Futility Closet

Forgotten stories from the pages of history. Join us for surprising and curious tales from the past and challenge yourself with our lateral thinking puzzles.

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Episodes

005-Mailing People, Alien Shorthand, and Benjamin Franklin

Henry Brown found a unique way to escape slavery: He mailed himself to Pennsylvania. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll accompany Brown on his perilous 1849 journey from Richmond to Philadelphia, follow a 5-year-old Idaho girl who was mailed to her grandparents in 1914, and delve deeper into a mysterious lion sighting in Illinois in 1917. We'll also decode a 200-year-old message enciphered by Benjamin Franklin, examine an engraved ball reputed to have fallen out of the G...

Apr 14, 2014•32 min•Ep. 5

004-Mystery Airships, Marauding Lions, and Nancy Drew

In 1896 a strange wave of airship sightings swept Northern California; the reports of strange lights in the sky created a sensation that would briefly engulf the rest of the country. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine some of the highlights of this early "UFO" craze, including the mysterious role of a San Francisco attorney who claimed to have the answer to it all. We'll also examine the surprising role played by modern art in disguising World War I merchant ship...

Apr 07, 2014•35 min•Ep. 4

003-Extreme Pedestrians, Kangaroo Stew, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In 1926, a woman named Lillian Alling grew disenchanted with her life as a maid in New York City and resolved to return to her native Russia. She lacked the funds to sail east, so instead she walked west -- trekking 6,000 miles alone across the breadth of Canada and into Alaska. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll consider Alling's lonely, determined journey, compare it to the efforts of other long-distance pedestrians, and suggest a tool to plot your own virtual journey...

Mar 31, 2014•35 min•Ep. 3

002-Mass Hysteria, Airborne Sheepdogs and Mark Twain's Brother

As skywatchers prepared for the return of Halley's comet in 1910, they heard some alarming scientific predictions: Poisonous gases in the comet's tail might "snuff out all life on the planet," "leaving the burnt and drenched Earth no other atmosphere than the nitrogen now present in the air." How should a responsible citizen evaluate a dire prediction by a minority of experts? In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we explore the Halley's hysteria, remember the alarming predictio...

Mar 24, 2014•29 min•Ep. 2

001-Calendar Reform, Doll Mansions, and Hitchcock's Vertigo

Will New Year's Day fall on a weekend in the year 2063? If calendar reformer Moses Cotsworth had succeeded, anyone in the world could have answered that question instantly -- any of us could name the day of the week on which any future date would fall, no matter how distant. In Episode 1 of the Futility Closet podcast, we examine Cotsworth's plan and discover how it found a home inside one well-known American company. We also look at how an antique dollhouse offers a surprising window into 17th-...

Mar 14, 2014•31 min•Ep. 1

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