I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Atlas Obscura: "A locked vault in a Baghdad mosque contains a Quran written in lovely, sweeping Arabic calligraphy which, if not for its ink, could be displayed in a museum. But this holy book was written in blood — Saddam Hussein's blood, to be precise. Following an
From Chess.com: "Ossip Bernstein was born in 1882 in the small Ukrainian town of Zhytomyr. Although he wasn't serious about chess until his late adolescent years, he quickly made a name for himself while studying law in Germany. At nineteen, he almost earned the title of
From NY Mag: "Marcel Malanga was standing in the foyer of the Palais de la Nation, the home of the leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. It was just before dawn on May 19, 2024, and close by was
Hi everyone! I'm going to keep this (mercifully) short. I don't do this a lot, and in fact I think I've only done this one other time in the last two years of this newsletter. I edit and publish this newsletter because I love
From the New York Times: "Annie Oakley, the most expert woman rifle shot ever known, died in Greenville, Ohio, a vivid and picturesque character known all over the world. Those who saw her at the height of her fame in the days of Buffalo Bill's Wild West
From Harper's: "Golf Manor is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen. In short, it is the kind of place where, on a typical day, the only thing lurking around the corner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck. But June 26, 1995, was
From the BBC: “The Geiger counter starts flashing and buzzing as I hold it against the 100-year-old Parisian doorknob. I am standing in the doorway between the historical lab and office of Marie Curie, the Polish-born, Paris-based scientist who invented the word "radioactivity" – and here is an especially
From ABC.net: “Two men are walking down a desert track. They are from different worlds, but they have one thing in common. They know what it’s like to be alone in the vast outback wilderness of central Australia. They know how the heat sears your skin, the way
From Academia: “Daniel Hudson Burnham, the Chicago architect and city planner, is recognized for his work on the development of American tall office building; for the construction of World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893; and for his city plans for Washington, D.C., Cleveland, San Francisco, and Chicago. What is
From the Library of Congress: "Thomas Paine was a national hero, best known as the author of Common Sense, which convinced many Americans to join the fight against the British. Over time, however, he became a social outcast, particularly for his controversial views on organized religion. He died in
From Now I Know: "Some believe that July 4, 1776, is not truly America's independence day. That honor should fall to either July 2, 1776, or August 2, 1776. On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress created a sub-committee of five delegates – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin
From Vice: "Back in 2010, in social media’s Wild West years, Eminem shared a photo on Twitter of a Donkey Kong machine, boasting a high score of 465,800, which, per DonkeyKongBlog, would have put him very near the top 30 scores in the world at the time.