whole trip might take five or six years, but it would be cheaper than a conventional circumnavigation because he'd

Starting point is 00:06:53 be spending most of his time among natives rather than in expensive ships and ports. He kept this plan largely secret to prevent well-meaning friends from trying to talk him out of it. On July 19, 1822, he set out on a merchant schooner, ostensibly to visit his friend from Naples, who, as it happened, was now living in St. Petersburg, the Russian capital. There he learned as much as he could about the country and spent the winter trying to acclimate himself to the cold. In the spring, he departed, ostensibly to visit Moscow, but in fact setting out on a vast odyssey across the Russian interior, much of it in an open wagon accompanied by an incomprehensible Tartar postillion. They reached Siberia by midsummer and came at last to Irkutsk, a metropolis of 15,000

Starting point is 00:07:35 people. From here, Holman hoped he might slip unnoticed through China or set out for Kamchatka and the coast, where he could find an eastbound whaler. But when he mentioned these plans to the governor general of eastern Siberia, he was told he would not be allowed to leave Russia in that direction. In fact, the Tsar dispatched an escort to accompany Holman all the way back to the Austrian frontier, where he was handed his passport. None of this was ever explained. The British ambassador in Vienna thought the Russians must have had something to hide. Holman returned to England on June 20, 1824, two years and a day after his departure. He found that his first book had sold well, and in 1825 he published his account of his Russian travels, which he was permitted to dedicate to the king himself. That generated enough royalties to fund Holman's next trip, and he

Starting point is 00:08:21 embarked now on a virtual riot of travel. As before, he went alone and carried only enough money to travel as the locals did, in carriages and carts, on horseback and on foot. He made it a rule never to retrace his steps if he could help it. He set out first with the explorer William Owen to establish a base in West Africa from which to combat the slave trade. After a year there, he hitched a ride on a Dutch galliot bound for Brazil, where he joined an inspection tour of a gold mine in the northern interior. From Rio, he took a Royal Navy ship to Cape Town, where he taught himself to ride a horse in order to visit the interior of southern Africa. He went on to Mauritius, Zanzibar, and Ceylon, crossed the

Starting point is 00:09:00 Bay of Bengal to India, and from Calcutta took the last commercial ship to China, where he learned Cantonese by ear. Down then to Van Diemen's Land, south of Australia, then to Sydney, and finally across the Pacific and around the Horn. Approaching England, somewhere in the Atlantic in 1832, he completed his circumnavigation of the world. Back at Windsor, he began dictating five years of adventures. The first two volumes appeared in 1834, and the final two the following year. Even that didn't sate him. In 1844, he was off again, through Malta, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Amman, Damascus, Montenegro, Bosnia, Bucharest, Transylvania, Hungary,

Starting point is 00:09:39 Austria, and France, returning to England only when he ran out of money. Austria, and France, returning to England only when he ran out of money. By October 1846, he had visited every inhabited continent and at least 200 distinct cultures. The author Jason Roberts calls Holman the most prolific traveler in history before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Where Marco Polo had traveled 14,000 miles, Holman covered 250,000. The moon is 240,000 miles away. When the journal Zoology compiled a list of all the major population centers Holman visited, it covered four pages. And he did all this traveling alone, mostly on foot and horseback, blind, poor, and with no prior command of the languages. One journalist wrote, he traversed the great globe itself more thoroughly than any other

Starting point is 00:10:23 traveler that ever existed and surveyed its manifold parts as perfectly as, if not more than, the most intelligent and clear-sighted of his predecessors. Strangers tended to be struck at first by the prospect of a blind man traveling alone, but Holman asked whether that should really be so surprising. All travelers have to make sense of unfamiliar places, cultures, and languages using the abilities they have. Sight is a help to them, but it's, cultures, and languages using the abilities they have. Sight is a help to them, but it's not everything, and much of what they learn comes from other people. He wrote, I am constantly asked, what is the use of traveling to one who cannot see? I answer, does every traveler see all that he describes?

