Futility Closet - 357-Scenes From an Earthquake

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 carving verbs to a quiet pier. This is episode 357. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is remembered for its destructive intensity and terrible death toll. But the scale of the disaster can mask some remarkable personal stories. In today's show, we'll describe the experiences of some of the survivors,

Starting point is 00:00:42 which ranged from the horrific to the surreal. We'll also consider a multilingual pun and puzzle over a deadly reptile. At two in the morning on April 18, 1906, a newspaper reporter named James Marie Hopper was walking up Post Street in San Francisco toward his room at the Neptune Hotel. He had just seen Enrico Caruso perform in Carmen at the Grand Opera House and turned in his story at the San Francisco Call. The night struck him as particularly peaceful. From the slope, he could see the city's buildings ranged below him in the darkness. Beyond them were the long silhouettes of ships at anchor in the bay, and still farther, the glow of the towns on the mainland. As he was passing a livery stable between Powell and Mason streets, a horse screamed suddenly. When he asked what was the matter, the stableman said,

Starting point is 00:01:42 Restless tonight. Don't know why. Hopper went on to his hotel and up to his room. The elevator operator said, Fine night. Hopper said, Beautiful. Three hours later, shortly after 5 a.m., off the San Francisco Peninsula, the steamship National City was seized with a sudden, fierce shaking. The chief engineer thought at first that the ship had struck a rock or a submerged wreck. He wrote in the log, the ship seemed to jump clear out of the water, the engines raced fearfully as though the shaft or wheel had gone, and then a violent trembling fore and aft and sideways, reminding me of running full speed against a wall of ice. At Ocean Beach on the city's western coast, laborer Clarence Judson had just waded into the

Starting point is 00:02:26 Pacific for an early morning swim. He was only a few yards from shore when a powerful shock knocked him to his knees. He recalled, I got up and was down again. I was dazed and stunned and being tossed about by the breakers, my ears full of salt water and about a gallon in my stomach. I was thrown down three times, and only by desperate fighting did I get out at all. I tried to run to where my shoes, hat, and bathrobe lay, but I guess I must have described all kinds of figures in the sand. I thought I was paralyzed. Then I thought of lightning, as the beach was full of phosphorescence. Every step I took left a brilliant iridescent streak.

Starting point is 00:03:05 James Hopper, the newspaper reporter, was shaken awake at 5.12, feeling like a fish in a frying pan. He wrote, I got up and walked to the window. I started to open it, but the pain obligingly fell outward and I poked my head out, the floor like a geyser beneath my feet. Then I heard the roar of bricks coming down in cataracts and the groaning of twisted girders all over the city, and at the same time I saw the moon, a calm, pale crescent in the green sky of dawn. Below it, the skeleton frame of an unfinished skyscraper was swaying from side to side with a swing as exaggerated and absurd as that of a palm in a stage tempest. Just then the quake, with a sound as of a snarl, rose to its climax of rage, and the back wall of my building, for three stories above

Starting point is 00:03:53 me, fell. I saw the mass pass across my vision, swift as a shadow. It struck some little wooden houses in the alley below. I saw them crash in like emptied eggs, and the bricks passed through the roof as through tissue paper. In the Harbor District, police officer Jesse Cook was standing at the corner of Washington and Davis streets when he heard a rumble like the roar of the sea and the earth rose under him. Both streets opened, water rose out of the cracks, the street settled again, and the top story of a corner building fell and buried two men under tons of brick. On Market Street, another officer, Michael Brady, saw buildings lurch out over the road

Starting point is 00:04:34 and back again, their foundations ripping, cracking, and screeching. The stone cornices of a building on the south side of the street crashed to the sidewalk and the steeple toppled from St. Patrick's Church. On Grant Avenue, plate glass windows exploded into the street. In the police station on the ground floor of City Hall, Officer Edward Plume was thrown from his chair. The building's massive pillars cracked with reports like cannon and fell with crashes like thunder. On Fremont Street, patrolman Harry Walsh was standing in a machine shop when heavy equipment from the floors above began crashing through the

