Oliver Karafa and Yun Lu “Lucy” Li were a perfect match. Karafa was the consummate pretty boy: his brown hair always coiffed just so, his tennis shoes pristine. With no post-secondary education and little job experience, he told whomever would listen that he was going to be a millionaire before
When World War II came to America, baseball was one of the early victims. Many Major League players were in their early 20s and, therefore, subject to the draft. the owner of the Cubs, Philip K. Wrigley (of chewing gum fame) started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1943.
More than halfway through the crime novel he wrote, Robert Fuller describes the frustration of a detective locked in a mystery. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Now what?” he said aloud. It has been a week since someone made their way into Fuller’s assisted living apartment in
Around 2,000 strange tunnels have been found around central Europe. These aren’t like the well-known catacombs of Paris or Rome. Known as the erdstall, these passages are extremely narrow, never more than two feet wide nor high enough for an adult to walk in, and sometimes the passages
"You know that island between Mozambique and Madagascar that you visited," she said. "Was it called Anjouan? Well, there's been a coup." Actually, there had been 24 coups in as many years, the pace accelerating after 1997 and culminating with two in 2001. On
There are tears in the audience as Patrick Darling’s song begins to play. It’s a heartfelt song written for his great-grandfather, whom he never got the chance to meet. But this performance is emotional for another reason: It’s Darling’s first time on stage with his bandmates
In the delicate jargon of the fertility industry, a woman who carries a child for someone else is said to be going on a “journey.” Kayla Elliott began hers in February, 2024. Elliott already had four children, but she was intrigued by the prospect of bearing another. She’d loved
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
In the run-up to this year’s Winter Olympics, and even as the Games have got underway, a scandal has been brewing: allegedly, some competitive ski jumpers may have artificially enlarged their crotch area by injecting their genitals with engorging chemicals or stuffing their underwear to create bigger bulges. The
Hidden inside a historic 19th century house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan is a secret sanctuary. Ever since the Merchant’s House Museum opened its doors to the public in 1936, visitors have lined up to get a taste of “old New York.” The Treadwell family lived there from
One procedure has enabled the births of more than 10 million babies around the world, and nearly 3 percent of United States births per year — and it only became available relatively recently. People have had children via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, since 1978, though it took around a decade
Does an mini-Stonehenge stand underwater in Grand Traverse Bay, part of Lake Michigan? In 2007, looking for shipwrecks in this area, which was a busy 19th- and 20th-century maritime trade route, Mark Holley, professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University, first came across a rock that he said bears
There is a memorable scene in “Oppenheimer,” the blockbuster film about the building of the atomic bomb, in which Luis Alvarez, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, is reading a newspaper while getting a haircut. Suddenly, Alvarez leaps from his seat and sprints down the road to find
A team of doctors working at the University of Munich reported the unusual case of a young man who experiences epileptic seizures every time he tries to solve a sudoku puzzle. The 25-year-old right-handed physical education student was buried in an avalanche during a skiing holiday, as a result of
On the evening of 3 December 1926 the couple fought and Archie left their home to spend a weekend away with friends, including his mistress. Agatha departed the house later that same evening. The next morning her abandoned car was found several miles away partly submerged in bushes. The fact
On April 18, 2005, a Canadian woman named Rani Jamieson gave birth to a healthy boy. Afterward, the doctor prescribed her Tylenol No. 3, which combines the mild opioid codeine with acetaminophen. In the next week, Tariq developed normally and surpassed his birth weight. But, at around 6:30 A.
In 2013, sixteen-year-old Harry Wilson made his international debut as a substitute against Belgium, becoming Wales' youngest ever senior player. His grandfather Peter Edwards, 62, was quoted odds of 2,500/1 when he placed the $70 bet with a bookmaker in Wrexham, and when Wrexham-born Wilson came on
I was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder. In December 2023, I went to a hospital in New York City with flulike symptoms and the onset of a sickle cell crisis, for what I thought would be a routine stay. But I did not receive the care
It was 1905 and 19-year-old Carter had just started his ten year sentence – arrested for burglarizing the station in Karlstad, MN, while hopping trains westward. He’d taken $24 to buy food and shelter. Not much is known about John Carter — in fact, that’s a penname and the public
It’s 2036, and scientists are working on a new class of drugs. These medications are mirror-image versions of the molecules your body uses to fight disease. Their big advantage is that reverse compounds last longer because destructive enzymes don’t recognize them and rip them apart. The scientists experiment