Futility Closet - 339-The Baron of Arizona

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 backward letter to a nosy geologist. This is episode 339. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1883, Missouri real estate broker James Revis announced that he held title to a huge track of land in the Arizona Territory. If certified, the claim would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of residents.

Starting point is 00:00:40 In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Baron of Arizona, one of the most audacious frauds in American history. We'll also scrutinize British statues and puzzle over some curious floor numbers. James Revis was born in Missouri in 1843 and led an unremarkable life until the Civil War broke out. He fought for the Confederacy and discovered an unusual talent. He could accurately forge the signature of his commanding officer. Using that skill, he learned to forge passes for himself, which he used to avoid the drudgery of camp life and to visit his mother. After the war, he traveled briefly to Brazil, but by the end of 1866,

Starting point is 00:01:24 he was back in Missouri, where he worked as a streetcar conductor and a store clerk and finally found success as a real estate broker in St. Louis. There, he found that his talent for forgery could be used to amend paperwork and alter property titles to help transactions go through. There's no telling where that career might have taken him, but in 1871, he met a prospector named George Willing, who told him of a remarkable opportunity in the West. Willing said he'd bought the rights to an enormous tract of land in the Arizona Territory. The details were shadowy. He'd heard rumors around campfires of a large Spanish land grant and had finally tracked down the owners,

Starting point is 00:02:01 the Peralta family, in the Black Canyon southeast of Prescott. He learned that in the 1700s, Spain had rewarded one of their ancestors with attractive land in the New World. This had passed down through the family and now belonged to the father, who agreed to sell it to Willing for $20,000 in gold dust, prospecting equipment, and saddle mules. The story was vague, but as he went over the documents, Rivas was increasingly interested. Claims such as Willing's were not unknown. As the United States had expanded its southwestern borders, it had promised to honor old Spanish and Mexican land grants that had been made in that territory. So if a solid foundation could be found for the Peralta Grant, the current

Starting point is 00:02:40 residents of Arizona and New Mexico would have to accept it. Rivas and Willing agreed to form a partnership to promote the claim. They traveled west separately. Willing filed his claim in the Yavapai County Courthouse, and the next day, mysteriously, he died. It is customary to hint darkly that this may not have been innocent, but the truth is that no one knows what happened. Willing's death left the way open for Rivas himself to pursue the claim, and he did so. By negotiating with Willing's widow and other stakeholders, he managed to consolidate ownership

Starting point is 00:03:09 of the grant for himself. He toured Arizona to study the land that might be his, and he traveled to Washington and Mexico to search for documents relating to the grant. After exploring the archives of Guadalajara and Mexico City, he returned to California with certified copies and photographs to back up his claim. The claim, when he made it, was astonishingly bold. He announced that in 1748, Ferdinand VI had given the title Baron de los Colorados to Don Miguel Nemesio Silva de Peralta de la Córdoba. With the title came an extensive grant of land in the New World, which Rivas now defined, a tract of 50 by 150 square miles in central Arizona, from just west of Phoenix almost to the outskirts of Silver City,

Starting point is 00:03:50 New Mexico. This barony of Arizona included Phoenix, Florence, Globe, Clifton, and Safford, as well as all the water, agricultural lands, and minerals in its range. In time, Revis claimed would grow to 78 by 236 miles. It caused, understandably, bedlam. Throughout this region, the U.S. government had granted homesteads to pioneers who had relied on the soundness of the government's title. They developed lands, built homes, and established irrigation projects. If Rivas' claim were supported, it would spell ruin for thousands of citizens who occupied ranches or homes, who built stores and other businesses, and who ran cattle on rangeland under grant from the federal government. Railroads that

Starting point is 00:04:30 crossed Rivas' barony would now be trespassers. Mines there produced millions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and copper that Rivas now claimed for himself. Rivas backed up his argument with two trunks of documents. As the Surveyor General began to pour over these, Rivas hired rent collectors and agents and posted notices throughout the area telling residents that they must either contact his lawyer or face litigation and expulsion. The settlers were stunned. The titles to their lands were now clouded and uncertain. Their very water supply was threatened. Rivas told them that it would be cheaper simply to pay him than to investigate the claim or hire a lawyer. Anyone was welcome to inspect the documents, he said, but the U.S. government must inevitably validate the claim. Many insisted from the beginning that this must

