I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Becky Little for History.com: "After World War II, a critical MI5 spy named Juan Pujol Garcia faked his own death, and kept it secret for almost four decades. And that’s not even the most interesting thing about him. Pujol was a veteran of the Spanish Civil
From Daniel Russell at Unanticipated Consequences: "At the start of World War II, all kinds of ideas for novel weapons were being explored as ways to end the war. Perhaps the most unlikely was Project X-Ray, an attempt to arm Mexican free-tailed bats with tiny incendiary charges. The idea
From Suzanne Raga for Mental Floss: "For Lyudmila Pavlichenko, killing Nazis wasn't complicated. “The only feeling I have is the great satisfaction a hunter feels who has killed a beast of prey,” she once said of her job. But Pavlichenko wasn’t just any soldier: She was
From Nathan Lawrence for IGN: "If you’re a Luc Besson fan, you’ve likely seen at least one of the flashy trailers for his latest movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Like many big-budget movies these days, Valerian is based on a comic. If the
From the University of Alaska, via Kottke.org: "An unexpected find in a University of Alaska Fairbanks archive has revealed more information about the oft-debated April 1910 Sourdough Expedition climb of Denali, North America’s highest mountain. Photographs found by UAF Geophysical Institute professor Matthew Sturm in the university’
From Rosemary Giles for War History Online: "Nakano Takeko was born into a well-respected samurai family in April 1847. From an early age – sources indicate she began as early as six years old – she was exposed to the ways of combat and weaponry. Her teacher, Akaoka Daisuke, also taught
From Michael Waters for Atlas Obscura: "Beginning in the 1920s, nightclub-goers in Berlin who feared face-to-face encounters could communicate with beautiful strangers from across the room. All they needed to do? Turn to the nearest pneumatic tube. Two nightclubs in particular—the Resi and the Femina—pioneered the trend.
From Luisa Rollenhagen for Deutsche Welle: "Imagine if your rent was 88 cents — a year. And it hadn't changed for the past 500 years. Welcome to the Fuggerei. Located in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, the Fuggerei is considered to be the oldest social housing project in
From the BBC: "A masked man drove a stolen van through the quiet streets of Aspra Spitia in central Greece. Parking outside a branch of the National Bank, he forced his way inside carrying an AK-47 rifle. He ordered staff to open the ATM, and snatched 150,000 euros.
From Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated: "Three weeks after they fell in love, they were freediving with dolphins off the coast of Honduras in front of cameras for his new Mexican TV series, then with sea lions off the Galapagos and with humpback whales off the Dominican Republic. Well,
From Stewart Brand at Works In Progress: "At the very beginning of the auto industry, no less than three radically different design-for-maintenance philosophies fought it out. One lost, but not because of maintenance issues. The other two won big by rejecting each other’s approach to maintenance. Electric automobiles
From Megan Cassidy and Gabrielle Lurie for the San Francisco Chronicle: "Thirty-five hundred miles southeast of San Francisco, a dirt road in Honduras shared by pickup trucks and oxcarts cuts through mostly abandoned farmland. On the outskirts of a small village, a jewel-toned mural appears like a mirage: the