Futility Closet - 364-Sidney Cotton's Aerial Reconnaissance

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

One of the most remarkable pilots of World War II never fired a shot or dropped a bomb. With his pioneering aerial reconnaissance, Sidney Cotton made a vital contribution to Allied planning. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe his daring adventures in the war's early months. We'll also revisit our very first story and puzzle over an unknown Olympian. Intro: Hall's Law holds that a group's social class is reflected in its members' initials. In 1814 Richard Porson wrote a sonnet to nothing. Sources for our feature on Sidney Cotton: Michael Smith, The Secret Agent's Bedside Reader: A Compendium of Spy Writing, 2019. Chaz Bowyer, Air War Over Europe: 1939-1945, 2003. David Marshall and Bruce Harris, Wild About Flying!: Dreamers, Doers, and Daredevils, 2003. "Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence During World War II," Contemporary Review 294:1705 (June 2012), 249. Taylor Downing, "Spying From the Sky," History Today 61:11 (November 2011), 10-16. "Sidney's Sky Spies," Air Classics 37:12 (December 2001), 30. Walter J. Boyne, "Reconnaissance on the Wing," Air Force Magazine 82 (1999), 72-78. "Parkes Display Plane's Remarkable Career," Parkes [N.S.W.] Champion Post, Nov. 1, 2015. Jessica Howard, "Daughter Tells of Spy Who Loved Her," [Hobart Town, Tas.] Mercury, July 27, 2013. "007 Cotton Inspires Bond," Gold Coast Bulletin, Sept. 27, 2008. "Aussie Maverick Who Fooled Nazis," [Surry Hills, N.S.W.] Daily Telegraph, Nov. 9, 2002. Christopher Bantick, "Aussie Spy in the Sky," [Hobart Town, Tas.] Mercury, Nov. 2, 2002. Stephen Holt, "Oh, What a Lovely War," [Brisbane, Qld.] Courier-Mail, Oct. 19, 2002. David Morris, "The Real Bond - Revealed: 007 Was Actually a Queenslander," [Brisbane, Qld.] Sunday Mail, July 15, 2001. David Wroe, "The Original Spy in the Sky," [Melbourne] Age, June 8, 2000. "He Fought the R.A.F. as Well as the Enemy," Sydney Morning Herald, April 12, 1969. "The Cheeky Missions of a Young Spy-Flier Helped to Save Thousands of Allied Lives," Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 9, 1969. "May Be the Wreckage of French Airplane," Morristown [Tenn.] Gazette Mail, July 15, 1927. "Search for Lost Men Is to Be Discussed," New Britain [Ct.] Herald, July 14, 1927. "Plans Search By Air For Nungesser, Coli," New York Times, May 26, 1927. "Was Proserpine's Sidney Cotton the Real James Bond?" Breakfast, ABC, Sept. 19, 2021. "Guide to the Papers of Frederick Sidney Cotton," Australian War Memorial (accessed Nov. 1, 2021). John McCarthy, "Cotton, Frederick Sidney (1894–1969)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1993. Listener mail: Norman Fraser, "Sad Ending to Beautiful Betsy Wartime Mystery," [Brisbane] Courier-Mail, March 18, 2015. "Beautiful Betsy," Monument Australia (accessed Nov. 13, 2021). "Monto-Historical and Cultural," North Burnett, Queensland (accessed Nov. 14, 2021). "Cylinder, Iowa," Wikipedia (accessed Nov. 18, 2021). "The Skeleton in the Bale," Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 2, 1892. (Greg's blog piece is here.) This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener S Wan. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from predictive initials to a sonnet to nothing. This is episode 364. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. One of the most remarkable pilots of World War II never fired a shot or dropped a bomb. With his pioneering aerial reconnaissance, Sidney Cotton made a vital contribution to Allied planning. In today's show, we'll describe his daring adventures in the war's early months. We'll also revisit our very first story and puzzle over an unknown Olympian.

