by Lewis, Dan
The Germans bought into Martin’s persona, “determining” that he was on a flight from Britain to Gibraltar to deliver the sensitive documents—a belief strengthened by the June 4 death notice in the Times. German leadership shuffled their defenses to buttress their positions in Greece, Sardinia, and Corsica, leaving Sicily mostly unguarded. When Allied forces invaded Sicily on July 9, the Nazis thought it was a feint, as the documents suggested; by the time the Germans reinforced the island on July 12, it was too late. Roughly two weeks later, the Axis began their retreat from the island.
BONUS FACT
Famed baseball manager Billy Martin wasn’t a William Martin. His real name was Alfred Manuel Martin Jr., but Alfred Sr., his father, skipped town when Billy was very young. Around the same time, Billy’s maternal grandmother started calling him “Bello”—the Italian-masculine for “beautiful”—and Billy’s mother, Joan, adopted “Billy” as his nickname. Because of Joan’s hatred for her ex-husband, she hid Billy’s true name from him; according to Wikipedia, it was not until Billy started school that he learned his true name. When the teacher called “Alfred Martin,” Billy ignored her, believing that she was referring to someone else.
BAT BOMB
USING BATS IN UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE
During the final days of World War II, the United States, apparently believing that Japan was unlikely to surrender otherwise, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The death toll from these two bombs numbered as high as 250,000 when one factors in those people who died up to four months later due to burns and radiation sickness. Research into the creation of an atomic bomb began in 1939, and the Manhattan Project, which developed the science behind the weapons in earnest, began in June 1942. But in March 1943, the United States was developing another weapon that would have spared many thousands of lives.
Unless, that is, you count the lives of the millions of bats that would have died in the process.
In the mid-1940s, many Japanese buildings were still constructed out of wood and paper, which, of course, were flammable. If the United States Army could figure out a way to start fires in a large number of buildings spread out over a wide area, the Japanese infrastructure and economy would suffer but the direct loss of life would be relatively small. But that seemed impossible. Napalm strikes could start fires everywhere, but they wouldn’t spread. Carpet-bombing with many small warheads would increase the area of the strike but most likely wouldn’t cause many fires. And of course, the death toll from either of those routes could still be large.
But a few months before the Manhattan Project got underway, a dental surgeon named Lytle Adams came up with the idea to use bats—those nocturnal flying mammals—as part of the strategy. As he would later tell Air Force Magazine, after seeing millions of bats flying around caves in Carlsbad Canyon in New Mexico, he immediately thought that they could be used as a way to spread firebombs throughout Japan. He collected a few of them himself, did a little research, and found that even tiny bats weighing well under a pound could carry three times their weight in explosives. He pitched his plan to the military (a procedure that was apparently not uncommon at the time) and the brass agreed that this was something to look into.
Adams’s theory was straightforward. Collect a million bats and strap timed incendiary devices to their backs while they hibernate. Stick a thousand of them each into a thousand bombs designed to open at high altitudes. Fly over Japan at night, drop the bombs, and then let the bats fly around. When daybreak comes, the theory went, the bats will hide in dark places—and given where they are, the most common hiding place will be attics. The timer ticks down and shortly after, without obvious explanations, hundreds of thousands of Japanese buildings start to burn to the ground.
The idea soon became more than a theory. By March 1943, the U.S. military had identified a suitable population of bats, having located a series of caves in Texas that were home to millions of the flying critters. For the next year or so, at the expense of $2 million ($25 million in today’s dollars), they tested Adams’s theory. Except for one major problem—at one point, some bats got loose resulting in a major fire at the base—the military believed that the bat bombs could actually work. One report placed their effectiveness at ten to thirty times more effective (measured by the number of fires they would start) than conventional incendiary devices.
But the final report on the bat bombs issued in mid-1944, though positive, noted that they would not be ready for combat for another year. Due to the slow timetable, the military canceled the project before it could be fully developed.
BONUS FACT
Bats eat insects (among other things), including malaria-carrying mosquitoes. In the 1920s, a researcher named Charles Campbell proposed building “bat towers” that would provide a roost for bats during the day so they could feast on the mosquitoes at night. An active one exists at the University of Florida, but the most famous one is probably the Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower in the Florida Keys. A fish lodge owner named Richard Perky built the Sugarloaf tower in 1928 with much fanfare—and one big problem. According to Atlas Obscura, when Perky put the bats into the tower, they flew off to find some bugs to eat—and never came back.
BEATING THE BOMB
THE MAN WHO SURVIVED HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI
Twenty-nine-year-old Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima, Japan, about to return home from a business trip, when he realized that he’d left his hanko—a personal seal used for endorsing documents—back at the office. His return trip was interrupted by history. The U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; its center of impact was fewer than two miles from where Yamaguchi’s walk took him. Nearly 140,000 people died in the explosion but Yamaguchi survived. The force of the blast knocked him to the ground, permanently destroyed his left eardrum, temporarily blinded him, and caused severe burns across part of his body. Nevertheless, after seeking shelter, he managed to return to his hometown for treatment the next day.
