Futility Closet - 329-The Cock Lane Ghost

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 map of itself to an automotive horse. This is episode 329. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1759, ghostly rapping started up in the house of a parish clerk in London. In the months that followed, they would incite a scandal against one man, an accusation from beyond the grave. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Cock Lane Ghost, an enduring portrait of superstition and justice.

Starting point is 00:00:46 story of the Cock Lane Ghost, an enduring portrait of superstition and justice. We'll also see what you can get hit with at a sporting event and puzzle over some portentous soccer fields. In October 1759, a clerk showed a genteel couple to a pew in St. Sepulchre's, a parish church in the city of London. After the service, they introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. William Kent and mentioned they were in search of lodgings. As it happened, the clerk had a room available in his house in Cock Lane, behind the church. They went to see it and quickly came to terms. The clerk, Richard Parsons, had a wife and two daughters, the eldest of whom, Elizabeth, was about 10 years old. The Kents were expecting a baby, but were not, it turned out, actually married. Fanny was the

Starting point is 00:01:30 sister of Kent's former wife, Elizabeth, who had died in childbirth. The law held that they could not marry, but they regarded one another as man and wife. Everyone got along agreeably enough, and shortly after moving in, Kent lent Parsons 12 guineas, with the understanding that Parsons would repay him a guinea a month. But presently, some odd things began to happen in the house. During a period when Kent was out of London on business, Fanny heard violent noises in the night. Mrs. Parsons couldn't account for this at first, but then recalled that their neighbor was a shoemaker. Perhaps he had been working late. Nothing unusual happened for another day or two, but on the following Sunday, the noise broke out again, and so loudly that Fanny jumped out of bed and called to Mrs. Parsons,

Starting point is 00:02:13 Pray, does your shoemaker work so hard on Sunday nights, too? He didn't. There seemed to be no accounting for the sounds. There was no time to solve the mystery. As Fanny's due date approached, she and Kent planned to take a new house in Clerkenwell to prepare for the coming birth. This was perhaps just as well. Relations had soured between Kent and Parsons, who had failed to repay the loan. Impatient to resolve the matter, Kent had even gone to his attorney. January 25th, when Fanny awoke with an acute pain in her back. The doctor at first diagnosed an eruptive fever, but the following day her symptoms pointed to smallpox. She was treated for four or five days, and as the news of her illness spread through the neighborhood, Parsons let it be known bitterly that she and Kent were not married. Some believed that her illness was a visitation of God. Meanwhile, in Cock Lane, the noises had started up again, and the mystery took a dramatic turn one evening when Richard Parsons was out. A local publican named James Franzen was

Starting point is 00:03:11 visiting with Mrs. Parsons and her daughter when noises began to be heard here and there around the room, sounding like knuckles knocking against the wainscot. They told Franzen that these now occurred every night. Franzen stood up to go, and as he opened the kitchen door, something in white, seemingly in a sheet, shot by him and up the stairs. Frightened as he was, he would have followed the shape, but Elizabeth shut the door and warned him not to. He went home and was sitting, shaken by his kitchen fire, when there was a knock at his door, and Parsons appeared in a terrible state of fright.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Parsons said, Give me the largest glass of brandy you have. Franzen said, why, what's the matter? And Parsons said, oh, Franzen, as I was going into my house just now, I saw the ghost. Franzen said, and so did I, and have been greatly frightened ever since. Bless me, what can be the meaning of it? It is very unaccountable. Parsons told him that the ghost could not be Fanny's, since she was still alive. He said it must be that of Fanny's departed sister, Elizabeth, William Kent's former wife, who had died in childbirth. If that was so, then the two sisters were soon reunited. Fanny Lines died on the evening of February 2nd, 1760. Kent arranged for her burial, notified her family, laid her to rest in the vaults of St. John's, Clerkenwell, and set about rebuilding his life. He set up a new business as a stockbroker, married a new wife in 1761, and prepared to go into partnership with her brother. But at Richard Parsons' house, the mysterious noises continued.