Starting point is 00:05:11 ceiling. He and a machinist fought their way out the front door into the street, which rose like the sea under Walsh's feet. Before he could reach the alarm box on the corner, the shop and the power company building crumpled up and fell flat. In his room on the fourth floor of the Grand Hotel, William Cushing, a visitor from Nevada, was thrown out of his bed. When he stood up, he was thrown across the room, through the bathroom door, and into the bathtub. Police Lieutenant Henry Powell was running toward 19th Street when he saw the Valencia Street Hotel lurch forward and telescope down on itself like a concertina. He wrote,

Starting point is 00:05:49 In the first gasp of recovery from the shock, it did not occur to one that the tragedy was so complete. Everything seemed to be burst up. The Valencia Hotel looked no worse than the street. Later, a second or so later, one realized that the crumpled four-story building was full of living people. William Stare lived on the top floor of the Nevada house on 6th Street. When the quake struck, he wrote, it came into my head to jump out of the window onto the roof below. But while I was waiting to make up my mind, the house I was looking at collapsed with a deafening roar and spilled down in a cloud

Starting point is 00:06:25 of dust from which I could plainly hear the agonizing screams of the inmates. The dust then came spurting up in so thick a cloud that I could neither see nor breathe. It choked me, so I hurried back from the window to the other end of the room and began to dress myself. He had just got on his trousers and shoes when he heard another crash. He looked again out the window and saw that Brunswick House, the second building south from his, had also collapsed into a smother of dust. He leapt to his door, but it was jammed. He wrote, So I hung on instinctively to the door handle while the whole floor dropped. As it sank, I felt three distinct bumps as the lower floors

Starting point is 00:07:05 collapsed in turn under the weight of the roof and the top story. With each bump came a frightful crash and cracking of timbers and glass and the cries of other people in the house. Then came another bump, very sudden and very severe. The place fell in on top of me, the breath seemed to be knocked out of my body, and I went unconscious. The main shock had lasted 42 seconds. Emerging onto Post Street afterward, Jimmy Hopper began to encounter survivors, silent men and women with faces of gray. He wrote all of them, they had a singular hurt expression, not one of physical pain, but rather one of injured sensibilities,

Starting point is 00:07:45 as if some trusted friend, say, had suddenly wronged them, or as if someone had said something rude to them. In Union Square, a man in pink pajamas and a pink bathrobe was walking barefoot on the gravel, carrying a pink comforter under his arms. An old man peered intently at the inscription of the Dewey Monument through spectacles without lenses. Photographer Arnold Genta passed mothers and children in nightgowns, men in pajamas and dinner coats, scantily dressed women in evening wraps. One old woman carried four kittens in a birdcage. A man held tenderly onto a pot of calla lilies and muttered to himself.

Starting point is 00:08:23 A scrub woman stood with a new broom in one hand and a black hat with ostrich plumes in the other. And a man in an old-fashioned nightshirt and swallowtails started when a policeman told him, say, mister, I guess you better put on some pants. Jack London arrived shortly after the disaster and would roam the streets all night. He wrote, within an hour after the earthquake shock, the smoke of San Francisco's burning was a lurid tower and would roam the streets was gone. At that time I watched the vast conflagration from out on the bay. It was dead calm, not a flicker of wind stirred. Yet from every side wind was pouring in upon the city. East, west, north, and south, strong winds were blowing upon the doomed city. The heated air, rising, made an enormous suck.

