A man is looking for the friends who shipped him overseas in a crate in 1965 | Hacker News Reader

A man is looking for the friends who shipped him overseas in a crate in 1965

cbc.ca

400 pointscolinprince238 comments

A photo of the actual crate he stowed away in (his rescuer is in the crate):

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/media/images/82156000/jpg/...

From this 2015 article: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32151053

It really helps to picture being stuck upside down in the thing. I thought, “surely you could gradually rotate yourself the right way up” before I saw the photo.

Those photos do a great job illustrating what his situation looked like.

Here's to hoping he finds his two friends after all these years!

I look at that and think "I would get cramp immediately and be in absolute agony".

Developing blood clots in the legs because of insufficient circulation is what I was afraid of when seeing the image.

I'd ship myself in a nice big coffin with lots of soft upholstery and leg room to stretch out. That way if the worst happened and I died en route, nobody'd suspect foul play.

When I was a kid we were playing around and I got zipped into a suitcase. I had to really "get small".

I was completely fine for a while, until a little while in it was like a switch was flipped and I was "let me out omg let me out". I freaked out. then I was out and was fine. But I remember that extreme claustrophobia moment.

> At one point, Robson says he was left upside down on a tarmac, literally sitting on his head for 24 hours because there wasn't enough room in the crate to turn around.

I'm surprised he survived this. I remember when David Blaine hung upside down in Central Park for 3 days – but every few hours he had to take a break: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1060038/Cheati...

Agree, and I just saw that caving docu-movie (The Last Descent) about that poor guy who got stuck upside down deep in the cave and couldn't move. He died in under 24 hours I believe.

Why would hanging upside down for 24 hours kill you (serious question)? Doesn't the heart pump blood with the same efficiency regardless of its orientation?

The heart isn't responsible for pumping blood through your body all by itself, it's supported by the skeletal-muscle pump - but that only works when your're moving. Hanging the right way up is in fact even worse and can kill you in less than an hour through something called a "suspension trauma".

I wonder if this is why sitting at a desk is so bad for us. Half way to torture.

Yes indeed.

The word for paid work in French is travail, which has the same Latin base as the word torture.

I didn't know about that but you are right. Not only French, also Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, and maybe other language. It comes from a torture instrument called "tripalium", literally "three sticks".

Thats why you need foot straps on your fall arrest harness. https://www.nationalsafetyinc.com/mobile/ReliefStep-Fall-Pro...

I thought that happened with fall arrest harnesses as the leg straps cut off the blood supply through your inner thigh. It's not so much the suspension, but where the straps cross.

No,that's not true. The femoral vein is too deep to be cut off. The position of the leg straps is relevant because proper leg straps allow you to hang in a sitting position.

Huh. I suppose thinking back the guy that told me that generally didn't know what he was talking about. I never bothered to double check. I don't do anything that I need a fall arrest system anymore, but maybe I should do some reading.

That's not true, I've definitely spent more than an hour hanging around in a rock climbing harness.. and that's just two thigh straps + waist.

It absolutley is true. The thigh straps are exactly what prevent suspension trauma because they allow you to take a sitting position rather than having your legs hanging straight down, so there is much less distance to overcome. Besides, you generally move around while rock climbing, so the skeletal-muscle pump is engaged.

Your lungs can get squished (as was hypothesized to be the case with the aforementioned caver), bursting blood vessels in the brain, and (news to me) according to the article below, your heart eventually has trouble pumping when you're inverted.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questio...

And they actually thought slapping a "fragile" and a "this side up" stickers on the crate would help. It shows a naivete. It's sort of like the "do not copy" prohibitions embedded on a set of keys.

Yeah I wonder if there is a better build so that it could only sit properly with one side down.

Or at least prevent siting upside down. Add a triangular roof to the top side?

Yeah or round it off, or... get a plane ticket, guess if you don’t want a vaccine maybe shipping ourselves will become viable.

Maybe having a few smaller suitcases instead of one larger would allow for a sokoban-style rearrangement while inside?

Luggage has changed a lot since this happened. I can still remember when the now-ubiquitous overhead bin–sized luggage with retractable handles and wheels came out and that was a couple decades after this event. I don't think that would have necessarily been an option. My recollection of my family's luggage when I was a kid was that there were pretty much full-sized suitcases and toiletry cases and nothing really in-between, plus everything was a rigid hards shell.