Starting point is 00:10:57 And is not every traveler obliged to depend upon others for a great proportion of the information he collects? In fact, he felt, his blindness may have given him an advantage over sighted travelers who tended to rely on immediate impressions. He wrote, I am compelled to adopt a more rigid and less suspicious course of inquiry, and to investigate analytically, by a train of patient examination, suggestions and deductions which other travelers dismiss at first sight, so that, freed from the hazard of being misled by appearances, I am the less likely to adopt hasty and erroneous conclusions. He noticed details that others would have missed. In St. Petersburg, he detected little tobacco smoke, heard no whistling,

Starting point is 00:11:36 and reported a slight unevenness in the flagstone sidewalks. He found he was immune to claustrophobia and vertigo, descending happily into Brazilian gold mines and proposing to visit even the Copper Sphere atop St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. He learned to understand his surroundings through echolocation, tapping his cane before him and listening to the sound that resulted. In Africa, he judged his environment by the quality of his horse's hoofbeats, and hunting elephants in Ceylon, he remarked to his companions on a stand of coconut trees that he could sense but not see. He was not alone in this ability. In 1749, Denis Diderot had written of a blind friend who could distinguish an open street from a cul-de-sac. And in 2012, I wrote about American teenager Ben Underwood, who learned to perceive his surroundings by clicking his tongue and listening to the sound that resulted. Underwood said, I'm not blind, I just can't see. Holman's other senses served him well. In Moscow,

Starting point is 00:12:28 he could tell by touching it that the crack in the Kremlin's Tsar bell had been caused by a flaw in casting rather than in a fall, as the official story held. In the Vatican Museum, he could admire the statues by feeling them when the guards' backs were turned, and in climbing Mount Vesuvius, he refused to ride a mule saying, I see things better with my feet. Indeed, his other senses could combine to give him an impression that sighted readers could not share. After climbing a mountain at dawn, he wrote, we reached the summit just before the sun began to break, and a splendid scene opened upon us. The insulated mountains, rising up into a peaked cone of 7,420 feet above the level of the sea, flanked on one side by lofty

Starting point is 00:13:06 ranges and on the other by a champagne country, stretching to the shore that formed the margin of an immense expanse of ocean, I could not see this glorious sight with the visual orbs, but I turned towards it with indescribable enthusiasm. I stood upon the summit of the peak and felt all its beauties rushing into my very heart of hearts. Elsewhere he wrote, As he advanced in years, Holman continued to travel, exploring Great Britain and going occasionally to Paris, but his journeys grew more circumscribed as his health and finances began to fail. He kept writing even as his works fell out of print, and he finished his last book, Holman's Narratives of His Travels, less than a week before his death in 1857 at age 70.

Starting point is 00:14:01 That book was never published, and as Holman's memory receded, his artifacts were discarded and scattered, and his manuscripts lost and destroyed. In fact, it's astounding how thoroughly James Holman has been forgotten. At his death, his entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica spanned several pages. By 1910, it had dwindled to a paragraph, and by 1960, it was gone. His travels had been real, and his first-hand reports of them had been consistently accurate, but in hindsight it was too easy to dismiss him as a novelty. That's unfair to Holman, but it can't erase the importance of his accomplishments or their personal meaning to himself, as he put it, to enter into the business of life and spend his

Starting point is 00:14:39 days in communion with the world and its multiplying delights. In episode 313, we had an extended follow-up on dividing trains, which had been mentioned in episode 307, trains that divide into usually two sections to go to different destinations. A listener had let us know that contrary to how it had sounded to us in episode 307, the trains don't actually split while in motion, but rather at a station, which sounded like a much better idea. However, several of our listeners let us know that actually there did used to be trains that split while in motion. Here's a sample of some of the email we received. Nick Moffitt wrote, Hello, once again, Sharon and Greg. In episode 313, Sharon read a large amount of listener mail about dividing trains around the world,

