Futility Closet

In 1864 Nevada mining merchant Reuel Gridley found a unique way to raise money for wounded Union soldiers: He repeatedly auctioned the same 50-pound sack of flour, raising $250,000 from sympathetic donors across the country. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll discover the origins of Gridley's floury odyssey. We'll also hear H.L. Mencken's translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English and try to figure out where tourism increases the price of electricity. Sources for our story on Reuel Gridley and the flour auction: Ralph Lea and Christi Kennedy, "Reuel Gridley and a Sack of Flour," Lodi [Calif.] News-Sentinel, Sept. 30, 2005. Mark Twain, Roughing It, 1872. Here's his monument, in the Stockton Rural Cemetery in California: Image: Wikimedia Commons The empty flour sack is in the collection of the Nevada Historical Society. "The Declaration of Independence in American," by H.L. Mencken, from The American Language, 1921: When things get so balled up that the people of a c