Bags existed.

they sell disposable pyramids intended for palletized cargo, the purpose is to prevent people from stacking stuff on top. In a modern cargo movement system if you have something on a standard pallet I think there's a low chance of anyone turning it on its side or upside-down, since that's just making more work for them vs. handling it with forks as intended.

https://www.leamancontainer.com/product/no-stack-pallet-cone...

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/ccfje7/t...

We get pallets that use these that unfortunately come in crushed occasionally, though they do make inspection at the dock a lot easier. Another one that might worth similarly here is a tip-m-tell, which is basically some beads that will stick to adhesive if the package is tipped.

https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-866/Damage-Indicators...

Typically the way to handle this is to use metal bands to affix it to a pallet. It will be very top heavy if stored upside down, and it's easier to just move it with a forklift anyway.

When shipping sensitive equipment, you can use these tilt and tip indicators: https://spotsee.io/tilt

As an aside, I was interested to see these devices tucked into the waybill pocket on a shipment of vaccines (see photo):

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-expect...

I presume that they are continuously logging temperature?

How about a little computer with an accelerometer and a speech synthesizer, that yells and complains bitterly whenever the box is mishandled or turned upside down, simulating somebody inside?

That might lead to an undesired response. When car alarms were novel, I wanted to make mine speak different phrases. Well, that can cause attention to be brought to the car as people will want to see what else it would say. The same could be said for the box if indicated its displeasure with being handled roughly.

That might be even worse. Those car alarms were always very irritating as it was. Eventually, you learned to dismiss it. If there's too much variation, it could continue to cause a big distraction with false alarms, and you couldn't learn to tune it out

Back in the day when labor was cheap and they didn't have to be stingy it was not uncommon to honor these sorts of things. Nowadays the employee would be yelled at for wasting time.

Isn't labour cheaper now, since wages haven't kept up with inflation?

Labour is cheaper, but margins are smaller.

I went to ~6 different hardware stores in NYC before I found one in LES that did not bat an eye on the "do not copy". So, I guess, YMMV.

Yeah, back in the day you'd have to go to a crappier store and (over)pay for the new key with cash. Putting a piece of strong tape over the words and having a decent story didn't hurt either.

Nowadays you can just use the kiosks in grocery stores though.

I think the somewhat better ones use blanks that are in theory only sold to locksmiths (not to your typical hardware store/kiosk), but that's unlikely to matter all that much. These days you can get keys made from a photo or two, or you can just spend some time watching Deviant Ollam's videos and likely have several other options for opening doors.

Popping the pins is probably not a great approach for daily use though.

There are some ones that use mechanical features, rollers usually, that require access to either a good machine shop or OEM blanks.

Or a bent screwdriver and a spring steel hook

Perhaps his legs were folded down in that crate, so blood pressure wouldn't increase that much.

He might not have been completely upside down, although I’m not sure if there’s a difference.

Also it might not have been 24 hours

From the article:

> They covered the crate with labels that read "Fragile," "Handle with care" and "This side up." It was scheduled to fly from Melbourne to London within 36 hours. Robson ended up being inside that crate for five days. "It was terrifying," he said. "I was passing in and out of consciousness. I had a lack of oxygen. Oh, it was bad." There seemed to be an endless number of stopovers, and the airport crews didn't pay much attention to the crate's labels. At one point, Robson says he was left upside down on a tarmac, literally sitting on his head for 24 hours because there wasn't enough room in the crate to turn around.

The rest of the article is great (in particular the way it ends), but reading the above excerpt made me shudder.

The will power of this man is unbelievable.

I hope he finds his friends.

>This side up

and he still ended up upside down for 24 hours.

They put the sticker on in Australia.

:-) :-)

Isn't it kinda crazy how we take for granted how easily it is to find people nowadays via social media or your stored phone book entry on your cell phone? I guess they didn't think to exchange phone numbers or addresses before the scheme was hatched? And then, how would you lookup a phone number in Australia from LA or London in 1963? You'd have to really work at it to find it.

Back in the deep mists of time you used to be able to call a special operator who would look up the number in a phone book for you. They called it "information".

Yeah? Did they have the names of parents and their kids in those directories? Did you have access to the number for anyone in the world or just your local area?

Could you find the number for an Irish guy doing an internship in Australia from Los Angeles or London?