Starting point is 00:09:27 city. The heated air rising made an enormous suck. Thus did the fire of itself build its own colossal chimney through the atmosphere. Day and night this dead calm continued, and yet near to the flames the wind was often half a gale, so mighty was the suck. With the fire spreading and the city under martial law, the whole town was shortly in flight. The military authorities had commandeered every automobile, so fleeing residents piled their possessions onto anything with wheels. Baby carriages, lawnmowers, toy wagons, and children's beds. Resident Mabel Cox saw belongings dragged in sheets and strapped to ladders mounted on roller skates, and increasingly it seemed every other person was dragging a trunk. Genta wrote, no one who witnessed these scenes can ever forget the rumbling noise of the trunks drawn along the

Starting point is 00:10:11 sidewalks. They fled through dreamlike scenes of urgency. On 8th Street, Jimmy Hopper passed a woman carrying a green and red parrot that squawked, hurry, hurry, hurry. At California and Stockton Streets, mathematician Eric Temple Bell dug a trench in his garden to bury his valuables. Among them was Adrienne-Marie Legendre's 1808 text on number theory, which Bell had checked out of the Stanford Library. He would return to find the earth baked into brick to a depth of four feet, but the book survived. Touring the city, Jimmy Hopper found that the fire had worked north as well as west. He wrote, the call building, the tallest skyscraper in the city,

Starting point is 00:10:51 was glowing like a phosphorescent worm. Cataracts of pulverized fire poured out of the thousand windows. But still, there was no hysteria. Jack London wrote, I passed Wednesday night in the path of the advancing flames, and in all those terrible hours I saw not one woman who wept, not one man who was excited, not one person who was, in the slightest degree, panic-stricken. At dawn on Thursday morning, London was sitting on the steps of a small residence on Knob Hill as walls of flame advanced from the east and south. The owner invited him inside. He told London, Yesterday morning I was worth $600,000. This morning this house is all I have

Starting point is 00:11:32 left. It will go in 15 minutes. That is my wife's collection of china. This rug upon which we stand is a present. It cost $1,500. Try that piano. Listen to its tone. There are few like it. There are no horses. The flames will be here in 15 minutes. As the fire approached the mission district that evening, police officer Henry Schmidt wrestled a piano down from his third floor flat on Dolores Street. By that time, the roof was on fire and Schmidt dared not go in again, but a soldier went up and threw some furniture out the window. Schmidt wrote, you talk about people doing strange things during that fire. There is no doubt that nearly everybody became half queer over it. I stood across the street

Starting point is 00:12:16 watching my own couch drop to the ground. A man I did not know from Adam quietly walked over, picked up that couch, my couch, hoisted it on his shoulder, and walked away with it. Did I call out to him or try to stop him or run after him? I, a policeman, looking at a fellow walk off with one of my best pieces of furniture? Not a bit of it. I just kept looking at him. It did not occur to me that there was anything unusual, anything for me to worry about, in the man making off with my couch, but very often afterward I wondered what had come over At the U.S. Mint, workers spent a full day fighting back the flames using a water system that had been completed only ten days earlier. Afterward, Superintendent Frank Leach emerged from the building to find himself in another world. He wrote,

Starting point is 00:13:03 emerged from the building to find himself in another world. He wrote, Turn which way you would, the view presented was one of utter ruin, desolation, and loneliness. The buildings were piles of smoking and blazing ruins. The street was encumbered with fallen trolley poles and tangled wires and other indestructible debris from the burned buildings. Not a human being was to be seen. It seemed as if all the people and buildings of the city but the Mint and its defenders had been destroyed. Ten days after the main fires had been extinguished, writer Louise Herrick Wall toured the ruins in a relief worker's automobile. She wrote, the eyes unveiled of smoke could now range across the wasted city from one notable ruin of house or church or hotel, with a growing

Starting point is 00:13:45 sense of the majesty and the dignity of the ruins set in space. Strange and terrible as is the destruction, San Francisco was never so nearly beautiful. There is no blackening of the ruins. The heat seems to have been so intense that it consumed all its own smoke and charcoal, leaving faintly colored surfaces of crumbled iron, marble, and brick. The ruins stretch out in the softest pastel shades of pink and fawn and mauve, making the wasted districts look like a beautiful city a thousand years dead, an Elder Troy or Babylon. The post office let it be known that it would accept any item, stamped or unstamped, as long as it bore an address to which it could be sent. William F. Burke, secretary to the San Francisco Postmaster,