Starting point is 00:05:14 be a fraud. Townspeople organized meetings of protest, and newspaper editors urged their readers to oppose the claim. But many settlers wavered, dismayed at the cost of litigation. When word came that both the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Silver King Mine had come to terms with Rivas, ordinary citizens felt that they couldn't possibly prevail against him. They began buying quit-claim deeds to homes, farms, mines, businesses, and even schools. Some people abandoned their homes and land altogether without even trying to deal with Rivas. At first, Rivas seemed unstoppable. When the Surveyor General's office sent a man to Mexico to investigate the strength

Starting point is 00:05:50 of the claim, Rivas went as well, guiding him through archives and directing him to particular documents that he wanted him to inspect. But at length, his efforts foundered against a lawsuit by the Attorney General of the territory. Under questioning, Rivas couldn't explain clearly how he'd come into possession of the grant or of its exact boundaries. He tried to argue that the court didn't have jurisdiction to consider the validity of a Spanish grant, but he lost the fight and the Land Office Commissioner ordered the Surveyor General to stop work on verifying the grant. That was a victory, but Rivas was already preparing a new attempt. In 1887, he filed a second claim, this one on behalf of himself and his new wife, Sophia. He explained that he'd met her on a train in

Starting point is 00:06:31 Sacramento and, by a very unlikely coincidence, recognized her as the last surviving child of the Peraltas, the great-granddaughter and only surviving heir of the original grantee. He'd informed her that she was an heiress, taken up her cause, and traveled to Spain to look for proof of her lineage. And now, as evidence, he offered 184 pages of transcripts, decrees, genealogies, and wills. This new claim was hugely unpopular, and the sale of new quit claims effectively ended. Rivas was vilified, but his efforts had already won him great returns. He wore fine clothes, traveled among homes in St. Louis, Washington, Madrid, and Chihuahua, and oversaw

Starting point is 00:07:10 three corporations that were preparing to build roads, railways, and irrigation systems in the area. That was until 1889, when the investigation finally caught up with him. The Surveyor General for the Arizona Territory released a report showing Rivas' claim was fraudulent. Documents supposedly dating from the 18th century were shown to have been written with steel-nibbed pens. Their Spanish was anachronistic and their style inauthentic, and some important supporting documents could not be found at all in the archives of Spain or Mexico. When the claim was dismissed, Rivas responded by suing the government for $11 million, and the investigation that followed uncovered fraud on a massive scale. It appeared that Rivas had spent years inventing his narrative, forging the documents that would support it, and inserting them into archives in Mexico and Spain.

Starting point is 00:07:58 In one genealogy, the first and last pages had been retained, but the rest replaced with a new version. In a notary record, an ill-fitting additional page had been glued in place. The text of authentic documents had been visibly altered by hand, and government agents in Spain learned that Rivas had once been caught in the act of inserting false records into archives in Seville and had left the country hurriedly. In the end, the court declared the grant wholly fictitious and fraudulent. No such person as Don Miguel Nemesio de Peralta de la Córdoba had ever existed. The whole thing had been a stupendous fraud. The claim was rejected and the petition dismissed. In a subsequent

Starting point is 00:08:35 criminal trial, Rivas was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government and sentenced to two years in the federal penitentiary. Two years? I mean, for that massive of a fraud, he got two years? Apparently two years was the maximum sentence at that time for conspiracy to fraud the government. No matter how large the fraud was. In fact, it's somewhat less. He also had to pay a $5,000 fine, and the maximum fine was $10,000. So he actually got off arguably light. Yeah, I was surprised at that myself.

Starting point is 00:09:03 In his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1895, W.T. Thornton, the governor of New Mexico territory, wrote, The history of the Peralta Rivas claim, its conception and prosecution, reads more like a romance than an incident in real life. It had its inception more than 40 years ago, since which time the parties prosecuting it have shown a zeal, energy, and intelligence worthy of a better cause. They have stopped at nothing necessary to prove their title of record. Forgeries have been committed in the decrees of judgment, grants, and writs of juridical possession, and copies of the forgeries filed not only in the court where the cause was proceeding, but in the archives of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and various places in the Republic of Mexico and in the Kingdom of Spain. The church records have been manipulated and changed to show entries of marriages,