Two days later, Yamaguchi—still bandaged and deaf in his left ear—returned to work. He was recounting the events of the Hiroshima bombing with a supervisor when the images he saw just a few days earlier began to appear before him again. But Yamaguchi was not suffering from a flashback. He worked in Nagasaki, and he was, again, fewer than two miles from the point of impact of an atomic bomb.
And again, he survived. This time, he did so with no new injuries, although the explosion ruined his bandages from the first blast and caused him to run a fever.
Yamaguchi is the only person recognized by the Japanese government to be a double hibakusha, the term given to survivors of the atomic bomb drops. (Hibakushas are entitled to a specific kind of government support.) Probably, in total, between 100 and 300 people survived both blasts, but only Yamaguchi has thus far earned the distinction.
His health, after the blasts and radiation exposures, was decidedly mixed. He wore bandages for most of his young adult life, lost hearing in his left ear (as noted above), and went bald. His children all believe that they, too, inherited health problems caused by the radiation. However, Yamaguchi was (after a long recovery) able to return to work and live a relatively normal life—and a long one at that. He passed away in January 2013 at age ninety-three.
BONUS FACT
Some call Yamaguchi the world’s luckiest person for having survived both bombs. If so, what does that make Kathleen Caronna? During the 1997 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, a Cat in the Hat balloon escaped its handlers, knocking over a lamppost. According to an account in The New York Times, the lamppost struck Caronna in the head, sending her into a coma for nearly a month. Nine years later, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into an apartment building overlooking the East River, killing him and his flight instructor. The plane’s engine landed in one of the apartments—owned by Kathleen Caronna. This time, she wasn’t harmed, as she wasn’t home, but the apartment’s bedroom was destroyed by the ensuing fire.
BEATING THE ODDS
The running joke is that the lottery is a tax on those who can’t do math. But on occasion, we see the opposite—people who are very, very strong in math not only play the lottery but also walk away with their pockets flush with newfound money.
Cash WinFall is a rather generic lottery game in Massachusetts. Pick six numbers out of forty-six. Get them all correct, win the jackpot. There are prizes for getting two numbers right (a free ticket), three ($5), four ($150), and five ($4,000) as well—in total, your odds of winning something are better than 1:7. Drawings are held twice a week (Monday and Thursday) and tickets cost $2 each. The jackpot begins at $500,000, but if no one wins it—and it has only been won once in the game’s history—it progressively increases until it hits $2 million, when it is reset.
The state makes more than $10 million each year on the game. And a few times each year, as reported by The Boston Globe, a bunch of players also make out like bandits. The details are a bit hazy as those who beat the game are loathe to talk about it. But the basic story is as follows.
When the pot breaks that $2 million ceiling but goes unclaimed, it gets reset to $500,000 for the subsequent drawing. But instead of simply resetting the $2 million jackpot to $500,000 and keeping the $1.5 million (or more) overage, the state rolls the excess money into the secondary prizes. During these “rolldowns,” the secondary prizes can, and have, hit ridiculous amounts, depending on the amount of excess money in the pot and the number of tickets purchased for the rolldown drawing.
Take, for example, the payouts as of July 14, 2011. Because of the nearly $1.9 million of excess money available, and because relatively few tickets were sold, all the secondary prizes were greatly increased. Instead of winning $5 for hitting three of six numbers, you would win $26. Instead of winning $150 for hitting four of six numbers, you’d get $802. Instead of winning $4,000 for hitting five of six, you’d cash out to the tune of $19,507. (And historically, that’s a low amount for a rolldown; once, the five-out-of-six prize was more than $100,000.)
Say you spend $100,000 on the tickets, each $2. That’s 50,000 entries. The odds of getting four of six numbers correct are about 1:800, so you will roughly break even from that alone. You’ll hit three or six about 1,000 times—that’s $26,000. And you may hit that five of six mini-jackpot once or even twice, adding another $25,000 to $100,000 to your saving account—and yes, that is on top of the $100,000 you have already recouped.
And this is exactly what some people are doing. A statistical rundown suggests that purchasing that same $100,000 all but guarantees breaking even, at worst (unless someone wins the $2 million-plus grand prize, in which case there’s no rolldown from which to benefit). One couple, the Selbees—who run a gambling/investment firm out of Western Michigan—spent more than $300,000 on Cash WinFall tickets just before the July 14 drawing. It was not the first time the Selbees tried to exploit the rolldown drawing: To date, they have claimed over $1 million in prizes.
The lottery has taken some measures—for example, limiting the number of tickets a person can purchase at one time—to prevent this loophole from being further abused. (And the press and visibility around the opportunity should take care of it, regardless.)