Starting point is 00:04:35 The neighbors all knew about them now. Several had heard them, and they'd driven away another lodger. Parsons called in a carpenter to take down the wainscotting, but that revealed nothing. He also approached John Moore, an assistant preacher at St. Sepulchre's, who heard the noises for himself one night and became deeply involved in the mystery. Since Elizabeth's ghost had arrived when Fanny was on her deathbed, it was decided that the present ghost must be that of Fanny herself, and that the two sisters had information to impart and would not lie quietly until it had been understood. John Moore and Richard Parsons began to communicate with the ghost through a system of

Starting point is 00:05:09 knocks. In response to a question, the ghost would knock once for yes and twice for no, and would indicate its displeasure by a kind of scratching. It had become associated with the girl Elizabeth, following her around the house and making its presence known, especially at night when she and her sister had gone to bed. The ghost revealed that it had returned to Earth to expose a murderer. The white shade that James Franzen had seen was the ghost of Elizabeth Kent, who had been killed by her husband William. She had come to warn her sister Fanny that she was about to suffer the same fate,

Starting point is 00:05:40 but she'd been too late. Kent had added poison to a restorative that Fanny had been given a few hours before she died, and now Fanny's spirit had returned from the grave to seek justice. John Moore mistrusted Kent because Kent had pursued Parsons so aggressively for a small debt, and because Fanny's sister Anne claimed that Kent had screwed down the coffin lid, perhaps to hide the evidence that Fanny had not died of smallpox. Moore called in the Reverend Thomas Broughton, who visited the ghost on January 5th and came away convinced, unable to locate the source of the knocks that answered his questions. Soon stories began to appear in the

Starting point is 00:06:15 public ledger describing the ghost and accusing Kent, who was greatly upset to find himself publicly arraigned of murder by a ghost. He went to Moore, who encouraged him to hear the knockings himself. So that night, William Kent found himself attending a seance in Cock Lane. The procedure by now was well established. Elizabeth was put to bed with her sister in a small bedroom on the upper floor of the Parsons' house, the bed placed in the center of the room so that spectators could surround it. An elderly servant named Mary Fraser ran around the room crying, Fanny, Fanny, why don't you come? Do come. Pray, Fanny, come. Dear Fanny, come. When the ghost registered its arrival by knocking, Moore began to put questions, reminding the assembly that one

Starting point is 00:06:56 knock meant yes and two, no. Are you the wife of Mr. Kent? Two knocks. Did you die naturally? Two knocks. By poison? One knock. Did any person other than Mr. Kent administer it? Two knocks. They established that the poison had been given in the restorative and asked, how long did you live after receiving it? The ghost knocked three times, presumably once for each hour. Kent had now heard himself being charged openly by a ghost of the murder of Fanny Lines. Someone said, Kent asked this ghost if you shall be hanged. He did and was answered with a single knock.

Starting point is 00:07:32 Kent said, But nothing he could say could repel the charges, and now both his reputation and perhaps his life were in danger. Unfortunately for him, word was spreading widely, and the seances were drawing larger and larger crowds. It was found that the ghost would accompany Elizabeth Parsons wherever she went. On January 14th, she was moved to the house of a Mr. Bray in the neighborhood and put to bed with a servant, and the knocks continued there. When two noblemen witnessed this, the story was taken up in a wider range of publications,

Starting point is 00:08:05 and in the face of this growing audience, the ghost was now committed to performing. The charges against Kent could not be withdrawn. After a few days at Mr. Bray's, the girl was returned to her father's, and Kent attended another seance on January 18th. There, the ghost reiterated its charge that he had poisoned Fanny Lines and ought to be arrested. The charge was dramatic, but it still amounted to spectral hearsay. Kent had no way to clear his name, but neither could Moore or Parsons bring their charges home. They needed independent evidence to confirm the ghost's account. For that, Moore turned to Fanny's former servant, Esther Carlyle, who was called Carrots