Starting point is 00:09:50 births, and deaths of fictitious persons necessary to create the chain of title. It is even said that not a single paper of all of the great number filed of record in this case is genuine. You don't have to follow all the ins and outs of the legal cases here. The thing to notice is what an audaciously ambitious swindle this was. James Revis claimed to own an area of 18,000 square miles, the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined, including all its water, agricultural lands, and millions of dollars worth of copper, gold, and silver. To do this, he forged records in three countries, invented an

Starting point is 00:10:25 entire Spanish family, and traced its descent through two centuries. He'd even collected a gallery of portraits to represent them. And as far as I can tell, he'd done all this single-handed, which is remarkable. He'd collected an estimated $5.3 million, or $163 million today, from frightened pioneers by convincing them that they were trespassing on their own property. If his claim had succeeded, thousands of people would have lost their homes, countless land titles would have been clouded for years, and the development of the territory would have foundered for a generation. As I was researching this story, I made a little list of the ways that various writers characterized the scheme. They called it one of the most ambitious frauds in the history of the American West, the most marvelous land fraud

Starting point is 00:11:10 of this generation, the most astonishing swindle in American history, the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in this country, one of the greatest criminal cases ever known, one of the most gigantic swindles in all history, and the most intricate and firmly based imposter in all the history of chicanery. Rivas was called the prince of imposters and one of the most daring and adroit and ambitious criminals of all time. At the close of the trial, Attorney General Judson Harmon wrote, the case is remarkable as probably the greatest fraud ever attempted against a government in its own courts. After he got out of prison, Revis turned occasionally to journalism, and in 1899, he published a detailed confession of his crime in the San Francisco Call.

Starting point is 00:11:53 In it, he acknowledged his encouraging early successes at forgery in the Confederate Army and in real estate, and wrote, Success in these early evils sowed the seed that later sprang forth into the most gigantic fraud of this century, the plan to secure the Peralta sprang forth into the most gigantic fraud of this century. The plan to secure the Peralta Grant and defraud the government out of land valued at 100 million dollars was not conceived in a day. At first the stake was small, but it grew and grew in magnitude until even I sometimes was appalled at the thought of the possibilities. I was playing a game which, to win, meant greater wealth than that of a Gould or a Vanderbilt. My hand constantly gained strength, noted men pleaded my cause, and unlimited capital was at my command. My opponent

Starting point is 00:12:31 was the government, and I baffled its agents at every turn. Gradually I became exultant and sure. Until the very moment of my downfall I gave no thought to failure. But my sins found me out, and, as in the twinkle of an eye, I saw the millions which had seemed already in my grasp fade away and heard the courts doom me to a prison cell. Now I am growing old, and the thing hangs upon me like a nightmare until I am driven to make a clean breast of it all, that I may end my days in peace. Whether he found that is not known. He spent his last days in a Los Angeles poorhouse, and he was buried in a pauper's grave. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to make a more ongoing donation to our show, you can join our Patreon campaign,

Starting point is 00:13:34 where you'll also get access to bonus material like outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, and what's going on behind the scenes of our show. You can learn more at our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of our website for the link. And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show. We really couldn't do this without you. The main story in episode 204 was about Mary Anning. Born in 1799 in Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England,

Starting point is 00:14:11 she has been called the greatest fossilist the world ever knew. But despite her incredible contributions to the field of paleontology, because of her gender and her lack of formal education and social standing, she received little to no credit for her discoveries and remained mostly unrecognized until fairly recently. Greg reported in episode 204 that in 2010 the Royal Society named Anning one of the 10 most influential women scientists in British history, and that Lyme Regis named a road after her, and that the local museum presents exhibits about her discoveries.

Starting point is 00:14:50 Recently, Mendel wrote to Let Us Know about an article in The Guardian from February titled Royal Mint to Commemorate Fossil Hunter Mary Anning. According to The Guardian, Anning had been on the shortlist to be on a new 50-pound note, but she lost out to Alan Turing. Instead, the Royal Mint is producing a collection of three commemorative 50-pence coins intended to celebrate her discoveries, and the coins depict the Temnodentosaurus, the Plesiosaurus, and the Dimorphodon. The Royal Mint collaborated with the Natural History Museum on the coins, and The Guardian reports that the Executive Director of Engagement at the museum said that the institution was thrilled to be involved, saying that, "...the Mary Anning Collection celebrates a pivotal figure in the understanding of paleontology, important contributions to science that were rarely acknowledged in Mary's

Starting point is 00:15:34 lifetime. It is fantastic to see Mary celebrated in such a special way in 2021." So the coins are really nice, and they are a public acknowledgement of some of Anning's discoveries and contributions to science, but I don't know how many people will actually see or hear about these special coins that have to be purchased, so I don't know how much recognition they will finally get her. Yeah, she certainly deserves more recognition than she's been getting. Yeah, and on the subject of more public recognition for Anning, Alex Wood wrote, Hi guys, in case you missed it, there's a campaign to get Mary Anning a statue. And Alex sent a link to the site for Mary Anning Rocks, a campaign to get a statue of Anning erected in Lyme Regis.