Starting point is 00:14:29 wrote, When I went back in the afternoon over the rounds of the morning, to collect the mail from the camps, the wonderful mass of communications that poured into the automobile was a study in the sudden misery that had overtaken the city. Bits of cardboard, cuffs, pieces of wrapping paper, bits of newspapers with an address on the margin, pages of books, and sticks of wood all served as a means to let somebody in the outside world know that friends were alive and in need among the ruins. At the end of the day, he said, there were 95 pouches of letters carrying mail composed of rags and tatters and odds and ends. It came to our knowledge later that not one piece of this mail that was properly addressed

Starting point is 00:15:10 failed of delivery. The toll of the disaster is even now still being reckoned. In the months that followed, some residents began to reflect on what the experience had shown them. Charles B. Sedgwick, editor of the British Californian, wrote, There was much kindliness. The old and feeble, the blind, the lame, were tenderly aided. The strong helped the weak with their burdens, and when pause was made for refreshment, food was voluntarily divided. The milk was given to the children, and any little delicacies that could be found were pressed upon the aged and the ailing. This goodness and self-sacrifice came natural to some, but even the selfish, the sordid, and the greedy became transformed that day, and indeed throughout that trying period,

Starting point is 00:15:55 and true humanity reigned. It was beautiful to behold and gave one a glimpse of humankind in a new and glorious light. Would that it could always be so. None richer, none poorer than his fellow. No coveting the other's goods, no envy, no greedy grasping for more than one's fair share of that given for all. What a difference those few days when there was no money, or when money had no value. In his book Three Fearful Days, Malcolm Barker lists some accounts of the disaster written by local school children. These were published less than a month after the quake. San Francisco is nothing but a cemetery now. When a sick lady in the hospital felt the earthquake, she jumped from a six-story building and she met death.

Starting point is 00:16:40 A big water main broke and drowned all the people in it. A big water main broke and drowned all the people in it. The Chronicle building is all hurt in the inside, and people are cooking on the outside waiting for their chimneys to be inspected. And the people ran to the banks and tried to get their money, but they couldn't get it out, and the Call building is still standing. There are 400 babies born in San Francisco since the earthquake, and people all over the world are making baby clothes. And the tides came together, and then they broke, and many people were killed. Bricks

Starting point is 00:17:11 fell on the people also and killed them. And then they put the fire out and said, San Francisco is going to be larger than it ever was. I have some more follow-ups to a few other topics that Greg had discussed in episode 351, Notes and Queries. One of those concerned whether there had been a family living in Virginia whose last name looked like Nrufty, E-N-R-O-U-G-H-T-Y, but was actually pronounced Darby. Greg found several confirmations of this, but they all seemed to give a different explanation, including that before emigrating to America, one of the original members of the Nrufti family had been stripped of the right to use the name, so he'd adopted the name Darby, but instead insisted that it be spelled like his former name. Or that two men named Nrufti were left a fortune

Starting point is 00:18:16 by a Mr. Darby, provided that they would change their name to Darby, and instead of changing the spelling of their name, they just insisted that it be said as Darby. Or that two branches of the Inruftee family had a falling out, and one branch of the family, who lived on Darbytown Road, took to calling themselves the Darbytown Inruftees, which was eventually shortened to the Darby's. Ed Kitson helpfully sent us several links to items in old newspapers on this topic, which all do seem to confirm that there was a family with their name spelled in rufty but pronounced Darby in Virginia, though they offer yet a new crop of explanations for it. For example, someone wrote in to the New Orleans Daily Democrat in 1878, in regard to the name in rufty pronounced Darby concerning which you make philological inquiry