In September 1938, an Australian businessman named Sidney Cotton was sitting in his office in St. James Square, London, when he received a telephone call from a man with a superbly anonymous voice. He said his name was Frederick Winterbotham, and he wanted Cotton to take some pictures from the air. Winterbotham was a spy. He headed the air section of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, which gathered intelligence overseas. He was known to his colleagues as Cloak and Dagger Fred. He'd also been a pioneer of air photography in World War I, and now, as war again loomed over Europe, the British and the French had begun to discuss

how to get photographs of the military buildup inside Germany. In an era before satellites, this could only be done from the air. France had begun reconnaissance flights in 1936, but these had covered only the immediate frontier. The British knew that any deeper ventures into German airspace must be made by civilian aircraft to avoid exacerbating the tense political situation, and to minimize the chances of detection and interception, any such flight must be made at high altitude and high speed. That, Winterbotham said, was where Cotton came in. He had experience as a pilot and an aerial photographer,

and he'd been trying to promote color photography in Europe, so he had legitimate reasons to visit Germany. Would he be willing to fly over the country in a private plane and take pictures from the air? Cotton considered. At 44 years old, he'd already had adventures enough for several lifetimes. Born on a Queensland cattle station in 1894, he'd gone to England in 1910 to pursue his education, and there conceived a passion for aviation, inspired by Louis Blériot's Crossing of the English Channel. When war broke out, he joined the Royal Naval Air Service and was posted to France, where he served as a bomber pilot and

revealed an inventive streak. A flying suit he designed there, which kept pilots warm in the often frigid temperatures aloft, became standard issue. And he was fiercely independent. Shortly after his promotion to flight lieutenant in June 1917, he warned that a mission had been poorly planned. He was proven right when an overheated plane crashed into the sea, but the incident gave him a reputation for being difficult to work with. As he wrote, authority does not like its incompetence to be shown up. He resigned his commission later that year.

In the period between the wars, he undertook an adventurous career in civil aviation. He spent three years in Canada working as an airmail operator, an aerial photographer, and an airborne spotter for sealing companies. He was involved in two stories that we've told on this show. In 1927, he organized a search in Newfoundland for two French pilots who had disappeared while attempting a transatlantic flight, a story we told in Episode 7. And in 1931, he organized a search for Augustin Courtauld, who had spent that winter on the Greenland ice cap, as we described in Episode 164. He also became deeply interested in photography and had lately been promoting Duffet Color, a new color film process. So he was well-suited to this job.

He agreed to Winterbotham's proposal, and MI6 arranged an allowance that would cover his expenses. The project's beginnings had not been auspicious. The French had hired a Parisian portrait photographer to fly up and down the Rhine in a decrepit airplane with an old wooden camera, hoping to photograph German fortifications across the water. France and Britain now each bought a Lockheed 12A, a smaller but more powerful version of the plane that Amelia Earhart had chosen for her attempt to circle the world a year earlier.

In his role as a business executive, Cotton would be representing a company called Aeronautical Research and Sales. The British hired Canadian Robert Niven to serve as his co-pilot, and the two spent some time flying across Europe to establish a plausible pattern of activity. The first reconnaissance flights were made under French auspices in March 1939, but again, these were disappointing. Cotton found that the French were unwilling to fly very deep into German territory, and he worried that the French photographer's bulky camera might betray their activity. Worse, the resulting photos showed huge gaps in the coverage. Some important targets hadn't been photographed at all. Cotton wrote, we would have to improve our methods, which were crude in the extreme. If worthwhile results were to be obtained, I must have my own aircraft and

operate it in my own way. This he did. He and Niven returned to Britain, the SIS ordered a new 12A, and Cotton oversaw extensive modifications. Three RAF F-24 cameras were installed in the cabin floor in a fan arrangement that could cover a strip of land more than 11 miles wide. These were concealed by sliding panels and operated by remote control so that Cotton could fly the plane and take photos at the same time. He supplemented these with two Leica cameras mounted in the wings, diverting warm air from the cockpit to keep their lenses from fogging. Then he and Niven set out on an ambitious journey, taking clandestine photographs over Italy, Greece, and the Middle East. If they were questioned, Cotton explained variously that he was an archaeologist interested in the local ruins, an airline executive surveying

a new route, or a movie director looking for locations. They photographed gun emplacements, bases for submarines and flying boats, and new airfields. Winterbotham was pleased. He wrote, Within 10 days, a single aircraft piloted by a supposedly wealthy man with a taste for desert ruins was able to secure photographs of most of the areas of the Italian Empire, which, during the past few years, had been exercising the British and French naval and air staffs. In his normal work promoting the duvet color film process, Cotton had let it be known that he wanted to franchise the format, and in July he learned that a German named Schöne wanted to market duvet color in Germany. By an unlikely