Starting point is 00:15:35 but she prefaced this section by clarifying that the trains divided at stations rather than while in motion. However, the UK pioneered the practice of slip coaches, which were passenger carriages at the ends of trains which featured a cab and operator who could disengage the slip to decouple the train and operate a brake to bring the carriage smoothly into a local station. Slip coaches were only used for down services, a term referring to travel away from a major metropolitan area such as London. Steam locomotives took a long time to accelerate from a dead stop, so there was an advantage to letting the bulk of the train maintain running speed and slowing only a little for the slip coach to disengage. John Stoven wrote,

Starting point is 00:16:15 Hi again Sharon and Greg. The last time I wrote to you was about feral wallabies in the UK, but this is on a very different subject, dividing trains. In this week's episode 313, Sharon said your correspondent Neil deCarter-Rett, said that the trains don't split while in motion. While this is true today, it has not always been the case. From the early days of the British Railway Network, the slipcoach was a fairly common sight. This was a coach that was designed to be dropped off the back of an express train while the train was traveling at full speed. The slipcoach would have a mechanism to detach itself from the main train and an independent braking system. There

Starting point is 00:16:49 would be a specially trained guard, or conductor for American listeners, who would be responsible for detaching the coach at some distance from the destination station and then safely stopping it. The coach could then be attached to another train to take the passengers along a local branch line without having to delay the main express train. The practice gradually died out after World War II and the last slip coach operated in 1960 on a service from London Paddington to Bicester. In these safety-conscious days, the whole idea of slip coaches seems absurdly dangerous. And Tom Race wrote, Hail the Rosses as a further follow-up to a follow-up to a follow-up. In the discussion And Tom Race wrote, were equipped with brakes but no engine, and could be decoupled or slipped in transit. While most of the train steamed through a local station, the slipped coach would be brought to a halt by an onboard operator.

Starting point is 00:17:51 As you can imagine, this was an operationally tricky process. The slip coaches needed to be diverted off the main line, so the track points needed to be moved after the main train had gone past, but before the coaches coasted to the station. the main train had gone past, but before the coaches coasted to the station. Each slip coach required extra staff on board to operate, and I imagine a mistimed slip would cause havoc on the rail system. Wikipedia has an article which says that this practice ended in the U.S. after an accident in 1883, phew, no recorded fatalities, and continued in England until 1960. This means it must have been even more important to get in the right coach on departure. When I imagine this, I always seem to see a wacky races scenario with Dick dastardly stuck on the slipped carriage as Mutley steams off into the distance. So on top of never having

Starting point is 00:18:36 heard of dividing trains, I hadn't heard of slipcoaches either. And from what I saw on this topic, it seems that while slipcoaches were used some in Ireland and the U.S., their longest and most extensive use was in Britain. They were designed to be a more efficient way to service local stations without requiring the entire train to stop. And once uncoupled from the rest of the train, a slipcoach would use its momentum to travel to the station where a guard would break to stop at the platform. The first use of slipcoaches seems to have been in Britain in 1858. They were very popular there before World War I with up to 100 services a day, but their use began to decline after the war with changing train technologies and general reductions in train services and operating budgets,

Starting point is 00:19:19 given the high per-passenger cost of operating slipcoaches. And as Tom noted, they were a bit tricky to operate, as for example, the carriage needed to be released at just the right time and they required specially trained extra staff. They would have to be coupled with a new stationary train as they couldn't be coupled on the go or make a return trip on their own, and they could only directly service one local station, so passengers who wanted to go farther down a branch line would have to wait for another train. As the use of slipcoaches died out in many places, they were replaced with our friends, the dividing trains. I was trying to put my finger on why that sounds

Starting point is 00:19:54 so scary. And that's what it is. They have to redirect it after it started coasting to get it to go to the local platform. Because I was thinking, well, it's just coasting. There's a man with a brake aboard. Right, but if you decouple it too soon, it won't make it all the way to the station, and it doesn't have its own engine, so it's just stuck on the tracks now. Yeah, no, I see that. That could be a problem, too. But that's not really dangerous. I mean,

