James Joyce would rise late, after an inebriated evening spent belting out songs at the local boozer, and get his writing done in the early afternoon. Cheever did much the same, but got out of bed earlier. Hemingway would stay up boozing but be at his typewriter by six the
Hitoshi Imamura was a Japanese general who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. He surrendered the Japanese forces in New Guinea and the southern Pacific Islands to Australian forces, representing the Allies, in September 1945, and was detained by the Australian Army, as he and troops
It's the fall of 1864. The war is going very badly for the Confederates. John Wilkes Booth is kind of the Brad Pitt of North America. He was a famous, dashing young actor, a committed supporter of the Southern Confederacy. A man who despised Lincoln. He begins to
It started with a suitcase hidden under a bed. It was 2009, and Antony Easton's father, Peter, had recently died. As Antony started to engage with the messy business of probate, he came across a small brown leather case in his father's old flat in the
Japanese singer-songwriter Yoko Ono had an obsession with artist Salvador Dalí’s surrealism, and decided she wanted to buy a strand of hair from Dalí’s famous mustache. Ono offered to pay the artist $10,000, which is the equivalent of about five or ten times that in today’s
The white marble headstone of Spc. 4 Richard Leroy McKinley may look like the other headstones in Section 31 but it marks Arlington National Cemetery's only radioactive grave and the story of America’s first fatal nuclear accident. In 1961, McKinley was serving as an operator at the
Albert Clarke was a rascally nine-year-old when he inherited the estate of Margaret Wise Brown, his next-door neighbour, who had no children of her own. Ever since, as “Goodnight Moon” has drifted toward the center of America’s collective consciousness, he has floated on the fringes of society. No steady
From TheForce.net: "Here's how that came about: My co-producer was Tony Bongiovi. Jon Bon Jovi was his little cousin and by little I mean we were all in our 30s and early 40s but Jon at that time was 17 years old. And we were in
From Gareth Edwards at Every: "In September 1974, Ed Roberts was sitting at the bank in a foreclosure meeting. His once-profitable calculator company, Micro Instrument and Telemetry Systems, was on the verge of bankruptcy. But Roberts was soliciting a $65,000 loan. Not to spend on calculators, he explained
From Amitha Kalaichandran for Undark: "In May, I was invited to take part in a survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to better delineate how long Covid is described and diagnosed as part of The National Research Action Plan on Long Covid. The survey had
From Chris Lewicki: "Some mistakes feel worse than death. A February evening in 2003 started out routine at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. I gowned up in cleanroom garb and passed into the High Bay 1 airlock in Building 179 where nearly all of NASA’
Links that interest me, and maybe you
Authorities are scrambling to find the gang behind the heist that targeted high-security display cases in the famous French museum. The criminals, who disguised themselves as construction workers on a cherry picker, are still on the run. Authorities fear the one-of-a-kind, and therefore highly recognisable items, will be melted down
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is one of the most important spiritual sites for Christians, so it may come as some surprise that the keys to the church are entrusted to the care of two Muslim families. This tradition dates back several centuries and was reportedly instituted
For nearly a quarter-century he railed against slavery in one Quaker meeting after another in and around Philadelphia, confronting slave owners and slave traders. He insisted on the utter depravity and sinfulness of “Man-stealers,” who were, in his view, the literal spawn of Satan. He considered it his Godly duty
In 2013, Samantha Futerman was a 25-year-old actress in LA, with a YouTube channel, and a major release on her IMDb bio. On February 21, she made her way to a friend’s apartment to have her nails done for the premiere of her new film. As her friend painted
Polar bears on an island off Russia's eastern coast have taken over an abandoned research station and made themselves at home. Drone footage captured by photographer Vadim Makhorov shows the large bears getting comfortable in the remains of a Soviet-era weather station on Kolyuchin Island. The tiny island
Nola and Helan are two of the hundreds of sleeping children who have appeared sporadically in Sweden over a span of 20 years. The first official medical reports of the epidemic appeared in the early 2000s. Typically, the sleeping sickness had an insidious onset. Children initially became anxious and depressed.
It's 1902, in what was known as the “Paris of the Caribbean,” Saint-Pierre, Martinique. And on May 7th, Ludger Sylbaris gets arrested. He works by the docks and he’s a guy that likes to enjoy a drink or two. We don’t know what it is that
In January of 2016, Avner Harari strolled out of a Tel Aviv prison for the umpteenth time and announced he was finally going straight. The convicted assassin had spent 40 of his 61 years behind bars and had cultivated a reputation as the Israeli mafia’s “Terminator”. Now, Harari hoped
Why do astronauts leave things behind on the Moon? There are many reasons. Often, it is to make room for Moon rocks to be taken back to Earth. As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began their return journey to Earth, they disposed of anything they didn’t need. This included
In 1934, Leon Dionne called a local newspaper in Ontario, Canada and asked how much it would cost to print a birth announcement for his brother’s five daughters, all born to the same mother in one delivery earlier that day. At the time, the world had rarely witnessed the
A Polish adventure skier has made history by becoming the first person to climb up and ski down Mount Everest without the use of additional oxygen. The ascent was Andrzej Bargiel’s third attempt at climbing Everest – the tallest mountain on earth at 29,032ft high – after dangerous conditions forced
From Vanity Fair: "I first heard of Hit Man in May 1999, when I was a young journalist in Philadelphia. Paladin Press’s insurance company had just settled with the victims’ families for undisclosed millions, a decision that made international headlines. The case was unprecedented; never before had a