I can't tell if you're asking seriously or not, but anyway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-1-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_assistance

Buddy they didn't have a social graph on 411. They didn't have names of kids on 411. They didnt have global phone books on 411. The didn't have an Irish man's hotel room number in Melbourne for his summer internship in London's 411.

iirc (only did this a couple of times and that was some time ago), at least by the 80s-90s, you'd call information in the target location long distance. But yes, that wouldn't go deeper than name->number kinds of lookups.

Buddy they didn't have a social graph on 411. They didn't have names of kids on 411. They didnt have global phone books on 411. They didn't have an Irish college kids dorm room number in Melbourne for his summer internship in London's 411.

"Buddy" "But yes, that wouldn't go deeper than name->number kinds of lookups."

Thanks for the 411 on how the phone system worked back in the day!

> The will power of this man is unbelievable.

He couldn't stand being away from home for more than 3 months. I'm not sure if it was really will power. More like sunk cost fallacy.

lol, always a pessimist.

11 months: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/offbeat/the-crate-escape-two...

Oops, I went based on the quote from the article:

> So Robson and his two closest work buddies devised the scheme to mail him home

> "We were very good friends, only for about three months because I only knew them for about three months"

But strong lack of sunk cost fallacy leaving Australia so soon.

I wish I could do something like this for my mother. She came to a strange country as a 14 year old girl in the 60s. Just happened upon some young men that spoke her language.

She had missed her connecting train so they took her home, 3-4 young men. They fed her, gave her a couch to sleep on without taking advantage of her. She wanted to give them a bottle of alcohol she had brought as thanks but they refused.

The next day they put her on the right train.

Only 2 years later she was married to my father, yes at 16. Times were different.

Ever since she had hoped to find these guys who helped her to thank them. She has facebook connections in both countries but it's not helping. I think she needs it to show up on the news somewhere, in both countries most likely.

What a touching story INTPenis

Reminds me of Reg Spiers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Spiers

> He is best known for successfully posting himself in a box from England to Australia to avoid paying for a plane ticket

I first heard of him on this episode of The Dollop podcast - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcast/the-dollop/113---reg-spi...

Reminds me of Stowaway [0], the incredible story of a teenage boy who escaped from his native Cuba by flying the Atlantic Ocean stowed away in the wheel well of a DC-8 airliner. Not as far as in the OP (he made it to Madrid), but he did not have access to a pressurized hold so he lacked oxygen, nearly froze, and barely escaped being crushed to death. But he did survive.

[0] https://www.rd.com/article/escape-from-cuba-dc-8/

There is a wide gap between "survivable" and "safe".

Happened more recently than that too https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/us/teen-plane-stowaway/index....

I so distinctly remember reading this in a second-hand paperback copy of Reader's Digest back when I was a teenager. I was so fascinated by this story - thanks for reminding me of it and helping me re-read it to relive some of it.

I'm shocked he even survived. Aren't airplane holds unpressurized? Perhaps airplanes simply flew at lower altitudes in those days. Still, it would have gotten pretty darned cold.

I believe the whole plane is pressurized, after all animals survive flights in the hold all the time.

No, this is a long-standing myth which is entirely false. It wouldn't make sense from an engineering standpoint as it would move the pressure differential to the flat (and thus weak) floor of the airplane, rather than the round (and thus strong) outer hull.

However, the hold is not climate controlled to the same degree as the cabin, so he may have gotten cold-ish. But even then, the cargo hold is not a particularly inhospitable place. Living things (animals) are for better or for worse shipped that way all the time.

> Living things (animals) are for better or for worse shipped that way all the time.

They also die a lot this way.

https://www.treehugger.com/as-pet-deaths-continue-airlines-p...

I agree that this situation is both tragic and depressingly, probably avoidable, although it is worth pointing out that the rate is just over one in ten thousand for the worst airline (United) or two in 100,000 for the best (Alaska).

From my reading, unfortunately causes seem relegated to anecdata in this case as only rates are officially recorded. Reading anecdotes, however, the issues also seem to mostly be related to ground-handling and packaging issues, between animals which are not properly crated (much as the human in the article seems to have been improperly crated!) or are heartbreakingly left on the tarmac for extended timeframes during harsh weather.

> They also die a lot this way.

Well that article shows a total of 78 animal deaths over a three year period. Out of 1,244,401 animals transported.