coincidence, Schöne had flown with Manfred von Richthofen, and this had made him a close friend of Hermann Goering. This was an opportunity. Cotton named Schöne his sales agent in Germany, and on July 26th flew the Lockheed to Berlin to meet him and test the waters. It went well. The Tobis Laboratories carried out a trial run of Dufay-Colour, and Cotton flew home the next day to have it developed and printed. This new connection paid off spectacularly. On July 28th, Cotton found himself flying back to Germany to attend an international air meeting for sports pilots in Frankfurt. Among the attendees was Albert Kesselring, who would become one of the highest ranking officers in the Luftwaffe. With a wingspan of nearly 50 feet, the Lockheed dwarfed the other

light planes at the meeting, and Kesselring asked Kotton for a ride. They took off and flew up the Rhine to Mannheim, and K and Cotton, unable to resist the opportunity, reached under his seat and activated the cameras. Kesselring asked him why a green light on the control panel had begun to flash, and Cotton told him that it indicated fuel flow to the engines. Other Germans vied to ride in the plane as well. Rudolf Boettger, the commandant of Tempelhof Airport, was in the cockpit when Cotton said he wanted to visit a beautiful part of the river that had been beloved of a maiden aunt, a detail he invented on the spot. That entire sector was closed to civilian aircraft except for airlines using specific corridors,

but the director got approval and Cotton flew them over hilly countryside with many military installations. Once again, he reached under the seat and the wing-mounted cameras silently began taking photos. As they passed over one particularly conspicuous installation, Cotton hid his face in his hands and said, I'm sure I'm not supposed to see that. Aviation historian John W.R. Taylor calls this one of the most fantastic reconnaissance sorties ever recorded. Emboldened by this success, Cotton and Niven began making frequent trips in and out of Germany, ostensibly on business. For some time, the images they captured of airfields, naval bases, and other military facilities gave the RAF the only detailed targeting data it had for planning its bombing raids. In May 1939, Cotton even visited the Karin Hall, Hermann Goering's

country house, to show him examples of duvet color. He brought along two photographers and asked whether it would be appropriate to have them take photos of the house in duvet color. Goering agreed, and when they flew out of Tempelhof a few days later, Cotton had a briefcase full of photos. Cotton now proposed an exploit that went well beyond his role as a photographer. From further talks with Schooner, he learned that Goering believed that Britain and France would not intervene if Germany invaded Poland. He wrote, I suggested to Schooner that he ask Goering to fly with me to England, because if we could convince him of England's true determination, then he would certainly inform Hitler. This seemed to me the only hope of avoiding war. Goring agreed to visit England on August 24th,

and the British government made arrangements to receive him. Cotton and Niven flew to Berlin on August 22nd, but Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin the very next day, and the Germans canceled the trip. The attempt did bear some fruit, though. Cotton and Niven took off from Temple Hoof just after 11 a.m. on August 24th, making theirs the last civilian aircraft to leave Berlin before German troops marched into Poland. And on the way home, they witnessed German bombers heading east, as well as hundreds of ships at the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven. When they reached home, they were able to provide the British Air Ministry with photos of the German Navy at anchor, as well as Hitler's private yacht, the Grille. With Britain now formally at war, Cotton couldn't be permitted to manage military aircraft and

personnel as a civilian, so he agreed to be commissioned as a squadron leader in the RAF. He was given a lot of autonomy. His team worked out of Heston Aerodrome, a small airfield used mostly for private flying, and so less likely to be associated with spy flights. They were given a discreet hangar away from the passenger terminal, where they had space to keep the aircraft and build photographic dark rooms. As to planes, the RAF gave him two Supermarine Spitfires, and as before, he customized them extensively. He stripped them of all excess weight, including their guns, painted them a pale blue-green to make them hard to see against the sky, and made provisions to prevent the lenses, film, and batteries from freezing

at altitudes up to 35,000 feet. Fitting each with an extra fuel tank increased its range to 1,250 miles, and reducing their wind resistance increased the plane's maximum speed to nearly 400 miles an hour. The unit was operational by the last week of October 1939. Officially, it was known as the number one camouflage unit. Unofficially, it was Cotton's Club, or Cotton's Crooks. Cotton distributed lapel badges that read CC-11. The 11 stood for the 11th commandment, thou shalt not be found out. When the club started, it employed 27 people. By April 1940, the number had risen to 316. Cotton may have worn a wing commander's uniform, but he ran the unit like a private flying club. He treated everyone on the team as equals, and he didn't expect them

