260-The Rugged Road
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2019
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1934, two Englishwomen set out to do what no one had ever done before: travel the length of Africa on a motorcycle. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron from Algiers to Cape Town on a 14,000-mile adventure that many had told them was impossible.
We'll also anticipate some earthquakes and puzzle over a daughter's age.
Intro:
Among the survivors of the Titanic were two boys who were unclaimed by any adult.
In 1638, Galileo saw through a mistake in Aristotle simply by thinking about it.
Sources for our feature on Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron's trans-African odyssey:
Theresa Wallach, The Rugged Road, 2001.
Steven E. Alford and Suzanne Ferriss, Motorcycle, 2007.
Iain Burns, "The British Women Who Conquered the Sahara," Daily Mail, Jan. 22, 2018.
Miles Davis, "Incredible Journeys," Walneck's Classic Cycle Trader 267 (June 2006), 143-145.
"Theresa Wallach – Motorcycle Pioneer of the 1930s," Archives Blog, Institution of Engineering and Technology (accessed July 28, 2019).
"Through Africa by Motor-Cycle (1934-1935)," Africa Overland Network, July 9, 2014.
Listener mail:
Wikipedia, "Earthquake Warning System" (accessed July 27, 2019).
Wikipedia, "Earthquake Early Warning (Japan)" (accessed July 27, 2019).
Wikipedia, "Mexican Seismic Alert System" (accessed August 1, 2019).
Wikipedia, "2017 Puebla Earthquake" (accessed August 1, 2019).
"Earthquake Early Warning System," Japan Meteorological Agency.
Sarah E. Minson, et al., "The Limits of Earthquake Early Warning Accuracy and Best Alerting Strategy: Discussion," Scientific Reports 9:1 (Feb. 21, 2019), 2478.
Sarah E. Minson, et al., "The Limits of Earthquake Early Warning: Timeliness of Ground Motion Estimates," Science Advances 4:3 (March 21, 2018), eaaq0504.
"Earthquake Early Warning," United States Geological Survey.
"Earthquake Early Warning: Background," United States Geological Survey.
Mary Halton, "How Effective Are Earthquake Early Warning Systems?," BBC News, March 24, 2018.
Jonathan Amos, "Are Mexico's Two September Earthquakes Connected?," BBC News, Sept. 20, 2017.
"How Did Mexico's Early Warning System Perform During Recent Earthquakes?," Seismological Society of America, Feb. 7, 2018.
"False Earthquake Warning Panics Japan," BBC, Jan. 5, 2018.
Richard M. Allen, et al., "Lessons From Mexico's Earthquake Early Warning System," Eos, Sept. 17, 2018.
Mary Beth Griggs, "LA's Earthquake Warning System Worked — Just Not How People Expected," The Verge, July 5, 2019.
Emily Baumgaertner, "L.A.'S ShakeAlert Earthquake Warning App Worked Exactly as Planned. That's the Problem," Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2019.
Alex Dobuzinskis, "California Expanding Early Quake Detection and Warning System," Reuters, July 9, 2019.
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Paul Schoeps.
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.
Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.
Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:14.6 | Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from the orphans of the Titanic to Aristotle's mistake. This is |
| 0:22.8 | episode 260. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1934, two English women set out to do what |
| 0:30.6 | no one had ever done before, travel the length of Africa on a motorcycle. In today's show, we'll |
| 0:36.5 | follow Teresa Wallach and Florence Blankiron from Algiers to Cape Town on a motorcycle. In today's show, we'll follow Teresa Wallach and Florence Blank Iron from |
| 0:39.1 | Algiers to Cape Town on a 14,000-mile adventure that many had told them was impossible. We'll also |
| 0:46.3 | anticipate some earthquakes and puzzle over a daughter's age. When Teresa Wallach first saw a motorcycle, she said, I got a message from it. |
| 1:00.6 | It was a feeling, the kind of thing that makes a person burst into tears hearing a piece of music or standing awestruck in front of a fine work of art. |
| 1:08.1 | Motorcycling is a tool with which you can accomplish something meaningful in |
| 1:11.1 | your life. It is an art. Unfortunately, she'd been born in 1909, in Buckinghamshire, and her parents |
| 1:17.3 | disapproved of her interest in engineering and travel, which she'd inherited from her father. |
| 1:21.9 | She dreamed of visiting Africa, the Grand Canyon, and Paris, but they expected her to become |
| 1:26.1 | a dutiful homemaker, as did her school |
| 1:28.0 | and her friends. But in 1928, her father agreed to let her pursue a course in mechanical engineering |
| 1:33.1 | at the University of London, and there she made friends with other motorcycle enthusiasts, and one of them |
| 1:38.0 | taught her to ride. She started wearing unlady-like trousers because her skirt would flap in the |
| 1:43.1 | wind. Her parents disapproved |
| 1:44.6 | of that, too, but she didn't tell them the reason. She bought a secondhand motorcycle and kept it |
| 1:49.3 | hidden in an old shed, and she'd time her arrival at the house to make it look as if she'd taken |
| 1:53.7 | the train. But she couldn't hide her dreams forever. Eventually, she revealed the motorcycle to her |
| 1:58.7 | parents. They asked her to abandon it, and she left home. |
| 2:02.0 | She wrote later, If you were not going to be like everyone else, you had to have the courage to go ahead alone. |
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