Futility Closet

One night in 1631, pirates from the Barbary coast stole ashore at the little Irish village of Baltimore and abducted 107 people to a life of slavery in Algiers -- a rare instance of African raiders seizing white slaves from the British Isles. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the sack of Baltimore and the new life that awaited the captives in North Africa. We'll also save the Tower of London and puzzle over a controversial number. Intro: In 1999, inventor Allison Andrews proposed dividing all our pants in half. In 1955, test pilot Alvin Johnston put an airliner through a barrel roll. Sources for our feature on the sack of Baltimore: Des Ekin, The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates, 2012. Nabil Matar, British Captives From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 2014. David D. Hebb, Piracy and the English Government 1616–1642: Policy-Making Under the Early Stuarts, 2016. Sir Robert Lambert Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom: Annals of British Relations With Algie