The Pilot Who Wore a Dress

by Tom Cutler

  Taking into account the size of the boat and the density of the water, scientists worked out its buoyancy force, which, according to Archimedes’ principle, would be equal in weight to the volume of floodwater it displaced. They were then able to calculate the total mass the ark could support before it sank, and found that it would not have gone under. Whether it could have managed all that rain on top is another matter.

  Here are edited highlights of the story as told in Genesis 7, from the King James Version of the Bible.

  And the Lord said … Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth …

  And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth … And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights … and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth … And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters … and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered … And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

  The problem

  That’s the original account from the Bible. It’s a good story, even if you are unpersuaded of its literal truth. Now, here is the problem: how many animals, of both sexes, did Moses take on the ark? No going back and checking – that’s cheating.

  Tap here for the solution.

  Hospital assault

  The mystery

  Wilfred Stansbeard couldn’t get about on his own, and was in the specialist unit of a hospital somewhere in the United Kingdom. He was surrounded by a group of medical professionals, including specialist nurses, Mr Cutwell the surgeon and anaesthetist Dr Gasser, all highly trained and experienced.

  The procedure he was in for can be life-threatening but is generally routine and safe. Once it had been done, it was expected that Wilfred would have to be specially fed and that he would be weak for many months. He would need to be washed and dressed and was unlikely to be up on his feet for a long time, though progress would probably be steady.

  The time for the procedure arrived and it got under way in the usual fashion. It involved the use of a local anaesthetic, injected into the spine. The injection, though delicate, was accomplished successfully by Dr Gasser and all was proceeding normally. The patient was slightly dozy but conscious. Monitors bleeped. The patient’s heartbeat was regular. Breathing and pulse were as expected. Voices were quiet and the progress of the procedure was monitored and recorded.

  An incision was made and the operation continued to plan, but suddenly things began to happen very fast, the surgeon Mr Cutwell became intensely absorbed in what he was doing and called out for help; nurses moved swiftly, handing him implements. He was now giving authoritative instructions.

  Then, before anyone knew what was happening, Mr Cutwell began repeatedly and deliberately hitting the defenceless Wilfred with his bare hands until he cried out in distress.

  The nurses around seemed unconcerned at Mr Cutwell’s attitude and a couple of them were smiling and chuckling as they watched this senior surgical professional with a wall full of awards and qualifications deliberately assault a person under his care.

  Mr Cutwell declined to explain himself to the staff or to Wilfred at any time and, in fact, studiously avoided saying anything to him for the duration of his period in hospital, except on the day of his departure in a special bed, when he blew a loud raspberry at him.

  This was not the first time this sort of thing had happened, either. This particular surgeon was responsible for many of these procedures and several times before had been seen hitting those he had a duty to look after.

  The problem

  Mr Cutwell was not an orthopaedic surgeon knocking bones about. How could he, a trained surgeon, treat a defenceless person this inhumane-looking way?

  Tap here for the solution.

  The two Italians

  The mystery

  Recently, the painting ‘Woman with a Yellow Dog’ by Andrew Wyeth, which hangs in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was revealed to be a fake by Italian forger Sofonisba Battista. Battista (1937–87) was an Italian who claimed to have forged more than 1,000 paintings by many different artists.

  Born into a poor family in Milan, Battista taught himself to draw using home-made charcoal and paper scraps. In the fifties he made a small living restoring paintings for collectors but was also obliged to work as a dustman to make ends meet. He tried exhibiting his own paintings but they lacked all originality. Apart from a facile aptitude for painting in almost any style, his work was without any artistic merit and he found himself snubbed by the art market.

  In revenge, Battista began to forge paintings by famous artists. These were snapped up by the same galleries who had disdained his original work, and he began making a lot of money.

  By his third year as a forger he was grinding out paintings like sausages, often to match old frames that he had bought at auction. He said that even a bad forgery in the right frame would convince the so-called ‘experts’.

  Battista claimed that the Wallace Collection’s ‘Circe and Her Lovers’, by Titian, the National Gallery’s ‘Blatchington Windmill in the Mist’, by Constable, and the Pompidou Centre’s ‘Carrot Boxes’ by Andy Warhol are all actually fakes by himself. In 1982 he suggested that the galleries X-ray the paintings, to reveal his signature in lead white below the surface paint. They all declined.

  In 2015 a London auctioneer noticed that seventeen paintings by Salvador Dalí were on the market, all depicting an identical theme, ‘Clocks Melting on a Staircase’. At the same time a schoolboy visiting a gallery showing one of these Dalí paintings pointed out that it was signed, very small but visibly, ‘Sofonisba Battista’. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again.