So a percentage of 0.0063%, which I'm not sure qualifies as "a lot".

No, cargo holds are generally pressurized and have been, as far as I know, since the beginning of pressurized aviation (late 40s to early 50s - there were a few test airframes earlier).

It doesn't mean cargo compartments are not cold, dark, loud, and unpleasant places to be, but they're pressurized.

If you pressurize a cylinder (say, a more or less round airplane fuselage), the stresses become tension stresses around the perimeter - it's trying to inflate the balloon, but the perimeter is designed to handle these stresses. The floor only has to support the weight of passengers.

If you had an unpressurized cargo hold, the floor would now need to not only support the weight of passengers, it would have to support the entire pressurization weight - which is far harder, because floors are typically flat. It would have to be far stronger and heavier.

There have been several aviation incidents from the cargo doors opening in flight - the DC-10 was particularly prone to the problem, because instead of an inward-opening, "plug" type door (where the pressure holds it in place), it had an outward opening door - more cargo space because the door doesn't swing in, but if the latching mechanism fails (which it did), the pressurization tries to push the door open, and it occasionally succeeded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_...

> If you had an unpressurized cargo hold, the floor would now need to not only support the weight of passengers, it would have to support the entire pressurization weight

Only if the plane is partly a passenger plane. If it would be a pure cargo plane, the whole back could be unpressurized, or am I missing something?

The vast majority of cargo planes are variants on commercial airliners and are pressurized. The other class are military heavy lifters, but they can also be used for troop transport purposes, which means they have to be pressurized as well.

In every commonly flown cargo airframe I'm aware of, the crew has the ability to get into the cargo area if needed, which a pressure resistant bulkhead would make very challenging (you'd have to depressurize the plane or have an airlock, and at that point, see "takes a ton of strength and weight you don't have any reason to haul").

There are a few weird, custom cargo planes that aren't pressurized (the Dreamlifter and Beluga cargo compartments aren't pressurized, though the crew compartments are), but they tend to be really weird, one-off designs where it's more trouble than it's worth to design them for pressurization - or, likely, the weird oversize fuselage would have to be far heavier to handle pressurization loads against the flat sides.

If you point to a random commercial cargo transport, it's almost certain to be pressurized. In the 1960s, there may have been some unpressurized ones still flying around, but they'd be at a low enough altitude for the flight crew that it wouldn't be a problem back in the cargo compartment either.

Speculating, but:

- Most cargo planes are cargo versions of a plane that has a passenger plane design variant. So it probably wouldn't make sense to do a completely different design.

- I imagine that many goods that are shipped by plane have not been tested to be unaffected by significant time at 30K-40K feet air pressures. So now you're introducing an additional shipping restriction for high-value goods that isn't actually necessary.

That is correct. Virtually all cargo planes are pressurized.

However, while the cargo area is almost invariably pressurized, they are often not heated. Some aircraft have designated cargo areas that are heated for transporting e.g. live animals. So if you end up in an unheated cargo area you won't die of asphyxiation, but could easily succumb to hypothermia or frostbite.

> Only if the plane is partly a passenger plane. If it would be a pure cargo plane, the whole back could be unpressurized, or am I missing something?

I'd guess you'd get stress issues in the bulkhead behind the cockpit if you tried that. You'd need to completely redesign the joint between the cockpit section of the fuselage and everything behind it. And then, for your trouble, you've given up the ability to transport anything that can't tolerate the pressure and temperature swings of an unpressurized cabin.

Given that the pressurization systems are already implemented and don't seem to hurt efficiency much (afaik they typically run off engine bleed air), I don't think there's much reason not to just pressurize the whole thing. I guess it probably makes the structure marginally heavier, but at that point you may as well just design a whole new airplane.

Here are some recent interesting videos by "Mentour Pilot" about the DC10 plane accidents caused by a cargo door coming off and depressurising the cargo hold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv5EQlzM1B8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7rF0wCSpE0

What happened, if you don't want to watch all the video, is that the aeroplane actually collapsed internally. In the second case, some of the passengers were sucked out of the plane.

See my comment elsewhere on the story called Stowaway in which someone climbed into a wheel well and survived a trip from Cuba to Madrid.

I just found a long list [0] of people who have done this, sadly only 24% of people who attempt such a thing survive.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wheel-well_stowaway_...