Starting point is 00:16:15 The impetus for this project came from then 11-year-old Evie Swire, a local fossil enthusiast who was hunting for fossils with her mother at Lime Regis a couple of years ago and asked, Why isn't there a statue to Mary, mummy? On the site, her mother says, That was our lightbulb moment, and I started to ask myself the same question. Why isn't there a statue to this incredible woman? I want to build positive and empowering female role models for all our children to look up to, to visualize for them that gender and class should

Starting point is 00:16:45 never be a barrier to who or what you want to be. The Mary Anning Rock site said something that I found intriguing, that only 2.7% of civic monuments in Great Britain commemorate named women, and that there are more statues in the UK of men named John than there are ones of women. I dug into this a bit and it looked to me like this information was likely from a 2016 article in the New Statesman titled, I Sorted the UK Statues by Gender, a Mere 2.7% are of Historical Non-Royal Women, by Caroline Criado-Parez, a journalist and feminist activist. Criado-Parez went through all the statues listed in the database of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association and concluded that, if you're a woman, your best

Starting point is 00:17:31 chance at becoming a statue is to be a mythical or allegorical figure, a famous virgin, royal, or nude. She said that of the total of 925 statues listed in the database, only 158 of them were of women alone. If you include women who were part of groups, that number rose to 253. And that's in comparison to the 632 statues of men, 508 of which were solo statues. Criado-Perez counted another 40 statues of either animals or of people of ambiguous gender. Criado-Perez reported that almost half of the female statues in the database were of allegorical figures such as justice or art. Eighty-three of the remaining female statues were what she called a figurative female, or an unnamed woman who was simply there to be decorative and is often nude.

Starting point is 00:18:19 Of the specific historical women depicted, 46 of them were statues of royal women, with 29 of those being of Queen Victoria. And that left only 25 statues of specific historical non-royal women in comparison to the 43 statues of men named John. Overall, Criado Perez counted 498 statues of historical non-royal men. I looked to see if anyone else had tried to compile similar statistics and I found an article on BBC News from 2018 titled, Reality Check, How Many UK Statues Are of Women? They also used the database from the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, although they noted it's not an exhaustive listing. They reported a total of 828 statues,

Starting point is 00:19:02 of which 65 were of specific named women who weren't allegorical or fictional, and that of those 65, 38 were royal. So by my math, that comes to a little more than 3% of the total statues that were of historical non-royal women, or rather close to Criado Perez's figure of 2.7%. And I looked a bit into that question for the US of what percentage of historical statues are of women here, and the estimate seemed to range from about 7 to 10%. So those percentages are actually rather in line with the ones from the UK, if you count the statues of the royal women there too. Yeah. I wonder what the numbers are elsewhere. In other countries. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:40 Yeah, maybe some other countries are doing better than the rest of us. Other countries. Yeah, maybe some other countries are doing better than the rest of us. In episode 332, we discussed that Horatio Nelson wrote letters with his left hand after losing his right arm, and how because there were many fewer surviving letters that he wrote right-handed, they tended to be worth significantly more, even though they are less interesting and have less character than his left-handed letters. Mark Sauerwald in Portland, Oregon wrote, Greg and Sharon, thank you for your podcast. I am a longtime faithful listener. My father had a childhood friend who was often ill and spent a lot of time in the hospital. At one point, Babe Ruth visited the hospital and signed baseballs for several of the boys,

Starting point is 00:20:19 and my dad's friend got one. My father's friend died shortly after my father married, and my mother was pregnant with me. The baseball was left to the unborn child, so I inherited this baseball from someone who I never met and indeed who had died before my birth. I put the baseball inside a sock and kept it in my dresser until I was grown, and when getting homeowner's insurance and asked if I had any valuable items that needed to be itemized, I mentioned the baseball. The insurance agent looked into the value and it came back far greater than I had ever imagined. And not wanting to pay the additional insurance premiums, I decided to sell it. It was sold through an auction house