Starting point is 00:19:02 this morning, I can perhaps relieve your mind in some degree. Darbytown, the old homestead of the Inrufty family, is but a few miles east or southeast of Richmond, Virginia, and occasionally, even now, a letter will come addressed to some member of the family, the name being spelled Inrufty. Such letter never miscarries. It goes to a Darby. There is a tradition in those parts that one of the remote ancestors of the living in Ruffdees, the head of the family in those days, was an illiterate, strong-willed old man with no particular reverence for orthography or phonetics, became so disgusted by his neighbor's failures to correctly pronounce his name that he got mad,

Starting point is 00:19:40 called himself Darby for short, and insisted on everybody doing the same. Mad, called himself Darby for short, and insisted on everybody doing the same. An item in a 1902 edition of the Richmond Dispatch reports that a writer in the New York Mail and Express explained this anomaly with what to me seems an unlikely story about one member of the family in England who took the opposing side from the rest of the family in the 17th century war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers, and was called a Derby as a term of derision, and that he continued to use that as his name afterward. The article in the Dispatch goes on to say, the spelling in Ruffdee has never been pronounced Derby so far as we know, but there are a number of persons in this city and in Henrico County named Inrufti who are never called anything but Inrufti, and there are many by the name of Inrufti who are called or nicknamed

Starting point is 00:20:30 Darby. And notes that records in Henrico County have a Darby Inrufti, who was the grantee in a real estate deed in 1678, and in a deposition he gave a few years later, he stated that he had been in the colony about 20 years. The article says that this Darby and Rufty had three sons, two of whom had sons that they named John. The John whose father was named Edward was called John and Rufty. And the other John, son of Darby and Rufty Jr., was called John and Rufty, son of Darby. And that in at least one instance, there are records where that was written as John and Ruffte parentheses Darby. So the writer speculates that over time that may have evolved to just John Darby with that branch of the family being called Darby. A really similar

Starting point is 00:21:17 explanation to this last one is also offered in an article from an 1890 edition of the Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper, The News and Observer, which says that they got the story from what they call the dispatch, which I am guessing might be the Richmond Dispatch, although this article predates the one I just mentioned from the Richmond Dispatch by about 12 years. Possibly there was another newspaper called the Dispatch, or the Richmond Dispatch ran a similar article to the 1902 one years earlier. I still don't know what to think then. I was sure someone would say, yeah, that's just a tale. It's just a story and there's nothing to it.

Starting point is 00:21:51 Because it seems so unlikely. But it seems like even the contemporaneous sources we've managed to find all say, yeah, there's something to this. No one knows. No, there's no agreement at all on what the underlying story is. But it seems like... Everybody agrees it was the case. At least some people named in rufty pronounced it Darby.

Starting point is 00:22:08 Yeah. And on that, Ed said of the whole Darby and rufty issue, Review of the Chronicling American Collection from the Library of Congress shows many mentions of this. Perhaps the most telling is this 1882 one, which states that even the family doesn't know the reason, and links to an article in an issue of the Weekly Chillicothe Crisis from Missouri that said, The death near Malvern Hill, Virginia of Nathan and Rufty is likely to revive the questions often

Starting point is 00:22:37 discussed but never satisfactorily answered, why the name of a numerous family should have been for at least a century universally spelled in rufty and universally pronounced Darby. The members of the family themselves follow this strange perversion, always writing their name one way and pronouncing it the other, but can give no explanation of its origin. And maybe that's just the truest answer of the bunch. In episode 351, Greg related a story about the origin of the typewriter brand optima that supposedly during the second world war as the russians were advancing on berlin the workers at the olympia typewriter factory in airfort collected their plans

Starting point is 00:23:18 fled to wilhelmshaven and established a typewriter works there. It was ruled that the old works, now in East Germany, couldn't use the Olympia name, so it became Optima. Greg wanted to know if that story was actually true, and in particular, whether the workers who left could have made the trip by bicycle. Patrick Hubenthal wrote, Dear Greg and Sharon, I listened to episode 351 this evening and decided to see if I could shed any light on the breakup of the Olympia typewriter company.