Starting point is 00:20:17 it can't accelerate, but I can't think when it would need to. I suppose if it was stuck on the tracks, I mean, I suppose somebody would notice and keep another train from hitting it or something. There's something about the idea of it just hurtling along on the tracks, I mean, I suppose somebody would notice and keep another train from hitting it or something. There's something about the idea of it just hurtling along on its own. You can't control a regular train any better than that. And you can stop this one a lot faster. Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in about slip coaches and sent such helpful links. And for those who want to learn more about them, we'll have links in the show notes to a video on slipcoaches in general, as well as a film taken of the last

Starting point is 00:20:49 slipcoach service from 1960, and a detailed article explaining the mechanism of slipcoaches with photos and drawings from a 1935 article in Railway Wonders of the World. And for those who are really taken with the idea of slipcoaches, Reto Fisher, a self-proclaimed long-time listener, first-time caller slash writer from London, UK, wrote on this topic and said, you can even have a holiday in a now stationary one. And so this appears to be the only preserved slipcoach from 1892, which has been restored as a two-bedroom rental unit in the Cornish countryside. as a two-bedroom rental unit in the Cornish countryside. The description notes that because of the unusual nature of slipcoaches, this carriage has first, second, and two third-class compartments, as well as a guards room, each with its own special character.

Starting point is 00:21:38 And that probably would be a fun little vacation spot for a real train aficionado. Yeah, yeah, it really would. On some other follow-up to dividing trains, in his email, John also wrote, you also said something about a train that divided twice at Edinburgh and Waverley stations. Edinburgh-Waverley is actually one station, the main station for Edinburgh on the East Coast main line. I'm sure many other UK listeners will also point this out to you. So I had misunderstood part of a table that I saw on dividing trains, not knowing that Edinburgh Waverley was the name of one station and seeing that the train split into three sections. So what I should have said was that this train leaves London and splits in

Starting point is 00:22:14 Edinburgh Waverley, with different sections ending up in Inverness, Aberdeen, and Fort William. And actually only a couple of listeners wrote in to explain that, so I'm glad that John did mention it. Robert Forbes wrote, I don't know the odds of this, but I listened to episode 313 where you discussed listener mail about splitting trains while sitting on a train that was being split at that moment. The Empire Builder runs from Chicago to Seattle and Portland, splitting in Spokane, Washington. The front half goes to Seattle and the rear half to Portland. I'm literally sitting

Starting point is 00:22:45 on the train in Spokane as I write this. By the way, when boarding, they ask where you're headed and then tell you what car to sit in. And lastly, Alexander Chirkovich wrote, Dear Sharon and Greg, I know there's been a lot of mail regarding your scandalous unfamiliarity with the split train problem, but I'll just throw my hat in the ring and say I've got the most splitting train here for the win. In the attachment, you'll find a picture of the departing train's timetable of Nuremberg main station, and you don't have to know the German language to see that this train, departing at 19.38 every day, splits in four, beginning with two sections separating at the first stop and the other two splitting up at the fourth stop, beginning with two sections separating at the first stop and the other two splitting up at the fourth stop,

Starting point is 00:23:27 with the first two also later separating. Boy, is this train able to efficiently separate the experienced commuter from the casual train rider. As you surely can imagine, there's all sorts of bedazzlement visible on the platform before departure and all sorts of rearranging happening on its first subsequent stop. I can imagine the rail personnel secretly rolling their eyes when learning of their assignment to this train service, but I must say they remain friendly at all times, even as they have to explain to people for the 30th time which section to board, or that they're in the wrong car.

Starting point is 00:23:56 All the best to you for your next train ride in Europe someday, once all our lives normalize a bit. And we'll have a copy of the timetable that Alexander sent in the show notes for anyone who wants to see that for the most splitting train for the win. Or if anyone knows of one that splits into more than four sections, please do let us know. It sounds efficient and nerve wracking. Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in on this topic. As usual, I'm sorry that I couldn't fit everyone's email on the show, but I really did appreciate the different information and links that everybody sent. So please do keep sending us your follow-ups and comments to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:24:40 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and we're going to see if he can work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Marie Nearing. A man sketches a battle plan with his non-dominant left hand. Why? A battle plan?