  Forger Battista confessed that the paintings were his and said he had included clues in all of them, the signature being only the most obvious. He told the press that he had produced the paintings as a protest against art dealers, ‘who get rich at the artist’s expense. They can’t tell real from fake even when it’s obvious,’ he added. ‘I’m hopeless at Dalí.’

  To decide whether any or all of these paintings were by Dalí or, embarrassingly, by Battista, the London gallery called upon the services of two specialists in forgery, one a professor of Chemistry, with a specialist expertise in pigment and canvas manufacture, the other a professor of Art History, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the work of Dalí and five influential books on Surrealism to his name. Both taught at famous universities, both had stratospheric CVs, and both were Italian.

  The two Italians turned up at the London gallery and, declining British coffee, were ushered into the back rooms where the conservators do their business. After a quick look at the picture in question, the Italians decided to roll up their sleeves and knuckle down.

  Taking their bags, they went into the changing room, which had a coat rack, a bench and a few lockers. They removed their street clothes, bantering with each other, as men do in a locker room.

  The strange thing was that although one of the Italian experts was wearing beneath his suit a normal outfit of boxer shorts and undershirt, the other was wearing a woman’s bra (white and cream), frilly panties (white), stockings (stocking coloured) and suspender belt (white).

  This was the first time that the two had met together in this way, yet neither remarked on the discrepancy in their clothing, and neither seemed remotely embarrassed by it.

  Anyway, they got dressed, and cracked on with their work.

  The problem

&n
bsp; Why should an Italian professor, who is not a transvestite, wear an outfit of very obvious women’s lingerie, and not be embarrassed to change in front of an academic colleague? And why is this man not surprised to see it?

  Tap here for the solution.

  House painting made simple

  The mystery

  Frank Copper Sr runs a successful domestic building firm on the south coast of England. He works with a team of associate craftsmen: plumbers, joiners, bricklayers and electricians. Frank also works with his son, Frank Copper Jr, who will be taking over the firm in due course, when his dad retires to concentrate on zooming around on his motorbike.

  The Coppers’ own houses take quite a bashing from the seaside weather, what with the salty winds blowing in straight off the English Channel, so they maintain their properties religiously and paint them regularly. And, of course, they are experts, so they get the job done efficiently.

  Frank Jr’s house was painted last year, so this time it’s the turn of Frank Sr’s house to get a facelift. The trouble is that they are so busy looking after other people’s houses that they have little time to do their own.

  Despite their hectic schedule, Frank Sr decides that, if they work together solidly over one weekend, they will have just enough time to prepare and paint two exterior walls of his house. The following weekend they can paint the two remaining outside walls, including drainpipes and woodwork, so that at the end of a fortnight all four exterior walls of the house will have been done.

  But Frank Jr has a better idea. He suggests that they should paint just one side of the house. Frank Sr is bemused. ‘But won’t that leave three walls unpainted?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ says Junior. ‘Just you wait and see.’

  Frank Sr decides that if he is going to pass on the business to his son he had better be prepared to accept some of his radical ideas, even if they sound incredible. ‘Well, OK, let’s try it,’ he says. ‘But if it all goes wrong we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’ Frank Jr agrees, and his father notices an enigmatic twinkle in his eye.

  The weekend comes. The weather is fine and the two Franks are looking forward to polishing off the job using Junior’s novel scheme.

  They first prepare one side of the house, rubbing down woodwork, filling cracks and gaps, and fixing up this and that. It takes about a day, but they finish at 5 p.m. and are able to enjoy dinner out at a favourite curry restaurant.

  On Sunday they start early and by the end of the day they are halfway through the job, just as Frank Jr predicted. Things are looking good, though everyone Frank Sr tells about the idea is puzzled. How can they get the work finished by next Sunday if they continue to paint just one side of the house?

  The following weekend, the two Franks work like stink, and complete the job on the dot, on their own and with no help, rinsing the last brush at 5.30.

  They stand back to survey their work. Set against the rising slope of the South Downs National Park the house looks a picture. The golden summer sunlight casts long shadows across the lawn and various neighbours stop to lean on the wall and compliment Frank Sr on a job very well done.

  The publican of The Neptune is having an evening off from behind the bar and he stops for a chat. He looks at the front of the house and admires the quality of the job. ‘Smashing!’ he says. ‘It looks dandy.’

  ‘You’ll never believe it,’ says Frank Sr, ‘but even though the work looks complete from here, we’ve actually only painted one side of the house. It was Junior’s idea.’

  The publican looks at him in disbelief. ‘I’m impressed,’ he says. ‘I can see young Frank is going to go far.’ And he is right.

  The problem

  Frank Sr and Frank Jr have painted only one side of Frank Sr’s house yet they’ve completed the whole job and Frank Sr is very happy with it. Nobody else has painted any of the house, but each and every wall looks as good as new, as if it has been freshly painted, which it has been. How is this possible?

