An unknown anime fan solved a long-standing math problem

From Scientific American: "In 2011 an anonymous poster on the now infamously controversial image board 4chan posed a mathematical puzzle about the cult classic anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The first season of this anime series consists of 14 episodes that were designed so that you can watch them in any order you like. At some point in a 2011 discussion, someone asked the minimum number of episodes they would have to watch to have seen it in every possible order. This question is related to so-called superpermutations, and to this day, mathematicians are unable to fully answer the problem that the 4chan user posed. But amazingly, in that discussion, one of the anonymous users made an estimate of the minimum amount of all episodes to watch with an approach that was previously unknown to mathematicians."

An Australian couple were forced to sit next to a dead body for hours on a plane flight

From The Guardian: "An Australian couple have criticised Qatar Airways after a blanket-draped corpse was seated next to them during a long-haul flight. Mitchell Ring said a passenger died part-way through the 14-hour flight from Melbourne to Doha last week. “They tried to wheel her up towards business class, but she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle,” he told Nine News. “They looked a bit frustrated, then they just looked at me and saw seats were available beside me.” Ring said he was made to wait next to the corpse even after the plane landed. Ring and his wife, Jennifer Colin, were seated next to the corpse while travelling en-route to Venice. Ring said he was seated with the body for around four hours despite other empty seats. Qatar Airways apologised “for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused.”

A wealthy widow spent millions trying to get the possum to replace the teddy bear

From the Smithsonian: "Inspired by a highly anticipated 'possums and taters' banquet that the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce was hosting for incoming President William Howard Taft, the cartoon told the teddy bear to 'beat it!' and declared Billy Possum 'the new national toy.' It might seem ridiculous to suggest that the beloved teddy bear, named for the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s refusal to shoot a restrained bear, could be replaced by a plush version of the 18-pound opossum served to Taft for dinner. But where most people saw a joke, wealthy Georgia widow Susie Wright Allgood saw a serious business opportunity. She and her son quickly formed the Georgia Billy Possum Company, to get opossum toys into production in time for Taft’s March 4 inauguration. She planned for each Georgia delegate to wear a little Billy Possum in the parade."

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.

Winston Churchill was hit by a car in New York City in 1931 and almost died

From the Churchill Society: "In New York in December 1931, on a lecture tour seeking to recoup his 1929 losses in the stock market crash, Churchill was searching for his friend Bernard Baruch’s apartment. Looking the wrong way halfway across Fifth Avenue, he was struck by a car and almost killed. In hospital, he began dictating, while his bodyguard Sgt. Thompson took measures to maintain his privacy. Churchill was in agreement with his doctors that he should be guarded from upsets. His concern, while identical to theirs, was prompted by a different reason. Propped up in bed, he was busily at work on a rush article tentatively titled, “My New York Misadventure.” He finished it without distraction, sold it for $2500, then got up and took a convalescent trip to the Bahamas on the proceeds. Some weeks later, back home at Chartwell, he resumed the massive writing projects to which he was now dedicated."

She always suspected the hospital gave her the wrong child and 70 years later a test proved it

From The Guardian: "When Sue bought her mother and younger brother Ancestry kits for Christmas in 2018, she knew that they were never going to be fun gifts. A lingering doubt had always cast a shadow over their family, a question that had gnawed at them for decades. Sue hoped that, if she, Joan and Doug took DNA tests together, they might finally have the answer they craved. Their results came in a few weeks later. Ancestry listed Sue and Doug as full siblings, with Joan as their mother. Their father, Tom, had died in 2016. Sue felt certain that William – her parents’ first child, the older brother she and Doug had grown up with, a man they hadn’t seen for years – had already taken a DNA test with Ancestry. But he didn’t appear anywhere on their genetic family tree. The news didn’t come as a shock to Sue, Joan or Doug. William had always seemed so different."

Bear throws a tantrum after repeatedly failing to get into a hammock

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy's Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova's The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com