Starting point is 00:08:40 for her red hair. Moore explained that Fanny's ghost said that she had been poisoned, and further, that she had told Carrots about the poisoning a short time before her death. Carrots immediately objected that Fanny had been unable to speak for four days before she died. Moore asked her to come to a seance that evening. Kent came as well. There were about 20 people in the room, and, as was common now, spectators filled the house and the lane below. When the ghost appeared and agreed to answer questions, Moore asked, Is Carrots in the room? One knock. Does Carrots know anything of the murder? One knock. Is your murderer here? One knock. If Carrots and her master were taken up and carried before a magistrate, would they confess?

Starting point is 00:09:21 One knock. Carrots asked whether she might ask a question. She said, are you my mistress? One knock. But this was followed immediately by scratching, indicating that the ghost was angry at having its identity questioned. Carrots asked, are you angry with me, madam? One knock. Carrots said, then I am sure, madam, you may be ashamed of yourself, for I never hurt you in my life. With Carrots now firmly against the ghost, she and Kent stood against Richard Parsons, John Moore, and Thomas Broughton. Kent could not endure the scandal much longer. It was ruining his reputation. He'd had to postpone his business plans with his brother-in-law, and the crowds in Cock Lane were so great now that Richard Parsons had had to shut up his house.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Fortunately, a crucial test was still available. Several times, the ghost had promised to accompany Kent into the vaults of St. John's and signify her presence by knocking on Fanny's coffin there. So, accordingly, a committee was now assembled to accompany Kent there. Its most prominent member was the writer Samuel Johnson. Johnson was well-suited for the job. He was a religious man who believed that the spirits of the dead could return, but he stopped short of credulity or superstition. He had once told James Boswell,

Starting point is 00:10:28 It is wonderful that 5,000 years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it, but all belief is for it. On the evening of February 1st, the party descended into the vault of St. John's and commanded the ghost of Fanny Lines to reveal her presence by knocking on her own coffin. They waited for a response, but, Johnson wrote, nothing more than silence ensued. The committee conferred and, Johnson wrote in the public ledger, it is the opinion of the whole

Starting point is 00:10:59 assembly that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting particular noises, and that there is no agency of any higher cause. This was a commendable triumph of reason, but even this didn't settle the matter. John Moore at first agreed that the ghost was a fake, but when Kent pressed him to clear his name, he hesitated. He decided that he still believed in the ghost and suggested that it was a judgment on Kent for living in sin. Others argued that the investigation hadn't been thorough enough. Richard Parsons agreed to submit his daughter to further examinations, and at the first house she visited, knocks, scratchings, and whisperings were heard. But on February 14th, she was taken to the home of a Mr. Missiter, who was very skeptical indeed. He arranged for her to sleep in a kind

Starting point is 00:11:39 of hammock with her hands and feet fastened. When no noises were heard that night, Elizabeth was told that she had only one more night to prove her innocence. If the ghost was not heard, she and her hammock with her hands and feet fastened. When no noises were heard that night, Elizabeth was told that she had only one more night to prove her innocence. If the ghost was not heard, she and her parents would be sent to Newgate. That night, watching through a peephole, Missitter's servants saw her get out of bed, cast about, and take up a wooden board that she found by the fireplace. After this, the knockings began again, but they had a new character, and the sound was now clearly coming from the bed. Elizabeth denied strenuously that she'd began again, but they had a new character, and the sound was now clearly coming from the bed. Elizabeth denied strenuously that she'd hidden anything, but they searched the bed and found the board.

