Though his vocation was astronomy, Clifford Stoll’s knowledge of computer systems was what paid the bills when he took a job as a system administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It was a $0.75 discrepancy in one of the accounting logs at the lab, though, that set
Visiting a London bookshop in the 1990s, musician DJ Cylob noticed a pile of booklets near the entrance, with a note indicating that they were free. He asked an assistant about them, and she said that she knew nothing, only that a mysterious person was leaving them. Each booklet consists
Senior executives at the tech company Plex were eager to treat their 120 fully remote staffers to a weeklong corporate getaway in a tropical paradise. The plan for the Honduras trip was simple: Company meetings and team building by powdery soft beaches during the day and island fun at night,
In 1966, when seamstresses at the International Latex Corporation arrived at its new Apollo Suit shopfloor in Frederica, Delaware, they were essentially “taught to sew again from scratch.” And for good reason: Compared to the company’s bras and girdles, the craftsmanship needed to fashion a spacesuit was, in every
Brown says he was unaware his mother sold cocaine to support the family and while away, he decided to fry chicken, a meal his mother taught him to cook. He grabbed a bag of what he believed was flour to coat the chicken. His mother would later return, elated he
The driver, Kentucky cops say, had just left a liquor store, smelled of alcohol, and was found “partially slumped over” the controls of his brown vehicle. As a result, Jorge Hernandez, 48, was arrested for galloping under the influence (GUI) through a residential neighborhood in Bowling Green. According to an
Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads. Thirteen of the defendants face life imprisonment. Those in the dock include four military personnel from France's foreign intelligence
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
As you read this, hundreds of thousands of high school students across the country are busy preparing for the most important test of their lives so far — the dreaded SAT. The most common college entrance exam has come under fire in recent years for glaring racial disparities, with critics pointing
A field in an overgrown Czech Republic forest has, for nearly 100 years, served as the hiding place for a secret stash of nearly 600 gold coins and other precious metal goods tucked into a stone wall. But the cache of treasure is hiding no more. Two hikers traversing the
In Nepal, helicopter rescue on high altitude is, by any measure, a genuine lifesaving operation. At high altitude, where oxygen thins and weather changes without warning, the ability to airlift a stricken trekker to Kathmandu within hours has saved countless lives. But threaded through that legitimate system, exploiting its urgency,
That fall, with her sights set on even bigger targets, Bartzen headed to Palm Beach and began hanging around with someone who appeared to be a genuine member of the scion class: a much younger man who introduced himself as Matthew Rockefeller. Suddenly, Bartzen and Global Passion Projects, to which
Chalker told me that he wanted to repair his reputation. He had always been an American patriot, he insisted, and to prove it he was willing to talk publicly, for the first time, about his years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had “prevented Iran
The British de Havilland DH-112 Venom is one of the most iconic combat jets of the Cold War, with a distinctive two-pronged tail design that stretched out far behind the main body of the aircraft and a striking red and black paint job. That was the aircraft 50-year-old Marty Tibbitts
Ilha da Queimada Grande, to give it its Portuguese name, is a lump of rock sitting 33km off the Brazilian mainland. It has come to be known as Snake Island because of the thousands of venomous snakes that occupy its 43 hectares. The golden lancehead is a species of pit
A noted professional cornhole player who is a quadruple amputee is behind bars after authorities said he shot and killed a front seat passenger Sunday night while he was driving in Maryland. Dayton Webber, 27, was behind the wheel when he opened fire on Bradrick Michael Wells during an argument
Juan Pujol was born in Barcelona in 1912 to a family of moderate means and liberal political beliefs. The onset of war in 1939 convinced him that he should make a contribution to the good of humanity. He decided contact the British authorities and offer to spy against Germany. Each
When I was growing up, my mother used to refer to the egg as “your father’s ego”, while to the rest of the world it was known as the Argyle Library Egg by Kutchinsky. I felt a mix of pride and bafflement towards my father’s creation. I was
The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road. In 1810 the brewery, Meux and Company, had had a 22 foot high wooden fermentation tank installed on the premises. Held together with massive iron rings, this huge vat held the equivalent of over
When police officer David Lacey was on patrol on August 7, 1994, and noticed drops hitting his windshield, he didn't think much of it. He turned on his wipers and kept on driving. But the wipers didn’t wipe. The rain — it wasn’t water. It was goo.