My mom's bff's husband was originally South African but his family moved to East Germany in the 60's. His mother, his sister, and him escaped in the back of an industrial box truck. Specifically, he was stowed in a toolbox and was frightened of being caught or killed the entire way. To this day, he has extreme claustrophobia as a result.

Curious why they needed to "escape" - South Africa's border control has always been pretty reasonable, so this piqued my interest.

Were they criminals on the run? Or was it an illegal citizenship / passport issue?

Sounds like an incredible story either way.

No, of course not. This was a long time ago when things were much different. They are normal, good people who tried to do their best to have a safe and comfortable life.

Escaped from East Germany.

Moved to East Germany? In the era of the Berlin Wall, which was built to prevent people from fleeing that country?

Yeap. There were bad conditions at the time in apartheid SA: violence and crime. (It's still pretty bad considering most middle-class homes have security guards and enormous gates, similar to Brazil.) I don't remember the precise specifics. IIRC, it was okay at the time of relocating but it deteriorated.

Why in the world would they move from South Africa to East Germany? People leave East Germany, they don't move there.

See other comment where it's answered.

> "Australia was a complete shock to my system," says Brian Robson. "I found it very difficult, and thought from the moment I got there I wanted to get out as quickly as possible."

a desperate situation calls for desperate measures

That's funny, that's what I thought about Melbourne last time I went. Only because the city seems to be entirely made out of fancy interior design indie coffee shops though.

It also somehow has all four seasons every day.

I wonder if this event was the inspiration for “The Gift” by The Velvet Underground. That song ends a bit different from this guys experience tho.

According to Lester Bangs, Lou Reed wrote that story when he was in college.

(https://www.creemmag.com/blogs/journal/dead-lie-the-velvets-...)

Lou Reed went to Syracuse University starting in 1960. While Lou Reed was likely writing the great American novel, he didn’t tell many people the truth so who knows for sure?? My gut feeling is that you’re likely right.

Here's a brief history of children being sent via the mail:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil...

To save people click: Children were not actually placed in boxes and mailed. Rather they accompanied a postman as he traveled to a different location.

Also usually the postman was a friend or relative, not a stranger.

So not as exciting as it sounds.

For a while parents shipped their children USPS Parcel Post because it was cheaper than train fare.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil...

> "The Americans, the FBI, the CIA and everything else, they were brilliant. I mean, I fell in love with America, because I've never been treated so well," he said. "Everybody there really looked after me. And they just thought, oh, it's this silly kid getting himself into trouble."

Hell ya. Imagine that happening in 2020.

American culture changed so so much on 2001/09/11. It's like the attack (and the government's response) snuffed out our optimism, spirit, and humor.

There was an interesting reality show called “Airport” I think. 9/11 put an end to that.

I was in high school in the early to mid 90's and actually went up into the Air Traffic Control Tower at an airport, once a week, for class. Now, everyone involved would go to prison. Times have changed. A lot. 9/11 ruined things.

Allowed.

I bet the Irish guys had a damn good laugh in the pub after posting him off. What a spectacularly stupid thing to do.

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit.

Bad idea all around. Could have easily been frozen or asphyxiated even if the trip was on a quick single flight. Nobody looks at a crate if there's a decompression event. Not even an emergency escape in the crate. Oof.

> Robson was 19...

"Thinking things all the way through" isn't a common trait in any 19 year old men I've known over the years, to include myself a few decades ago.

"Oh, man, that sounds like it should work!" is a lot more likely. And, you know, it usually does!

-And, you know, it usually does!

Technically, his scheme did "work". Though it wasn't what we might call an unqualified success...

Seemed like a crate idea at the time.

That story is nuts - and he obviously would have been treated much differently when they found him in the U.S. if the climate at the time would've been like it is now (thankfully it wasn't).

Another Australian guy did similar: Reg Speirs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Spiers

This reminds me of the time I was riding my motorcycle in the cold at night on the highway from Vermont to Massachusetts for 3 hours. I wore a bunch of layers but with highway speeds the wind chill cut away heat incredibly quickly. Creeping cold gave way to mad shivering which gave way to a general numbness and fatigue. But I refused to give in and stop and eventually made it home. I spent a nontrivial portion of that ride saying “Fuck” over and over to myself.

This sounds like that experience times 10. The will of the human spirit is truly extraordinary.