to salute him. The Spitfires made their first operational sortie on November 22nd, and soon they were regularly delivering aerial photos to Heston, where they were processed and the prints rushed to General John Gort, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force. Because the exposures were only five inches square on a very small scale, Cotton engaged an aerial survey business at Wembley to help interpret them. Before the war, it had been unusual for aircraft to fly higher than 20,000 feet. Here again, they were breaking new ground. Cotton said, what we are doing today, the fighters will be doing tomorrow, the bombers the day after tomorrow, and civilian aircraft after the war. Further, he was ordering the planes to fly up to a thousand miles into German territory without weapons, which required

a special breed of pilot. According to an Air Ministry report, The blue paint may have concealed the Spitfires, but at high altitudes they were betrayed by the water vapor in their exhaust, which left visible trails. Worse, unlike fighter pilots, reconnaissance pilots had to fly straight and level in order to complete their mosaic of photos. Fortunately, in 1939, there were no anti-aircraft guns that could fire a shell up to 30,000 feet. Twice, Messerschmitt Bf 109s lay in wait for them, but in both cases, the Spitfires managed to outrun them, as they were about 40 miles an hour faster. Initially, the photos they took had to be developed and printed in England, but by 1940, Cotton had arranged for two photographic trailers to be delivered to France, where they were hidden

under covers in a stable yard. Now, when a Spitfire returned from a mission, its photos could be developed in the field and delivered in a few hours to both Army and Air Force headquarters. By early May, when the Germans began their push into France, the Spitfires were flying constantly, with the men in the photographic trailers stripped to the waist as they developed and printed the photos. When they had no water, they washed the prints in a trout stream. Cotton believed to the last that France could be saved and resisted orders to evacuate his squadron. By the time they finally withdrew in June 1940, the men barely escaped, and all their equipment was either lost or captured. But they suffered zero casualties. By comparison, their counterpart in the French

Air Service lost 17 of its 23 crews in just three weeks' action. Despite these successes, Cotton returned to some dismaying news. He was being sidelined. He was told that his operation had passed beyond the stage of experiment and would be reconstituted as part of the ordinary organization of the RAF. Cotton would be replaced by a regular serving officer. The unit was renamed the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. It would go on to play a crucial role in the war, but Cotton would not be leading it. Cotton blamed his dismissal on bureaucratic jealousy and interdepartmental rivalry. Probably there's some truth to that, but he had also proven himself headstrong and opinionated,

and the Air Ministry had been exasperated with the way he had been using the Lockheed to conduct his own business dealings. Among other things, Winterbotham accused him of selling weapons to the French and evacuating French businessmen for a fee. He spent the rest of the war on the sidelines and afterward returned to private and commercial flying, but in 1941 he did receive the Order of the British Empire. The accompanying letter of congratulations thanked him for, quote, the great gifts of imagination and inventive thought which he had brought to bear on the development of aerial photography. The main story in episode 359 was about the crash of a U.S. Army transport plane in New Guinea in 1945. Dean Winter wrote, Hi, Greg and Sharon. I was listening to episode 359 of your wonderful podcast this morning and for some reason was instantly reminded of a story from the pre-COVID times.

My uncle and I had driven to Gladstone in Queensland with the intention of making our way to see Beautiful Betsy. A Liberator aircraft, Beautiful Betsy went missing on the 26th of February 1945 with the loss of eight lives, six American and two British service personnel. The Liberator was on a fat cat mission, i.e. a supply mission from Fenton Airfield in the Northern Territory to Eagle Farm Airfield in Brisbane. She carried out 25 missions, mostly in and around the Timor region. Speculation is that she had crashed amongst poor weather conditions. at least in my opinion, is that the wreckage of Beautiful Betsy was not discovered until the 2nd of August 1994, when a park ranger was checking the results of a controlled burn off in the Crumbit Tops National Park. It blows my mind that it has been found for less years than it was missing. The wreckage still lies there today, strewn over about 100 meters, serving as a memorial

site. It was a really sobering moment to see the wreckage after reading about it online. From Gladstone, it's a relatively short drive to the park, but then a few hours of fairly challenging four-wheel driving to get there. But even if you can't get there, I thought the story would be right up your alley. And from what I saw on this, it was a total mystery what had happened to the U.S. Air Force Liberator and the eight people on board until a park ranger happened to see something glinting in the sun while standing on an escarpment almost 50 years after the aircraft had gone missing. So if you're up for some rugged four-wheel driving, it does sound like viewing the crash site would be a rather moving experience. But it turns out that there is also a one-fifth scale replica of the bomber that serves as another memorial at the Monto Cultural and Historic Complex in Queensland that is presumably much

easier to access. That'd be a very dramatic thing for the ranger to discover, you know, you didn't get up in the morning expecting that to happen to you. To find an almost 50-year-old missing aircraft or pieces of it, I guess, strewn around. And the fact that there was anything there to glint suggests that the whole thing wasn't just completely buried under debris, you know? Right. At least somewhat visible all that whole time. Yes. Yeah, it's just in a very inaccessible part of the world, apparently.

