Futility Closet

005-Mailing People, Alien Shorthand, and Benjamin Franklin


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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 Georgia sky in 1887, and present the next Futility Closet Challenge.

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Futility ClosetBy Greg Ross

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