How did he deal with going to the bathroom in the crate? A topic the article does not touch upon.

They mentioned the empty bottle. I'm sure he didn't have to poop living in a crate for five days with only water to drink.

Even if you aren't eating, the bacteria in your digestive system are producing waste.

Several days without defecation is not comfortable but quite easily achievable.

Couple days? Sure. 5 days?

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-longest-a-human-has-ever-gon...

Being constipated for 5 days is not particularly unusual, especially for people who've just undergone a major surgery

Happens to me every time I go camping. Not through deliberate choice or anything. I just... don't go.

Most convenient psychosomatic issue ever. Though it's a little rough on day 5.

I imagine that if I went camping, and didn't eat anything, Camping Mode would last longer.

I was about to give this same example. I'm sure I've gone almost a week while camping in the past.

This is also the example I had in mind but didn't want to write. Going on an adventure always stops my system.

It seems that my body takes the "leave no trace" principle very seriously.

Once I get home, it goes back to its normal schedule.

This happens on outdoor adventures, but also on long car trips to museums, etc.

You're not toxic shocking your gut with alcohol?

I don't know, maybe. But this mode activates every time I leave my house for extended periods. Whether or not I'm drinking. I call it "Camping Mode", but it also happens on vacations and business trips.

Being trapped in economy class for 16 hours usually breaks me mentally and physically. But imagining this torture leaves me in complete horror.

That was my thought, too. I'm usually ready to kiss the Earth after a 16+ hour flight. I can't imagine 5 days, and not even in the luxury of a coach class airline seat.

I’m not sure if 16 hours in coach is too different from 16 hours in a box. Except for the heat, I suppose.

Cargo areas in planes are usually heated and pressurized like the cabin.

I've done many 15+ hour flights in coach. You get used to it, plus there's sleeping pills.

Did 13 hours with a 2 year old. Who thought kicking the seat in front of her was great fun.

First 3 hours of the flight was me bent over holding her legs still.

Turns out 5% of the population have a reverse reaction to Benadryl. They become absurdly hyper on it.

You gave Benadryl to a two year old? That's insane. Dangerous and irresponsible.

Why? It’s marketed for that age and is in wide use.

https://www.drugs.com/monograph/diphenhydramine.html

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/special-features/use-caution-when-...

Right - but the kid was two, and the presumably within the dosage recommendations given by both the manufacturer and the FDA.

I was specifically responding to the claim that administering Benadryl to a two-year-old was “insane” and “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Once when my daughter was 2 years old she needed an MRI. She was given Benadryl beforehand on the advice of the doctor to allow her to sleep through the procedure.

why is it dangerous?

At least he wasn't in the middle seat in that crate

Haha, try that today.

Different times for sure. My mother’s family immigrated from Mexico during the 1970s. There was an article in a local Louisiana newspaper welcoming and introducing the family to town. How times change.

—edit

Searching for orig. article but quote from mom re:

“Yes, the Ruston Daily Leader came to the house and interviewed mom and took our picture for the paper, we were famous.”

In the mid 80s when my dad married a Pakistani bride and brought her home to Ohio the local newspaper did a write up on it.

My own anecdote as an immigrant is that I've always felt welcome here and have always been well treated, respected, and valued.

Totally different route of course, but same deal in terms of falling in love with the country. This is really home for me. America has given me much more than my birth country ever did, and my birth country was on multiple occasions a lot of more hostile to me, a citizen, than America has ever been to me as a non-citizen.

I'm currently seeking citizenship and have no qualms about swearing to uphold the Constitution and to defend the country if called to it.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

What is your country of origin? Seems relevant.

Brazil.

If you find US border guards welcoming to foreigners then that doesn't speak highly about the standards of friendliness in your country of origin.

> If you find US border guards welcoming to foreigners

The parent comment said absolutely nothing about border guards.

Ah, yeah, I guess, But the story involved a man being found in an airport (probably in a zone of unclear immigration status) and being surrounded by police and FBI/CIA etc. So it makes one think of men with guns in American airports being unfriendly.

I was about to post just that. That bearded guy must be celebrating in whatever goes for their afterlife place.

Probably would be similar, aside from more regulations to follow. It's hard to remember sometimes that the assholes make the news, but most regular people are pretty friendly. Even police.

Yeah, it's just post-9/11, the attitude towards these sort of escapades has been dramatically different. Everyone in an airport today is treated as a terrorist first and a normal human second.