Yeah. Eric Cohen sent a follow-up to some of the listener mail in episode 359. Dear Sharon and Greg, I just heard your update on duplicating keys from photographs and it reminded me of this charming story from many years ago. One chilly wet day on Cape Cod, my girlfriend and I locked ourselves out of our car while looking at a remote lighthouse. The nearby Coast Guard station took us in and very kindly, thank you Chief Petty Officer Cookingham if you ever hear this, let us dry off and warm up, call a locksmith, no cell phones back then, and even watch an educational video about the Coast Guard while we waited for the locksmith to arrive. He did in his

van a bit later. We headed out, asked him how much we owed, thanked him profusely, and then asked, so how are you going to get into our car? He replied that he was already done and handed us a car key. Apparently, he had seen our ignition key lying on the driver's seat and cut a duplicate by eye on the machine in the back of his van. Despite all the cold and wet, that is one of my favorite memories. And I had been pretty surprised when I was reading about duplicating keys for that episode to learn how easy it is for someone who knows what they're doing to copy many keys just by sight if they can get a decent look at the key. So I guess Eric's story just validates that.

Yeah, I can't decide if that's good or bad. I mean, it's good news for Eric, but it's a little concerning that people can do that. Paul Rippey had an interesting alternative answer to the puzzle in episode 362, not a spoiler, about how ponies stopped working efficiently in a local coal mine after a Christian mission came to New South Wales. I quickly figured out the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 362 about the changes in ponies behavior after the missionaries came to town. The missionaries convinced the miners to give up

alcohol, but rather than throw their large stash of homemade beer away, knowing that it was a nutritional drink, they fed it to the ponies. Of course, that wasn't the answer as it turned out, but it could have been. That makes sense. And we have a couple of follow-ups to much older episodes. In episode 19, the main story was about how in 1898, W. Reginald Bray studied British postal regulations, which promised that all letters must be delivered as addressed, and then resolved to give the postal service a severe test. Joel Strand wrote, Hi Greg and Sharon, I love your podcast and I've recently started going through your back episodes from before I started listening.

I just heard episode 19 about testing the post office, and I thought you might enjoy a personal story about the diligence of the post office. I grew up in a very small town in Iowa called Cylinder, population 105. While in college, I worked for a professor who was fascinated with the idea of growing up in such a small community. When he learned that there was only one town in the United States called Cylinder, and I was the only resident named Joel, he immediately pulled out a piece of paper and an envelope and wrote a letter addressed only to Joel, Cylinder, and mailed it. Sure enough, about a week later, I got a call from my parents that the postmaster had handed them a piece of mail that he figured must be for your son. I think they were quite puzzled, but my professor and I were delighted. And according to Wikipedia, the population of Cylinder, Iowa has been declining a bit in the last few decades, so that as of the 2020 census, it was 87.

I guess making it even more likely that there might be only one person with any given name in the town. I'm trying to think of some clever pun on Joel and the cylinder not managing to do it. It is pretty amazing, though, that they figured out that there is only one cylinder, and it's a cylinder Iowa with this little tiny population. I mean, kudos to the postal service. I thought about it with the Bray story, like you can just picture the conversation that must have gone on in the post office that only a few people are privy to, but that must be a fascinating thing to overhear. And we have an update to a story that Greg covered back in episode one. Yes, this is in fact a follow-up to the very first story we ever

ran on this whole show, March 2014. I was talking there about an odd item that I ran across in Nigel Stark's 2006 book, Life After Death, The Art of the Obituary. Here's the piece as I wrote it up for the Futility Closet website. The Atlanta Constitution of October 2nd, 1892 contains this lurid tale from the Civil War. Discharged after losing a leg in battle, Confederate Colonel Clay Clayton had returned to Sans Souci, his Alabama plantation, when a portion of the Union Army established camp nearby, and the Yankee officers made Clayton's mansion their headquarters. During the occupation, Frederick Jasper, a disreputable captain from a Massachusetts regiment, pursued Clayton's beautiful daughter, Virginia, who rejected his proposal of marriage. Virginia's two brothers and lover learned of this during a visit to the plantation immediately after the Union troops left. When the war ended, Clayton's sons returned to Sanssouci, and Virginia married her lover and settled on an adjoining plantation. Cotton had risen to a high price, and Clayton had two bales in his gin house, but he vowed not to sell them for less than a dollar a pound, and they lay there unregarded for years.

