Futility Closet

In 1857 guests at Washington D.C.'s National Hotel began to come down with a mysterious illness. One of them was James Buchanan, who was preparing to assume the presidency of the United States. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the deadly outbreak and the many theories that were offered to explain it. We'll also contemplate timpani and puzzle over an Old West astronaut. Intro: The words overnervousnesses and overnumerousnesses are vertically compact. Harvard mathematician George Birkhoff reduced the principle underlying beauty to a formula. Sources for our feature on the National Hotel Disease: Kerry Walters, Outbreak in Washington, D.C.: The 1857 Mystery of the National Hotel Disease, 2014. George Alfred Townsend, Washington, Outside and Inside, 1874. Ruth D. Reichard, "A 'National Distemper': The National Hotel Sickness of 1857, Public Health and Sanitation, and the Limits of Rationality," Journal of Planning History 15:3 (August 2016), 175-190. Brian D. Crane, "Filth, Ga