Starting point is 00:12:10 That was the end of it. The knockings ceased, Elizabeth was sent home, and a report was published in the newspapers. A doctor and an apothecary swore an affidavit confirming that Fanny had been incapable of speaking for some 50 hours before her death, and another deputation went down into the vault and this time opened the coffin of Fanny had been incapable of speaking for some 50 hours before her death, and another deputation went down into the vault and this time opened the coffin of Fanny Lines, whose appearance showed that she had died of smallpox and not arsenic poisoning. At that, John Moore retracted his view and a pamphlet appeared, commonly attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, that exposed the whole affair. Kent also sued the other principals for conspiracy, in part, he said, to prevent other

Starting point is 00:12:45 ghosts from rising and threatening the reputations of innocent men. The case came on at the Guild Hall on July 10, 1762. In the dock were John Moore, Richard Parsons, Mrs. Parsons, Mary Fraser, and Richard James, a tradesman who had published false reports in the public ledger. The trial lasted a whole day, but the jury took only 15 minutes to reach its verdict, all guilty. John Moore and Richard James gave Kent 588 pounds and were reprimanded and dismissed. Richard Parsons got two years' imprisonment and stood three times in the pillory, and his wife spent a year in prison. Mary Fraser served six months in Bridewell. Afterward, they all disappeared into obscurity,

Starting point is 00:13:27 which is a pity because it leaves some questions unanswered in the account that has come down to us. Presumably, the girl Elizabeth had been put up to all this by her parents after William Kent had threatened legal action over the debt of the 12 guineas, but no one seems to have asked her how she managed to fool so many people so successfully. In the Parsons' home, the knocking and scratching might have been accomplished by one of the girl's parents, but she wasn't always at home. Indeed, the ghost manifested in seven locations altogether, and its knockings were heard by more than 200 people. Some have suggested that she used ventriloquism, but if that was the case, it's hard to understand

Starting point is 00:13:58 why the knockings ever failed, or why in the end Elizabeth had become desperate enough to retrieve the incriminating board from Mr. Missiter's chimney. It's still not clear how she produced the noises. And finally, I don't think James Franzen's apparition was ever explained. Franzen, again, was the Cochleain publican who had been leaving the Parsons' house when, quote, he saw pass by him something in white, seemingly in a sheet, which shot by him and upstairs. I believe this is the only time the ghost was seen rather than heard. It was said to be so bright that a beam of light touched the face of a clock in a charity school across the way.

Starting point is 00:14:31 Franzen had not been party to the parson's deception and had no reason to lie about what he'd seen. Perhaps it was an unrelated ghost just passing by. In episode 312, we discussed some of the injuries to spectators at Major League Baseball games. And then in some follow-up in episode 321, we talked about some of the issues specifically relating to foul balls at baseball games. After that episode, Tim Ellis wrote, Just listen to your latest episode in which Sharon talks about the dangers of foul balls at baseball games. After that episode, Tim Ellis wrote, Just listen to your latest episode in which Sharon talks about the dangers of foul balls in baseball. I actually have a personal story that is tangentially related. I was hit by a flying object at a live sports game, but it wasn't a ball, it was a puck.

Starting point is 00:15:22 About two years ago, a friend and I took our seven-year-old daughters to a hockey game at my city's minor league team, the Everett Silvertips. We were sitting in the fourth row back from the ice, and there was a slight gap in the glass at the end of the opposing team's bench, close to the seats our daughters were sitting in. I figured my friend and I should probably trade seats with them just in case a puck left the ice at just the right angle to smack one of them in the head. They weren't exactly paying the best attention to the game. Sure enough, late in the third period, just after the home team scored the first goal of the game, a puck came flying directly at me, striking me in the hands and dropping at my feet. An arena worker immediately rushed over, which briefly concerned me, as I thought maybe for some reason they weren't going to let me keep the puck, but I quickly realized they were just