Starting point is 00:20:53 which specialized in Americana and they had it authenticated. It amazed me that through various different methods, they were able to not only authenticate it, but were able to narrow down the date at which it was signed to a six-month period, using the name of the baseball commissioner on the baseball, the type of pen used, and the fact that it had been signed on the West Coast, Los Angeles. The ball sold for far more than I had expected, and part of this was because it was a ball with Babe Ruth's signature only. It turns out that most Babe Ruth autograph balls were signed after games and had both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig signatures on them. The fact that my ball had not been signed by Lou Gehrig made it more rare and therefore more valuable. I donated about half the proceeds from the ball to the Arthritis Foundation since my dad's friend had died of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and bought a car with the other half.

Starting point is 00:21:41 and bought a car with the other half. So like Nelson's letters, where I would have guessed that the left-handed letters would be more valuable, this situation with the baseballs also seems initially counterintuitive, that having only one signature makes something more valuable than having the signatures of two famous baseball players. And it's kind of funny that the absence of Lou Gehrig's signature is valuable. That's a positive attribute in this case. Eric's signature is valuable. That's a positive attribute in this case. Mark also said, on another note, my career, I am now retired, was as an electronic engineer, and one of my employers used puzzles like yours, but related to electronics, to see how candidates thought. One puzzle which we used is that you have a shed which has a light bulb inside and three switches

Starting point is 00:22:21 on the outside, and the door is closed. One of the three switches turns on the light bulb. The other two do nothing. You can do whatever you want with the three switches, but you cannot change them once you open the door to the shed. Can you determine which switch controls the bulb? The answer is that you turn on switch number one and wait a few minutes, then turn off switch one, turn on switch two, and open the door. If the light is on, then it is switch two. If the light is off but warm, then it is switch one. And if off and cold, then it is switch three. Clearly, this wouldn't work with the LED bulbs that we use now. So I thought that was a really clever

Starting point is 00:22:56 puzzle and answer. And that would have worked for a long time with incandescent bulbs, though, as Mark said, not as well with today's more energy efficient ones, but I was still tickled by it. We need more puzzles about LED light bulbs. Yeah, somebody will probably come up with some. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your comments and follow-ups. So if you have any of those for us, please email them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Closet.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation,

Starting point is 00:23:32 and I'm going to do my best to figure out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Colin White. He was working on a project at the University of Surrey's physics department in the late 1980s when he noticed something odd. The elevator referred to the ground floor as floor 21, and the floors above that were numbered sequentially, 22, 23, and so on. Why did the university adopt this scheme? The ground floor was numbered 21.

Starting point is 00:23:59 Yes. Did it matter that, I think you said it was the physics building? No. Okay. Could this have been a different building on the campus? Yes. Did it matter that, I think you said it was the physics building? No. Okay. Could this have been a different building on the campus? Does it matter where the university is? No, I'll say no. Is there anything about the location that's important, like geography or geology or topography?

Starting point is 00:24:21 Yes, I'll say yes. Not of the whole university, but of this building. Of this building. Does it have to, is it, is the building set on the, flush on the ground? No. Is the building up on something, like to help prevent flooding or something, like it's above the ground significantly. Not to prevent flooding, but yes. Not to prevent flooding.

Starting point is 00:24:52 Is it still on the surface of the earth, would you say? Yes. That's worth double-checking everything. So it's not underwater, up in the air. Does this have anything to do with astronomy? Like they've got some kind of a big tower for astronomers or something? Or astrophysicists? No.

Starting point is 00:25:16 So you would say that this building is significantly above the ground in some kind of funny way? I guess it's either that or it's below the ground in some kind of funny way? I guess it's either that or it's below the ground in some, like it's... It's on the side of a hill. It's on the side of a hill. Meaning it's partway up a hill? Yes, on an embankment.

Starting point is 00:25:42 So, does that put something at a slant, or they're trying to deal with a slant in some way, the angle, the slope? No, but it means that it's sort of set somewhat into the hill, as I understand it. So, for example, there are seven stories at one end of the building and three at the other because of the shape of the hill. But they still – the elevator starts at 21. Yes. And this has something to do with the hill? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:14 In some way? Also, I'll say there are other buildings on the same side of the embankment, and there are corridors linking these different buildings. And does that have something to do with it like what would be floor number one for one building is actually floor 21 for a linked building so they're just trying to be consistent right the ground floor because of this layout on the side of the hill the ground floor of the different buildings varies, if you see what I mean. Yeah. So what's the ground floor for the physics building will be a different level for one of the other buildings, for instance. Am I done?