Starting point is 00:25:00 Yeah. Is this true? Yeah. Non-dominant left hand. Does it matter that it's his left hand that's non-dominant? No, he just uses his non-dominant hand. So he's right-handed. Yes.

Starting point is 00:25:10 Okay, so is this to disguise, to make it harder to identify the plan if someone, say, intercepts it somehow? No. You know, like if you try to write with your left hand, with your non-dominant hand. It doesn't come out as neatly. Right, but that's not the point. To try to disguise it somehow? Yeah, so it wouldn't be traceable back to him by his right hand.

Starting point is 00:25:30 Oh, I see, no, yeah. No, that's not it. Okay. Non-dominant hand. Is his dominant hand free? Yes. Oh, that's a good thought. That would be a very simple puzzle.

Starting point is 00:25:41 That's a very good thought, yes. Yes, they've tied his right hand behind his back. Okay. Okay. Would it help me to know when this happened? No. Or who or where? No.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Okay. Was the plan realized? Did the battle take place? That's hard to answer. Wow. I'm going to have trouble answering that question as it's worded. Is this fiction? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:09 Oh, okay. A fictional man. All I know about him is he's a man. I didn't say the man was fictional. The battle plan is fictional. In a matter of speaking. Was the man writing fiction? Was he inventing this?

Starting point is 00:26:29 Sort of. Like he didn't expect an actual battle, real battle to take place? Correct. Was he writing fiction? I'm picturing like, I don't know, a fantasy novel or something where he's imagining a battle.

Starting point is 00:26:42 I see. No, he was not writing fiction. Was someone else? Let's say yes. And this battle plan would take place within the fictional world that someone's creating? Yes. Is this something I know or that the listeners would know, like the actual thing? You do know the actual thing.

Starting point is 00:26:58 I mean, I don't know that you know this piece of trivia about it, but you have heard of the thing. Okay. By battle plan, I'm picturing like a map, or is this something? Yes. Okay. This is something drawn. Not something that's written in text.

Starting point is 00:27:08 Something drawn, yeah. Mostly drawn with a little bit of writing on it. Was this plan published eventually? I would say no. Okay. So it wasn't intended to accompany some story in a published work. Correct. So he was just working out what would happen in the battle.

Starting point is 00:27:26 No. They need it for another reason. Does it have to do with, I don't know, some dramatization, like film or? Yes. Oh, all right.

Starting point is 00:27:36 So was this to help sort of choreograph the battle on, is it a movie? It is a movie. On a screen, like so they just have to sit down and work out what's going to happen, technically?

Starting point is 00:27:45 No. They needed it for another purpose. And he needed to do it with his left hand to fulfill the purpose. Okay. But ultimately, it was being done for that reason. It was being done to go in a movie, as part of a movie. I keep being tempted to guess what the movie is, but I probably shouldn't spend time doing that because it's not going to help. No, there's a zillion movies.

Starting point is 00:28:03 I'm being tempted to guess what the movie is, but I probably shouldn't spend time doing that because it's not going to help. No, there's a zillion movies. I'll tell you it was the movie Home Alone. Well, I want to say then that it was that the kid was meant to have been the one to have done it, and so you wanted it to represent, to look like a child had done it. That's exactly right. Oh, is it? That's exactly right. Oh, is it? That's exactly right. In order to make eight-year-old Kevin's battle plan against the burglars in the movie Home Alone look like it was drawn by a child, John Mutu, the production designer, drew it with his left hand. And there is a picture of Kevin's

Starting point is 00:28:38 battle plan at the link that we'll have in the show notes in case anyone wants to see it. So thanks so much to Marie for that puzzle in which nobody did die, if I remember the movie correctly, although the bad guys did get pretty much beaten up by Kevin. If you have a puzzle you'd like to send in to us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our amazing listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a Thank you. and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by my phenomenal brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 323-The Blind Traveler

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