BONUS FACT
In 1999, a New Yorker named Jesus Leonardo was eking out a living doing odd jobs, painting homes, and cleaning windows. On occasion, he’d try his luck, though—not at the lottery, but on the ponies. He’d go to a New York City OTB—off-track (horse) betting—establishment and place a wager or two. One night, like many before, he threw away his losing tickets. But that night, a correction came over the wire a short time after, turning one of his losers into a $900 winner. Unfortunately, the ticket was in the garbage, and without the ticket, he was unable to cash out his winnings. The OTB manager allowed him to sift through the hundreds of discarded tickets that evening, and although Leonardo did not find his ticket, he found two others worth a total of $2,000. He spent the next ten years doing more of the same, turning ticket sifting into his full-time job. It paid him, on average, about $40,000 to $50,000 a year. (Leonardo has since moved on; New York’s OTB shut down at the end of 2010.)
TURNING YELLOW INTO GOLD
HOW TO WIN AT THE TRACK (KIND OF)
In the book Bringing Down the House, author Ben Mezrich recounts the story of a group of blackjack players, many from MIT, who systematically took casinos for millions of dollars. The blackjack team’s system, which requires solid math skills, is designed more to avoid casinos’ rules than to exploit the rules of blackjack itself. If anything, the book best demonstrates how buttoned up the gambling world is when it comes to loopholes, aiming to ensure that you can’t beat the house.
But that doesn’t stop people from trying—and, on occasion, succeeding.
In the 1970s, Barney Curley was a gambler known well in betting circles around Northern Ireland and throughout the Emerald Isle. Looking for an edge, he concocted a scheme that would not only end up working, but worked so well that Irish bookmakers ended up changing their betting rules. It started when he realized that one particular Irish horse racing venue only had one phone line, and it led to a public pay phone.
Curley raised a horse named Yellow Sam and had its trainer prepare it for a specific race at the track in question, Bellewstown, located about a forty-five-minute drive north of Dublin. The decision to focus the horse on this particular race, combined with the fact that the targeted race typically featured amateur jockeys, meant Yellow Sam would have an excellent chance at winning.
But the real money wasn’t in winning the race’s prize purse. Curley could make much more by betting on his horse to win, especially if the bookmakers put Yellow Sam as a prohibitive underdog. Curley’s plan helped make that happen. Before running at Bellewstown, Yellow Sam raced in a handful of events, all under bad conditions, and fared poorly. The gambit worked. The horse developed a reputation as being slow and not that competitive, and when Yellow Sam was entered in the race at Bellewstown, it started as a 20-to-1 underdog.
Under-handicapping horses, as this error is called, is nothing new, and odds makers have a long-standing system to account for it. As bets come in, the odds makers adjust the handicap to reflect the betting activity; that’s why the odds on any given sporting event change over time. Most bookies wouldn’t accept very large bets from unknown gamblers or, even worse, from known professionals such as Curley. He needed a way to get a lot of small bets entered without the bets being communicated back to the odds makers at the track—which is why Bellewstown was selected. In the end, that single pay phone was the key to the operation.
Race day was June 26, 1975. Leveraging his network of friends, family, and even hiring some others, Curley distributed his life savings—roughly £15,000 Irish pounds—to his compatriots. He gave each of them between £50 and £300 and a sealed envelope with instructions. Curley sent them to bookmakers’ offices in their locales. Ten minutes before the race began, each of the bettors placed wagers on Yellow Sam to win.
Fifteen minutes earlier—unbeknownst to the off-site accomplices—another of Curley’s friends faked a family emergency. The friend, Benny O’Hanlon, walked into the phone booth and pretended to call his “dying aunt,” offering her solace in her final moments. No one was willing to force O’Hanlon off the phone, thereby precluding the off-site bookmaking offices from reconciling the wagers before them. When the race started, Yellow Sam remained a 20-to-1 underdog, and, of course, won. Curley’s £15,000 investment earned him £300,000, or, accounting for inflation and exchange rates, about $2.25 million in early 2013 money.
Because the operation was entirely legal, albeit sneaky, the bookmarkers were obligated to pay Curley his winnings. They did so in £1 notes, filling over 100 bags with cash. And, to prevent others from abusing this loophole in the future, bets of greater than £100 now must be placed at least thirty minutes before the race begins.
BONUS FACT
Voltaire, the French writ
er and philosopher, was quite wealthy—and garnered his wealth in a manner similar to Curley’s. From 1728 to 1730, the French government created a lottery intended as a fundraiser. Voltaire (then in his mid-thirties) and a colleague realized that the government had made a mistake—the prize pool was larger than the amount of francs it would take to purchase all the tickets. So the two set off to buy as many lottery tickets as they could. Voltaire earned roughly 1 million francs in the gambit.
SABLE’S STABLE
AN ISLAND OF TINY HORSES
Travel about 150 miles southeast from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and you’ll hit something: Sable Island. You may not see it coming—positioned precariously on the northern Atlantic edge of the North American continental shelf, Sable Island is a small, treeless crescent of sand. At its widest point it runs not quite a mile and is only thirteen square miles in area. No one has been born there since 1920 and, except for a handful of transient researchers, no one lives there, either.
Unless you count the few hundred horses.
Sable Island is home to 350 to 400 short, stocky horses, which over generations have found ways to thrive in the unfriendly terrain they call home. No one owns them—they’re feral and roam the island freely.