Starting point is 00:16:01 checking to make sure I was uninjured. Fortunately, other than some very light bruising on my fingers, I was fine. Sadly, like foul balls in baseball, others at hockey games have not been so lucky, including a 13-year-old girl who was killed by an errant puck at an NHL game in 2002. According to Wikipedia, it was the first and currently only fan fatality in the NHL's history. Because of Cecil's death, the league implemented mandatory netting at both ends of the rink in every arena at the beginning of the next NHL season in 2002-2003 to protect spectators from errant pucks. Anyway, here's a pic of my daughter and I just after I got the puck. Thanks, as always, for all the work you do on the show. got the puck. Thanks as always for all the work you do on the show. So Tim and his daughter, who we'll have a picture of with their puck in the show notes, were a lot luckier than Brittany Cecil and her family. Cecil was hit in the head with a puck at a Columbus Blue Jackets game in Ohio in

Starting point is 00:16:55 March 2002, while at a game with her father as an early birthday present for her 14th birthday. At first, she didn't seem to be too badly injured and even walked to the first aid station before being taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a skull fracture. Unfortunately, it was missed that she had suffered a torn vertebral artery, and two days after the injury, she died from a blood clot resulting from the tear. Similar to baseball, hockey involves rather hard projectiles that often travel at about 100 miles per hour, and that unfortunately translates to risk to spectators. Although Cecil's is reported to be the only death of a fan at an NHL game,

Starting point is 00:17:33 I did find a few reports of other deaths of spectators at minor league hockey games, where the glass is usually not as high around the rink to protect the fans, including a 9-year-old girl in 1979 and a 21-year-old man in 2000, both in Canada, and a 10-year-old boy in 1984 in Washington state. A research team of several sports medicine doctors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham published an article in 2019 in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness after one of them read about a child being hit by a foul ball at a baseball game and then discovered that there didn't seem to be much research on spectator injuries at sporting events. These authors searched for internet reports of injuries to

Starting point is 00:18:14 sports spectators dating back to 2000. Their reported numbers seemed a little low to me, given that back in episode 312, I discussed a 2016 article that reported 33 spectator injuries at Major League Baseball games from 2009 to 2014. And this new study only reported 10 injuries at baseball games. Now, one possibility for some of the discrepancy may be in how spectator injuries were defined and what was counted. The definition in the 2016 article was a bit broad in that it counted things like fans falling downstairs or off of railings at stadiums, and it's possible that the newer study had more narrow inclusion criteria. But even so, the earlier study, which covered fewer years, found 18 injuries from foul balls or bats hitting fans, which is still higher than the 10 injuries reported in the 2019 study, which encompass the same years as the earlier study. And I should mention that I couldn't access and read the entirety of the 2019 study for myself,

Starting point is 00:19:12 so I'm relying on the article's abstract and an in-depth press release of the study. But whether the exact numbers reported are possibly low or not, what was interesting was the relative number of spectator injuries reported for different sports. The greatest number of both fan injuries and fatalities were reported for automobile or motorcycle racing, with 123 injuries and 38 fatalities. Next highest was cycling. In doing some reading about hockey injuries, I had seen a reference to spectators at auto races sometimes being killed by crash debris that flew into the stands. The study authors also mentioned vehicles, including sometimes support vehicles hitting spectators.

Starting point is 00:19:52 Apparently, that also accounts for the majority of injuries at cycling events, where spectators are sometimes hit by a vehicle such as a security motorcycle or what was described as a publicity caravan. And in this study, Hockey had eight reported injuries and four reported deaths. In thinking about spectator injuries, I wouldn't have thought to guess motorsports, but that makes perfect sense. Yeah, you know what? I felt exactly the same way when I read that. I don't know what I would have thought,

Starting point is 00:20:19 but that wouldn't have been the first thing to cross my mind. But yeah, it does make a lot of sense. Although the 2019 study didn't mention golf, in his email to us, Tim also said, golf has had at least one spectator fatality as well. And he sent a link to a rather unfortunate story about a six-year-old Utah girl who was hit by her father's golf ball while sitting in a nearby golf cart and died in 2019. The father was quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune and seemed to be at quite a loss to understand how the ball went through the back of the cart and passed two bags before hitting his daughter. That's awful.

