I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Mental Floss: "During the American Revolution, George Washington approved a plan to kidnap a 17-year-old midshipman. Such kidnappings were not unusual. Throughout the war, Continental and British army leadership attempted—and sometimes succeeded—in kidnapping colonial governors and high-ranking military officers to gain leverage in stalled negotiations. The
From the BBC: "In 2020, Danish antiquities dealer Dr Ittai Gradel began to suspect an eBay seller he had been buying from was a thief who was stealing from the British Museum. More than two years later, the museum would announce that thousands of objects were missing, stolen or
From JSTOR Daily: "Coke was the brainchild of Dr. John Stith Pemberton, who was injured while fighting for the Confederacy and then became addicted to the morphine prescribed for pain relief. Living in Atlanta after the war, the physician tried the new wonder drug cocaine and found it cured
From The Guardian: "There was Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, all about the joys of spring, and as darkly funny as its title suggests. There was the American football song Fight Fiercely, Harvard, which seemed to make cruel mock of those cold, dreary afternoons I was forced to spend
From the BBC: "In 1968, author JRR Tolkien refused The Beatles permission to make a film version of his fantasy epic The Lord of The Rings. "What I understand is that Denis O'Dell, who was their Apple film producer, who produced The Magic Christian, had the
From Mental Floss: "Dutch Schultz was about to die. But he wasn’t about to go quietly. It was October 23, 1935, and Schultz’s career of criminal activity had caught up to him. Earlier that evening, he had been shot by rivals in the restroom of a restaurant
From Vanity Fair: "On a spring day in Rome in 1957, 30-year-old Bruno Lunenfeld gave one hell of a presentation. For four years he had been developing a therapy that would induce ovulation in women struggling with infertility. What he needed now was the support of the Istituto Farmacologico
From Terra Nullius: "On the 12th September 1919, Gabriele D’Annunzio proclaimed that he had annexed the city of Fiume to the Kingdom of Italy as the “Regency of Carnaro” - of which he was the Regent. The Italian government was thoroughly unimpressed and refused to recognise their newest
From the Smithsonian: "The Lizzie Borden murder case is one of the most famous in American criminal history. New England’s major crime of the Gilded Age, its barbarity captivated the national press. And the suspected killer was immortalized by an eerie rhyme: Lizzie Borden took an ax and
From the City of Chowchilla: "On July 15, 1976, a busload of children aged 5 to 14 and their school bus driver, Ed Ray were abducted on a country road in Madera County at about 4 p.m. on their way back from a swim outing. The bus was
From The Economist: "Hansen’s disease, better known as leprosy, is a tropical malady that is rare in America. In 2020, just 159 cases were reported. Only 5% of people seem to be susceptible to infection. Because it is so rare, Americans seldom think about leprosy, and many clinicians
From Medium: "Songwriter, producer, and McCann Erickson executive Roquel “Billy” Davis, conceived and co-wrote “I’d Like To Buy the World A Coke” for that famous 1971 campaign. Davis’s biography is every inch as remarkable as the fictional Don Draper or any other character from Mad Men. Born