Nice try FBI

How did he forget their names? It just seems unbelievable.

Do you remember the names of the people you worked with during a summer job while you were in school? I sure don't.

If you did something incredibly illegal would you forget the names of the accomplices? Apparently many do ;)

Incredibly illegal is pushing it here, they probably thought of it as something that wouldn't be approved of so best not ask.

His story is notable mostly for being unusual and the ways it went wrong, not the decision making process behind it - I know lots of people who did things at that age with similarly questionable judgement, just not nearly as memorable or unique. You probably know some also.

I don't remember the last names of my best friends from elementary school who moved to different states, and have started blanking on names of a few folks from middle school. This was about 20 years ago, so I find it perfectly plausible to forget the last names of folks who you 1. knew only for 3 months, 2. have not talked to for 56 years

Curious how old you are... there are so many things that seemed impossible to forget when I was younger that I have now forgotten.

If you feel this way, you must be young. I really encourage you to keep a brief chronology of names and events that are important to you. You will forget them decades from now and wish you’d written them somewhere.

This is some ageist nonsense. I feel this way because doing something illegal is different than a walk in the park with a friend.

No offense was intended. I understand thinking an event that seems to be indelibly imprinted to you now will always be that way.

he only knew them for 3 months

He only knew them for three months and it was a long time ago. I can't remember the names of some people I knew for much longer than that, 30 years ago, nevermind in the 60's!

Hell, I can't even remember names of some people I worked with and saw every day for about a year and a half, 6 years ago.

> So Robson and his two closest work buddies devised the scheme to mail him home. Robson believes their names were Paul and John, but after all these years, he can't remember their surnames.

Ringo might be able to help :P

For an entire summer, I worked with 2 people in a factory 30 years ago. I couldn't tell you what their names were either. I don't find it very shocking. When you turn 45, let us know how good your memory is as well :)

He forgot to add them on Facebook.

"The three young men had no idea whether their antics were against the law, he said."

That's not even remotely plausible.

How isn't it remotely plausible?

Shipping regulations were an awful lot more lax 55 years ago, and I wouldn't expect more than a handful of teenagers today to be able to give you details on shipping regulations related to shipping live animals (which, absent specific regulations on shipping humans that may or may not have been in place, seem the most relevant).

I would expect some specific regulations on shipping humans today, based on cases like this, but that's a case of "... OK, this is pretty vague in the regulations, let's make it exceedingly clear."

Indeed, when I was a kid around 1960, it was perfectly normal to see someone off on a flight by getting on the plane with them and looking around, then going to the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat and "fly" the airplane for a minute before climbing back down the stairs to watch it take off.

What laws did they break?

They probably broke some, but I don't know which ones they would be, so it seems plausible to not be sure they broke any laws.

I'm certain there are human trafficking laws that it would have violated.

That's not what human trafficking means.

It’s illegal to cross the border outside of official border crossings, see 8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien. Of course in this case it seems like the crossing was unintentional, and I’m unsure if the UK has similar laws.

I'm not sure how to track the history of US code, but it looks like that law didn't exist until 2012.

So it sounds like... you are unsure if they broke any laws

Also remember there was no internet in 1965, they couldn’t exactly google for a law.

If I’m reading it correctly, the law you cited only applies to non-citizens of the US, so if a citizen posted themselves to return home they wouldn’t be in violation. This was a case of a UK citizen (attempting) returning to the UK, so the equivalent law wouldn’t apply.

That's absurd logic. You don't need to know the specific laws to know there are laws. Sneaking into a country is clearly illegal. Sneaking out of a country to break your contract has to be illegal. Sending a person by freight is pretty definitely specifically illegal, and even if it isn't nailing someone up and mailing him has to be breaking some sort of reckless endangerment law.

I suppose the charitable interpretation is that it's a short way of saying, "We figured it was probably against some kind of law, but we didn't know enough to understand what specifically or how bad the consequences would be."

That £700 from 1965 is now worth £13,600. He should pay it back if he can, even if any legal obligation has expired. But not the first class return ticket, that seems to have been freely given.

Maybe you could start a gofundme

Perhaps it was an unjust contract in the first place that trapped a 19 year old thousands of miles away from home and with an unpayable debt over their heads.

yeah what if that was an etherum or cardano smart contract?

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