Starting point is 00:20:54 I know, it's just one of these really unfortunate freak accidents. Though it's possibly not reported on as much as hockey or baseball injuries, with golf you again have hard projectiles traveling unpredictably at high speeds and therefore you do have spectator injuries. A 2018 article on golf.com written after a spectator at the Ryder Cup lost vision in her right eye from an errant shot reports that Tiger Woods struck a fan in the neck on his opening tee shot during the 2010 Memorial, Pat Perez hit two spectators in a single round at the 2017 Genesis Open, and that after Ernie Els's opening tee shot hit a fan in the face at the 2014 British Open, he was so rattled that he went on to shoot a 79.

Starting point is 00:21:36 I also found a New York Times article from 1974 reporting that at the time, Vice President Ford hit a 17-year-old spectator in the head as he teed off at a celebrity golf tournament in Minneapolis, and that later on the course he hit a golf cart carrying a policeman. Also according to the article, Ford's vice presidential predecessor, Spiro Agnew, had hit the golf pro Doug Sanders with a ball during a match in 1970 and hit a spectator at another event. And the article mentions that Agnew had also hit two people with balls during tennis matches. Apparently, Ford had rather a reputation

Starting point is 00:22:10 for how many spectators he hit at golf games, although he is not the only president to have done so. In 1995, former presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush and then-current President Clinton all played in the Bob Hope Desert Classic, where one of Ford's shots hit a woman in the hand and another hook straight into the crowd. But Bush hit a man in the leg and ricocheted a shot off of a tree and into the face of a 71-year-old woman who had to be treated at the hospital. I'm not a golfer, but it seems like the whole point of that sport is that it's very hard to get the ball to go where you want it to. So maybe this isn't surprising. So maybe being a golf spectator isn't the safest thing to do.

Starting point is 00:22:50 And speaking of being hit by things at sporting events, also in episode 312, I mentioned that possibly the oddest injury cataloged in the 2016 article on injuries to fans at baseball games was to a man who had suffered a detached retina after he was hit by a hot dog thrown by a mascot. Unrelatedly, in episode 321, I noted that historically, baseball has been largely immune from litigation from injured fans because of the assumption of risk that spectators take when they go to a game. It turns out that these two topics do happen to be related, as Lawrence Miller let us know. Hi, pod folks. You'll forgive me for not going back into the archives to get the exact details of what you've covered so far vis-a-vis the Kansas City Royals and the assumption of risk

Starting point is 00:23:33 doctrine. But when you brought it up again this week, I wanted to point out a legal detail that you may have missed that might be amusing to you and or fellow futility closeters. The case involves a spectator at a Kansas City Royals game who was struck in the eye with a hand-flung hot dog and required surgery. All parties agree that eye injuries are not funny, just like getting struck with a foul ball would not be funny. As Kevin Underhill of the Lowering the Bar blog reports, the Royals, though, phrase the question as whether the risk of being struck by a thrown hot dog is an inherent risk of the hot dog toss, which they say has become an integral part of a Royals baseball game. Their brief notes that the hot dog toss has occurred at every one of the 800 home games the Royals have played since 2000 and that fans have come to love and expect it.

Starting point is 00:24:25 Considering that from 1995 to 2012, the Royals had exactly one winning season, it is not too hard to believe that the hot dog toss did become very important to their fans. In other words, the Royals are arguing that because they are a particularly bad baseball team, baseball alone cannot be the only reason people would attend their home games, and therefore risk of flying hot dogs and presumably other mascot antics is indeed inherent for those who choose to experience the games in person. Hard to disagree, honestly. You can find all of LTB's excellent reporting on the matter at this link. Best wishes. So San Francisco lawyer Kevin Underhill has covered this unusual case several times on his blog as it wended its way through the legal

