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\\nOn Feb. 9, 1855, the residents of Devon in southern England awoke to find a bewildering set of footprints in the newfallen snow. "These are to be found in fields, gardens, roads, house-tops, & other likely and unlikely places, deeply embedded in snow," ran one contemporary account. "The shape was a hoof."
\\nIn this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we\'ll examine the surviving descriptions of the odd marks and consider the various explanations that have been offered. We\'ll also revisit the compassionate Nazi fighter pilot Franz Stigler and puzzle over how to sneak into Switzerland across a guarded footbridge.
\\nOur segment on the "devil\'s hoofmarks" is drawn from Mike Dash\'s excellent article "The Devil\'s Hoofmarks: Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855," which appeared in Fortean Studies 1:1 in 1994. The full text (2MB PDF) is here.
\\nThe Restricted Data Blog\'s post on John W. Campbell and his 1941 article \\u201cIs Death Dust America\\u2019s Secret Weapon?\\u201d appeared on March 7, 2014. The comments include an extensive discussion about Campbell\'s exchanges with Robert A. Heinlein.
\\nYou can listen using the player above, or subscribe on iTunes\\xa0or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset.
\\nMany thanks to Doug Ross\\xa0for the music in this episode.
\\nIf you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!
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