Starting point is 00:23:46 The newspaper article you cited suggests that German typewriter designers bicycled 460 kilometers to escape the advancing Soviets. After perusing the Olympia section in Leonhard Dingwert's history of German typewriter manufacturers, I'd say the facts are not quite so dramatic. of German typewriter manufacturers, I'd say the facts are not quite so dramatic. Dingwert writes that the Olympia factory struggled throughout World War II, with many of its workers being called up to the army and typewriter production taking a back seat to orders for airplane motor parts, ammunition belts, and other military paraphernalia. Olympia nonetheless manufactured its millionth typewriter in 1942, and in early 1945, it was operating with a staff of 3,800. In April of that year, however, the factory suffered significant damage from American bombs and artillery attacks on a nearby SS post, and the resulting fires burned for days,

Starting point is 00:24:37 completely destroying the administration building and much of the equipment and materials. Once the Allies had occupied Erfurt, employees gradually found their way back to the factory and began cleaning up, but were forbidden to restart production. On June 10, 1945, Olympia's director learned that the American occupiers were going to be replaced by Soviet troops. Assuming that the Soviets would raise what remained of the factory, he began making plans to move at least part of the company out of Thuringia. A number of managers and engineers left for Bavaria the next day, taking some design drawings with them, and the company's assets were transferred to a bank in Hamburg, although part of the sum was

Starting point is 00:25:15 subsequently transferred back due to a clerical error. The group initially stopped in Birkenstock, just inside Bavaria, and decided to start over in the old industrial city of Bielefeld. However, that attempt failed for reasons Dingwert does not explain, and so in the summer of 1946, they relocated to Wilhelmshaven, where they had found a vacant warehouse complex, plenty of skilled laborers among the city's unemployed dock workers, and a green light from the local authorities. By October 1948, Olympia typewriters were rolling off the production lines again. Meanwhile, the factory back in Erfurt, far from being razed, had been repaired. Thanks to the bank error mentioned above, the remaining staff had almost 2 million marks at their disposal,

Starting point is 00:25:57 and had, in fact, been producing its own Olympia typewriter since July 1945. However, most of these were Cyrillic models made to be shipped to Russia as reparations, so it was not until 1949 or so that Erfurt-made Olympias began to appear in the West. The two companies went to court, each one claiming to be the legitimate successor to the original Olympia. In May 1950, the Westerners won. A district judge in Hamburg ruled that typewriters from the East German factory could not be sold in West Germany under the name Olympia. After trying out Commando, Ranger, and Orion, among others, the Easterners chose Erfurt as their new name, only to learn that a city name could not be trademarked, and so they ultimately settled on Optima. One thing Dingwert

Starting point is 00:26:39 does not tell us is how the Splinter Group made their way from Erfurt to Birkenstadt. These two cities are about 150 kilometers apart, so it's conceivable the group could have cycled there in a day or two, and bicycles seem a plausible choice as well, since I presume the German rail network was severely disrupted at that time. So maybe they really did go by bike, just not directly from Erfurt to Wilhelmshaven. Thank you for all the stories and puzzles. I love the show. from Erfurt to Wilhelmshaven. Thank you for all the stories and puzzles.

Starting point is 00:27:04 I love the show. So thanks so much to Patrick for digging that up. Dingvert's book is in German, so we really appreciated Patrick's being able to give us the story in English. And it sounds, that sounds right. You know, it's more plausible and less dramatic. That they bicycled the whole way. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:21 All in one go. But it's still interesting how the one type of company sort of divided into two. In episode 351, Greg quoted Joseph Addison, who defined a pun as, a conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound but differ in the sense. The only way, therefore, to try a piece of wit is to translate it into a different language. If it bears the test, you may pronounce it true. Dan Nolan wrote, Dear Futilitarians, I have a counterexample for Mr. Joseph Addison's assertion.

Starting point is 00:27:57 A piece of wit that stands the test of translation and is yet a pun in several languages. And Dan sent a link to a BuzzFeed article from 2017 titled, Tumblr users have discovered a pun which works in so many languages. A user had posted on Tumblr, I found a pun that works in both English and Spanish. Where do cats go when they die? Purgatory. Adonde van los gatos cuando mueren?

