(Note: I am backcountry camping this week in the remote Canadian wilderness so this is a repeat of an earlier newsletter) Zale Parry, a depth-defying scuba diver and underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included
The Grand Duke Francesco de Medici, a prominent politician in the Tuscany region of Italy in the 16th century, died under mysterious circumstances in 1587 – with the suddenness of his death giving rise to rumors that he'd been poisoned. According to historical documents, Francesco's brother and
How good a golfer was Ted Rhodes? At the 1948 US Open, he finished the first round just three shots behind the leader – and eventual winner – Ben Hogan. But there’s more to the story: Rhodes was the first Black competitor in the tournament in its modern era, during a
Known as the human calendar to her friends but nicknamed AJ in later research reports, the woman was looking for help. “I want to know why I remember everything,” she said. AJ told the scientists that she couldn’t turn her memory off, even when she was engaged in other
It was the largest armed robbery in Austrian history. The heist had been near perfectly executed — perfect, that is, except for one small oversight. The thieves didn’t realize that the ATM had a security camera that automatically took photos of the street. The images were blurry, but they revealed
Many people who receive attention from crows feel that the birds have more complex motives. “It seemed like they would just come by to hang out,” my sister tells me — like, well, friends. What is a friend, anyway? For a scholarly perspective, I spoke to Thom van Dooren, a field
Ask most people who flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb and you'll get one name: Paul Tibbets. He's the one who named the Enola Gay after his mother, the one who spent decades insisting he never lost a night's sleep over
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
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
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
At the Elmcroft of Lebanon, Tennessee, the staff of the memory-care unit knew the code to the keypad that controlled the exit door. Residents weren’t supposed to be able to leave unattended. That’s how the system worked: the keypad stood between those in the facility’s care
For years, Arthur Kermalvezen, the child of a sperm donor, saw possible fathers everywhere he went. "I imagined it might be my teacher, the people I saw on the bus... and I was very angry because it's impossible to live like this." When, as an adult,
In July 1933, former Marine General Smedley Butler was visited by a pair of gentlemen who had come to urge him to run for the office of National Commander of the American Legion, an influential organization of veterans. Though Butler declined the invitation, one of the men— Gerald MacGuire— made
The organism in question is a protozoan, meaning a single-celled animal, and it’s called Toxoplasma gondii. It’s one of the most successful parasites on the planet. Depending on which country’s serology data you look at, somewhere between eleven per cent of Americans, thirty per cent of
“I don’t think it belongs here.” Such was the assessment of Bob Vinson, the graveyard shift supervisor at Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The “here” Vinson referred to was a nook just outside the telephone equipment room in the employees-only portion of the second
On January 23, 1973, the 5,000 residents of the tiny Icelandic island of Heimaey — located just four miles off Iceland’s southern coast — woke up to the Earth splitting open. In the dead of night, a mile-long volcanic fissure ripped through the ground just a half-mile from
I awoke one morning in the summer of 2023 to discover that, while I’d slept, my son Joel had been texting my wife and me a series of unnerving messages about a perilous situation he had found himself in, in rural Connecticut. From what I could tell, as I
A 400-year-old grave held the body of a young woman, the rusted blade of a sickle over her throat and a padlock fastened to her foot — the macabre signs of a community terrified the deceased would rise again. Archaeologists unearthed Zosia, as the skeleton was nicknamed, from an
Zale Parry, a depth-defying scuba diver and underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper, died on July 20 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 93. Once
Most forms of measurement from times past – even some in common use today – are based on some part of the human body or some action a person may take. For example, the ‘inch’ was originally the width of the middle of the thumb across the knuckle. The ‘foot’ was just
He drove his red Mercedes along Pershing Avenue with the top down, his wavy brown hair just long enough to flap in the wind. With his monogrammed shirts and pleated pants, Michael Blatt exuded a specific 1980s California cool rooted in the certainty that, no matter what, he would never,
When excavators explored (and emptied) King Tuntankhamun’s tomb in the 1920s, they found a lot of magnificent artifacts. The 5,398 officially noted burial objects included ceremonial figurines, chariots, pieces of jewelry and artwork, and even piles of food. Excavators also found King Tut’s underwear — more than 140