In 1866, a Boston lawyer appeared looking for any trace of Jasper. The captain had separated from the Union troops after they had departed the plantation, taking with him a sergeant and promising to return in half an hour. He was never seen again, and now the lawyer sought to establish his fate in order to settle his estate. Clayton could tell him nothing, and he returned to Boston. Twenty years later, Clayton died, and the brothers and Virginia's husband finally sold the gin house bales, which were stamped with the plantation's mark and sent to Russia. Quote,

When it came to the turn of these two bales from old Colonel Clay Clayton's Alabama plantation, they were opened and the cotton dumped out on the floor of the factory. One was shaken up, there was a flash of blue and something bright and a rattle of something on the floor. What was it? It was a skeleton in the uniform of a captain of the Army of the United States of America. Sword, watch, money, buttons, some rotten cloth and bones. That was all. On the The sergeant's body was found in the other bale. When the Boston lawyer returned to Alabama to investigate, Virginia's husband told him everything. He and the Claytons had discovered Jasper assaulting Virginia on the plantation and carried him and the sergeant to the gin house. Quote,

The cotton was lying ready to be baled. We started the press and filled it. Into the middle of the bale of cotton went the wretch Jasper, begging like a hound to be killed first. But no, he went into the bale alive and was pressed with it. The other man, seeing the fate in store for him, shot himself while we were at the press and he was lying wounded on the ground. Then he went in the other bale. The Claytons then retained the bales with the excuse that they were waiting for a high price, but they were unrepentant. They had killed a Union soldier on Southern territory during wartime and one who had behaved

vilely despite their hospitality. I cannot blame you at all, said the lawyer, who returned to Boston and delivered Jasper's fortune to his heirs. I added, the whole thing is so melodramatic that I think it must be fiction, but the Constitution ran it as a news story with the notice, every particular of this incident can be verified by legal papers on file in Boston courts and by the testimony of witnesses yet living. I mentioned this on the first episode of the podcast and heard nothing more about it until just this fall when a listener named Alexa wrote in. She says, I recently discovered your podcast on YouTube and went back to listen to the first episode. I was intrigued by the story you mentioned about the remains of a Union soldier being found in a

cotton bale in Russia 30 years after the war, in large part because I've done enough Civil War research to figure I could probably verify or debunk at least some of the details in the story. So I went and read the post on your blog. And she was able to investigate it more ably than I was. She says, the National Park Service has a searchable database for Civil War soldiers on both sides. Based on these records, there was no Frederick Jasper of Massachusetts nor Clay Clayton of Alabama. Even when accounting for the likelihood that Clay could have just been a nickname based on Clayton, I couldn't find anybody surnamed Clayton from Alabama who was also a colonel. For good measure, I also checked the 1860 census for Frederick Jasper, Clay Clayton, and Virginia Clayton,

the sister in the story. Again, no dice. While there is still a slight possibility that everyone searchable in the story. Again, no dice. While there is still a slight possibility that everyone searchable in the story had the bad luck of having their names poorly transcribed or went by a nickname or middle name that doesn't show up in the official record, I find it incredibly unlikely. So thank you, Alexa, for that. I'll add that the newspaper ran this with no byline and no editorial comment or introduction, and as I say, the story itself touts its own accuracy. It ran on the same page with two ordinary items. One was about the Southern shorthand in business college and the other about the recent growth of East Decatur. So there was no indication that this was not an accurate story. And they claim that there was legal records and eyewitnesses. I mean, it's just kind of astounding.

But I think it's just also really cool that we finally heard back something about it one way or the other. I think it's a fitting item to run as the podcast comes to an end. It's literally the first story we ever covered. It appears three minutes into the first episode. Thanks again, Alexa. And we want to thank everyone who's been writing to us about our show ending. We've been really touched by all the well wishes and lovely sentiments that everyone's been sending.