Starting point is 00:25:03 system over several years. And for anyone who's interested in more of the details, I recommend reading his rather engagingly written posts. A condensed version is that after a fan was injured by a thrown hot dog in 2009, a court allowed the case to proceed to trial despite the assumption of risk doctrine because the court found that even if hot dog flinging is considered to be a customary part of the game, as the royals argued, there was still an issue of fact to be decided as to whether the mascot had flung the hot dog negligently. In 2011, a jury found in favor of the Royals, but the plaintiff appealed, arguing that the trial judge shouldn't have instructed the jury on the assumption of risk defense because the risks created by a mascot throwing promotional items do

Starting point is 00:25:45 not arise from the inherent nature of a baseball game. The Missouri Court of Appeals agreed and the case continued. In 2014, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals ruling and sent the case back to the trial court. And in 2015, a second jury also found in favor of the Royals and their mascot, despite not receiving the assumption of risk instructions this time. So it seems that the juries in this case agreed with the Royals that, as Underhill put it in one of his posts, someone who goes to a Royals game assumes the risk that a guy in a lion suit will launch a dog into his eye socket.

Starting point is 00:26:18 And I think the bottom line to all of this is that you should just assume that if you go to almost any kind of sporting event, there is a risk of your being hit by something. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We're always sorry that we can't manage to fit everything we get onto the show, but we really do appreciate getting your comments and follow-ups. So please do keep sending those 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 try to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Jesse Onland in Kitchener, Ontario.

Starting point is 00:27:12 When newly constructed soccer fields were spotted along an island's coast, the result was a major crisis. Why? Wow. Newly constructed soccer fields. Yes. Does it matter that it's an island in particular? I mean, could this, whatever it is, could it have happened just on the mainland somewhere? Possibly.

Starting point is 00:27:28 It's hard for me to answer that question. Is the political identity of the island important? Yes. Okay. Is it? It's hard to guess. I'll tell you. It's Cuba.

Starting point is 00:27:36 Okay. Newly constructed soccer fields. Yes. You said on the coast of Cuba. Yes. And led to what? I'm sorry. A major crisis. Oh, that's not much to go on.

Starting point is 00:27:47 All right. Was that a sign of a political development in the nation? I'll say yes. Would it help me to know when this happened? Sorry. Is this recent? No. Would it help me to dig that out?

Starting point is 00:28:05 Possibly. I mean, are there current events at that time that have a bearing on this? Does this have to do with an event in Cuban history that most people are familiar with? Yes. The Missile Crisis? Yes. Okay. Wow.

Starting point is 00:28:18 That was very efficiently done. That was very efficiently done. All right. So this is during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Is that before? Yes. Did this... Oh, oh, oh.

Starting point is 00:28:32 Okay. I can see this dimly, I think. So sometime before the Cuban Missile Crisis began, someone spotted some newly constructed soccer fields on the coast. Yeah. Was that a sign of the impending crisis? In other words, did it betray the presence of certain personnel, for instance? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:55 Who, like, I would think Cubans normally play soccer, but maybe these were... No. Oh, they don't? No. But these people did. Yes. Soviets or whoever it was. That's exactly it.

Starting point is 00:29:05 Jesse said the first evidence of a Soviet presence in Cuba during the Cold War consisted of newly constructed soccer fields. Cubans play baseball. On the basis of this evidence, President Kennedy agreed to send U-2 spy planes over Cuba, which uncovered evidence of Soviet missile systems under construction and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, so it's a super interesting fact. Yeah. covered evidence of Soviet missile systems under construction and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wow, I didn't know that.

Starting point is 00:29:27 Yeah, so it's a super interesting fact. Yeah. Thanks so much to Jesse for that puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet would not still be here if it weren't for the support of 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 supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign,

Starting point is 00:29:55 where you'll also get access to outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, and what's going on behind the scenes of our show. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 bite-sized distractions, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the share 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 the always talented Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next

Starting point is 00:30:35 week.

Futility Closet - 329-The Cock Lane Ghost

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