Starting point is 00:28:23 Purgatorio. Which works in Spanish as the word for cat is gato. Other Tumblr users posted similar versions in Italian and Portuguese, which have similar words for purgatory and cat. In a post on the topic on Reddit, someone says that the riddle works in Hindi too, although you have to use a word that means more like heaven rather than purgatory. And another poster does fairly point out that means more like heaven rather than purgatory. And another poster does fairly point out that the pun in English is the pur, not the part that means cat, as it is in the

Starting point is 00:28:51 other languages. But even so, it does seem that the pun does work the same in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. So granted, they are all romance languages, but it does still seem to contradict Addison's assertion. That's true. I wonder if there are other examples that work in, at least within language families. Yeah, there probably would be, I would imagine. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate how much we learn from all of you. So if you have any comments or follow-ups for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:29:31 It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he's going to try to guess what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Michelle Carter. One of the deadliest reptile encounters claimed the lives of 20 people. How? Wow. So one reptile killed, is that accurate, 20 people? 20 people died due to one reptile. All right. So I like this already. 20 people encountered one reptile. Can I say that? Yes. One individual animal. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:07 All right. But it didn't directly kill. That would be impressive. 20 people. Right. All right. Did all 20 of them die of the same cause? Would you say that?

Starting point is 00:30:15 Yes. All right. So none of them died directly by an attack, you'd say, by the reptile? Correct. All right. How would you... So were they aware the reptile was there? I'm sorry? Were they aware that it was there?

Starting point is 00:30:30 Yes. So were they frightened of it? Yes. Did they die as a direct result, would you say, of the reaction? Yes. To the presence of the reptile? Yes. Okay, so they, somewhere, 20 people saw a reptile and fled?

Starting point is 00:30:44 Would you say that? Yeah. Tried to? Yeah. And fell? Did they fall? Why am I guessing this? They fell off a cliff or something?

Starting point is 00:30:52 No. How would 20 people die? How would 20 people die? Are the surroundings important, like the actual situation? Yes. All right. Were they indoors when this happened? Define indoors.

Starting point is 00:31:11 Under a roof, under a man-made roof, let's say. No. Between walls. You can't answer that. I mean, it depends on your definitions of things, but I could sort of say yes to that. Inside some man-made structure, would you say that? Yeah. In a vehicle? Yes. Oh, all 20 of them? Yes. Oh my gosh. Is this true? Yes. A bus? No. A train? No. What vehicle holds 20 people? A plane? Yes. The plane crash? Yes. Okay, so there's, let me keep going.

Starting point is 00:31:47 crash? Yes. Okay, so there's, let me keep going. There's at least 20 people on a plane. Yes. With a reptile. Yes. That gets loose, I guess. Yes. And they all see it and react. Yes. And I guess interfere with either the pilot. Was the pilot one of the ones who reacted? No, no. But their reaction interfered with the flying of the plane. Would you say that? Yes. And that led to it crashing? I think that's close enough, yeah. In August 2010, a passenger aircraft crashed on approach to the airport in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing all but 21 of the people who were on board. The accident was reported to have been caused by the passengers rushing to the front of the plane to get away from a crocodile that had been smuggled on board by one of the passengers,

Starting point is 00:32:24 with the resulting shift in the plane's center of gravity causing the pilot to lose control of the plane to get away from a crocodile that had been smuggled on board by one of the passengers, with the resulting shift in the plane's center of gravity causing the pilot to lose control of the aircraft. It's reported that the crocodile survived the crash, but then was killed with a machete. So, an unfortunately fatal puzzle, even for the reptile. Thanks so much to Michelle for sending that. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send that to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. If you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our 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 frappant ephemera.

Starting point is 00:33:13 Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the episode with the links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or feedback for us, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the redoubtable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 357-Scenes From an Earthquake

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