  Tap here for the solution.

  The absent-minded taxi driver

  The mystery

  The first London taxi service was provided in the early 17th century by so-called ‘hackney carriages’, horse-drawn vehicles numbering fewer than fifty in the early years. The derivation of the curious name ‘hackney carriage’ is lost in the London fogs of history, but may come from the village of Hackney, which is now a well-known part of the city.

  In the early 19th century cabriolets (cabs) replaced the heavier hackney carriages, and the first petrol-powered taxis appeared in 1903, with meters being introduced four years later to work out the proper fare. Nowadays, the licensed black cab is famous around the world as the best taxi service anywhere.

  Black cabs are firmly regulated. The licensing body is the Public Carriage Office, and it awards licences only to those who have completed a gruelling test known as ‘The Knowledge of London’, or just ‘The Knowledge’.

  The Knowledge was introduced in 1865 and it has hardly changed since. It is a long and thoroughgoing process of self-education, during which the trainee cab driver must drive around on a motor scooter, learning London inside out. A cabbie once told me that doing The Knowledge was like studying for two degrees at the same time.

  A London taxi driver must be able to decide immediately the most direct route to anywhere, without consulting a map. The Knowledge therefore involves memorising some 25,000 streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross, such that the taxi driver knows the most efficient route to follow, without having to think.

  It takes about three years to do The Knowledge, and successful cabbies take a pride in their familiarity with the entire capital. They have a magnetic brain for geographic information and will probably be able to take you from the headquarters of the Magic Circle to Vincent Van Gogh’s London House in SW9 without you having to give them either address.

  But this doesn’t mean they never make mistakes.

  One day, not so long ago, a policeman was standing in Albemarle Street, in Mayfair, near London’s Green Park. Albemarle Street is famous for a number of things. The well-known Brown’s Hotel is here, for example, as is the Albemarle Club, where in 1895 the Marquess of Queensberry left a calling card for Oscar Wilde, who he believed was corrupting his son. He famously scribbled on the back of the card, ‘For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite’ (sic). This resulted in Wilde’s unsuccessful libel action and criminal prosecution, the court finding that Queensberry’s illiterate allegation was ‘true in substance and in fact’.

  Albemarle Street is also one-way. In fact it was London’s first ever one-way street. So it was ironic that the police officer in Albemarle Street that day should see a taxi driver clearly going the wrong way down this famously one-way thoroughfare, against the flow of traffic. The cab driver, who was smoking a cigarette and staring into his mobile phone, seemed oblivious.

  The policeman, who you might think ought to have known better, merely smiled as he passed, and did not try to stop him.

  The problem

  Why did the policeman take no action against the taxi driver who was going the wrong way down a one-way street? He didn’t know him, or owe him anything, there was no change to the one-way rule on the street, and he was particularly hot on penalising drivers disobeying the law.

  Tap here for the solution.

  Plane crash in no man’s land

  The mystery

  ‘No man’s land’ is the name for disputed territory between two opposing lines of enemy trenches. The term goes back to 1320, when it was spelled nonesmanneslond. Nowadays ‘no man’s land’ is mainly used to refer to any area of unoccupied land between the opposing sides during the First World War. No man’s lands (if that’s the right plural) were often snarled with barbed wire and sprinkled with gigantic land mines and corpses, and no soldier from either side was keen to enter for fear of a whiz-bang taking his noddle off.

  Because of the long stalemates, in which neither side was able to move forward
without risking thousands of casualties, it was during the First World War that aircraft began to be used in combat for the first time. Large biplanes containing a pilot and an observer were able to plot enemy positions from the air. Bombers could then target their supply bases behind the lines.

  It was little more than a decade since the Wright brothers had made the first powered flight, so the new military planes were large and slow, making them easy targets for fighter aircraft. There were countless crashes and deaths on both sides, though many fewer than if soldiers had tried to cross no man’s land on foot in the teeth of enemy fire.

  Perhaps the most notable of these plane crashes occurred on the Western Front in November 1917, when five German Albatros D.IIIs came down in no man’s land, along with two British aircraft.

  Except for one German pilot and one British pilot, everyone was killed. The crash site was close enough to the British trenches for stretcher-bearers to bring back the bodies and the two injured men were immediately attended to by the orderlies of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

  As some of the dead were German and others British there was an argument about the proper site for burial. It was decided that no man’s land was not a fit place to inter the dead, so a German chaplain and a British chaplain met to decide between them exactly what they would do.

  The problem

  Once the sick had been treated, where did the British and German chaplains decide the survivors should be buried?

  Tap here for the solution.

  The strange story of Antony and Cleopatra

  The mystery