Starting point is 00:26:57 Is there more? No, there's more. There's more? Oh, I thought, okay, that's it. Because these buildings are linked by corridors. So they wanted, I'll just tell you, they wanted some consistent, just to avoid confusing everyone, they wanted some consistent scheme that would make sense to everyone. Right.

Starting point is 00:27:10 And they adopted this. But the question remains, why is the ground floor 21 in the physics building? Well, are some of the other buildings that tall that they have more than 21 floors? No. None of them has 21. 21 is the ground floor. It's just the number that they've assigned. Right.

Starting point is 00:27:31 No, I meant they have more than 21 floors. So if you have 30 floors and you come in at 21 if you're on the ground floor of the physics building that puts you at floor 21 on something else. Is it not that it's really a 21? Is it sort of like 2-1, or it stands like the 2 and the 1 stand for separate things? So it shouldn't be read as like 21, meaning the number after 20.

Starting point is 00:27:59 No. That is not correct. That's right. It's not correct. That's not correct. Sorry. So it should be read as 21, not correct. That's not correct. Sorry. So it should be read as 21, meaning the number that comes after 20. Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:10 Okay. Are there any buildings that have more than 21 floors? Or you don't know? No. Again, none of them have 21 floors. It's just the ground floor is labeled 21 in the physics building, and the floor above that is 22, and so on. So it looks arbitrary, but it's not. Right, but I guess I'm trying to understand,

Starting point is 00:28:32 because if it links to another building, and that does have 30 floors, and it just comes in at the 21st floor, the link, the corridor that links them. No, if there's... Yeah. If a given floor is labeled, say, 21 in one of the buildings, and you follow the corridor, it would be 21 in each of the buildings, in all of them. Okay, even though you get to the other building and there isn't 20 floors below you.

Starting point is 00:28:54 Right. Yeah. There wouldn't be 20 floors below you. So why did they pick 21? Right. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? That is a really good question.

Starting point is 00:29:04 Why would you do that? Why would you do that? That is a really good question. Why would you do that? People who worked there found it useful because it gave the same reference. If you knew you were on floor 25, say, you always knew. It would be the same for every building. Yes. It's just why did they start with 21 in the physics building? Right. Did some of the other buildings have floors below 21?

Starting point is 00:29:26 As it happens, no, but you could have continued the scheme down. Like if they all had sub-basements, you could have continued it with lower numbers down below, and it would still have made this kind of sense. And still would have made this kind of sense. Are we in base 10 here? Do I need to leave? Yes. It's not a different base. Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:42 It's not a different base. Why would you pick 21 for the ground floor? It's a reference to something external that all the buildings, everyone who works there can make sense of intuitively. 21 is a reference to something external, something to do with the hill. No, even more broad than that. Something to do with the location on campus. No, even bigger than that. Something to do with an hour of the day.

Starting point is 00:30:16 I'm trying to think like what 21 could even refer to. Apart from floor numbers, why might you assign numbers to different heights? You were 21 feet off of sea level? That's very close. It tells you how many feet off the ground you are. I'll give it to you. It's a reference to sea level. The building stood on the side of a steep hill, so there were three stories at one end and seven at the other. Also, other buildings stood on the same embankment, and corridors linked the various buildings.

Starting point is 00:30:41 So the designers wanted a numbering scheme that would remain meaningful across buildings. Colin writes, linked the various buildings. So the designers wanted a numbering scheme that would remain meaningful across buildings. Colin writes, I was then told that they wanted to reference to a fixed known point outside the buildings. Now, as luck would have it, all the floors on all the buildings are all exactly 10 feet apart. So G in the physics building

Starting point is 00:30:56 is actually 210 feet above sea level. The floor numbers were derived by taking the sea level for each floor, dividing it by 10, and that's the numbers I saw on the lift. Wow. Which is clever. I think that'd be something that a physicist would be inclined to see. Thanks, Colin. Thank you. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try, you can send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our incredible listeners.

Starting point is 00:31:27 If you'd like to help support the show, please check out the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can find a donate button and a link to our Patreon page. At our website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 uncommon beguilements, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with the links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or questions for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by Greg's incomparable brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 339-The Baron of Arizona

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