We're sorry that we're not able to respond to everybody individually, but we have really appreciated everything that everyone sent. And as always, if you have anything that you want to say to us, you can send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an interesting sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener S. Wan. The identity of the youngest medalist in modern Olympic history is unknown. Why? Oh, interesting.

The identity of the youngest. Did they compete under a pseudonym? No. Is this a human? I wish I could say no, but yes. But the identity is unknown. So the person wasn't competing under a false identity or pretending to be somebody else? That's correct.

Okay, because maybe they were too young to actually compete, so they were using papers or something, pretending to be someone else. Do they know the age of the person? No. In the modern Olympics, does it matter what years that defines? No, actually, not particularly. Does it matter exactly when this occurred? No, and I'll tell you it was 1900. 1900, okay. But there wasn't anything else going on world events-wise that were germane that I need to worry about?

That's right. It could have been a different year. Yes. Does it matter where the Olympics took place? No. Does it matter what the nationality of the person was? No. Do they know the nationality of the person?

Not for sure, no, they don't. Not for sure. know the nationality of the person. Not for sure. No, they don't. Not for sure. So somebody won an event or meddled in an event. Was this a team event? Yes. They were competing as part of a team. Yes. So

was it that they just didn't have I don't know personal identification for everybody on the team? Or did they substitute somebody in on the team who wasn't supposed to be there? Those are two different questions. Those are two different questions. Okay.

Did they substitute somebody in on the team who wasn't supposed to be there? Yes. Or just who wasn't planned. Who wasn't planned. So they just didn't have that person listed, their credentials and everything. That's right. So do I need to figure out the sport that would help yes that would help okay is it the summer olympics yes okay uh is this one of the running things no like a relay race or something uh swimming no is this a sport that still happens today yes okay there were some weird sports we've been learning in some of the early Olympics, like painting and stuff.

Okay, so it was a team sport. Is it something that you would call, that we call normally like a game, something involving like a ball? I would say no. No, so it's not like soccer or anything like that. I'm trying to think. I don't want to make you guess your way to the answer. Gymnastics. I'm trying to think what they do in the Summer Olympics.

It was a team event. A team event. Is it one of these ones where you have to do multiple things like the decathlon or the pentathlon? No. And it's not running and it's not swimming and it's not gymnastics. I'm trying to think what other big summer events. Equestrian? I mean, what do they do in the Summer Olympics?

I'm trying to think whether to send you in a different direction or just to give this to you. Okay, because you said it might help if I knew what the event was. Yeah, I'm worried if I tell you the event, it'll be too much of an advantage. It'll be too obvious. But the change was made for a reason. For a reason. Okay.

Does it matter what the gender of the person was? No. Okay. You said it didn't matter where the Olympics took place. That's right. It was Paris, for the record. It was Paris. I had no idea.

Okay. What other events do you have? See, I don't really watch the Olympics. I'll tell you. It was rowing rowing oh see that would have taken me a week to get to rowing do they still have rowing in the olympics i believe so yeah i don't remember hearing about rowing um so it was rowing oh did they need a lighter person that is why it would be obvious if you told me but i would never guess rowing so they just suddenly needed somebody lighter in the boat so they need a lighter person? That is why it would be obvious if you told me, but I would never guess rowing. So they just suddenly needed somebody lighter in the boat,

so they picked a very young person or a rather young person. That's basically it. Yeah. At the Paris Olympics of 1900, the Dutch rowing team reached the final but wanted to find an advantage against their French opponents. So they replaced their coxswain, the 60-kilogram Hermanus Brockman, with a 33-kilogram boy who they found on the site. Oh, no.

The Dutch boat surged to an early lead and won by two-tenths of a second. The victorious team posed afterward for a photo, and this picture is the only known written or visual record of the boy, whose identity remains unknown. So he didn't actually, like, probably really contribute to the team very much. Well, he was a coxswain, at least nominally, he was guiding the boat. So he was contributing. And as I understand it, since he was part of the winning team, he was a medalist. He was a medalist. Yeah. Great. He's referred to as the unknown French boy, but it's not even clear that he was French. Very little is known about it. That's a really interesting story. That's a really interesting story.

So thanks to S for that puzzle. We'll be back next week with a whole episode full of lateral thinking puzzles. In the meantime, you can visit our website at futilitycloset.com to graze through Greg's gallimaufry of more than 12,000 frappant furlies. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the episode with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you'd like to reach us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's extonious brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.