I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Slate: "Virtually every film in modern memory ends with some variation of the same disclaimer: “This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” For that bit of boilerplate, we can indirectly thank none other than Grigori
From Daily KOS: "On Feb. 20, 1939, German-born Fritz Julius Kuhn. the leader of the pro-Nazi German American Bund and would-be Führer, was the final speaker at what was billed as a “Pro-American Rally” at Madison Square Garden. At one point, an unemployed Jewish plumber from Brooklyn, Isadore Greenbaum,
From Vanity Fair: "Dante and Beatrice, Scott and Zelda, Véra and Vladimir. All famous cases of literary love and inspiration, sure. But these romances lack the 47-year novelistic drama of the craziest story. They lack the stolen gun, the border crossings, the violation of federal law. They lack the
From the BBC: "Hundreds of truckles of cheddar worth more than £300,000 have been stolen from London cheese specialist Neal’s Yard Dairy. Fraudsters posing as legitimate wholesalers received the 950 clothbound cheeses from the Southwark-based company before it was realised they were a fake firm. More than
From RR Auction: "A previously unknown 8mm color film capturing President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade on November 22, 1963, has been sold for $137,500 at auction. The silent color footage, shot by local truck driver Dale Carpenter, Sr., captures the presidential motorcade moving through downtown Dallas, followed
From The Weather Network: "The Nazis managed to install an automatic weather station on the coast of Labrador during WWII and it remained undiscovered by Canadians for more than 30 years. The secret German mission remains one of the only known enemy operations to actually take place on North
From Science News: "In December 1855 and January 1856, a trio of vessels set sail from the United States to Jarvis and Baker islands, coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. The ships carried representatives from the American Guano Company and a guano expert tasked with examining the quality of
From The Guardian: "From 1946-48, the US Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies on medical research paid for by the US government that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases. The researchers apparently were trying to see if penicillin,
From Psychology Today: "Claire Sylvia was an accomplished dancer when, at the age of 45, she was diagnosed with a rare incurable condition known as primary pulmonary hypertension. The only effective treatment for severe PPH is a heart-lung transplant. Claire’s transplant was unique not just because she was
From The Bulletin: "In the early hours of October 30, 1961, a bomber took off from an airstrip in northern Russia and began its flight through cloudy skies over the frigid Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. Slung below the plane’s belly was a nuclear bomb the size of
From the New York Times: "For 60 years, Baltazar Ushca worked a rare but rigorous trade: ice merchant. Once or twice a week, he climbed snow-capped Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak, to hack ice from a glacier with a pickax, wrap the 60-pound blocks in hay and transport
From The Independent: "Taliesin was an architectural commune set up in 1932 in Wisconsin by Wright and his wife, the mysterious Olgivanna. Staffed by young, eager, and mostly male architects who wanted to learn from the master, it quickly evolved into a place where Olgivanna, Wright’s third wife,