012-The Great Race, Grace Kelly's Tomahawk, and Dreadful Penmanship

The New York Times proposed an outrageous undertaking in 1908: An automobile race westward from New York to Paris, a journey of 22,000 miles across all of North America and Asia in an era when the motorcar was "the most fragile and capricious thing on earth." In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the six teams who took up the challenge and attempted "the most perilous trip ever undertaken by man."

We'll also see how a tomahawk linked Alec Guinness and Grace Kelly for 25 years and hear poet Louis Phillips lament his wife's handwriting.