Dozens of climbers walked past a man who was dying on K2

From Der Spiegel: "It’s two hours after midnight. The extreme mountaineer Kristin Harila is trudging through the death zone on K2, the second tallest mountain in the world, following the beam of her headlamp. To her left, the mountainside plunges almost vertically, hundreds of meters into the depths. Above her on the right is an enormous hanging glacier groaning and cracking menacingly in the freezing cold. She is only about 400 meters from the top. One final steep ascent and Harila will have reached her goal. The Norwegian woman is aiming to complete a staggering, record-breaking project. Within just three months, she has climbed all of the highest mountains in the Himalaya and Karakorum. When she reaches the peak of K2, Harila will have summitted all 14 8,000-meter peaks on the planet, faster than anyone ever before. But suddenly, their path is blocked. A man is hanging there from a rope. He is upside down."

Scientists have discovered a superconductor hidden inside pencil lead

From SciTechDaily: "MIT scientists have identified a bizarre new material: a superconductor that also acts like a magnet. Using a special stacking of graphene layers from graphite, they observed this dual behavior — something thought to be impossible until now. For over a century, scientists believed that magnets and superconductors were fundamentally incompatible, like mixing oil with water. But a groundbreaking discovery from MIT physicists is now turning that idea on its head. In a recent study published in Nature, the research team revealed something remarkable: a new material called a chiral superconductor. It carries electricity with zero resistance, and it’s magnetic. This strange combination has never been observed in such a direct way before. Even more surprising? The researchers found this exotic behavior in a very familiar substance: graphite, the same material used in ordinary pencil lead."

The mystery behind the woman known only as Miss Atomic Bomb

From MSN: "It wasn't going to be easy to track down the woman who came to be known as “Miss Atomic Bomb." All Robert Friedrichs had to go on was a stage name he found printed under an archival newspaper photo that showed her posing with other Las Vegas showgirls. It would take him more than two decades to unravel the mystery of Lee A. Merlin's true identity. Friedrichs, 81, isn’t a detective. He’s a historian and a retired scientist who got his start during the atomic age, a complicated moment in American history when the line was blurred between fear and fascination with nuclear power. Between 1951 and 1992, hundreds of nuclear tests were performed, in the desert outside Las Vegas. Las Vegas sought to capitalize on that craze, and in 1957 sent a photographer out on assignment to shoot a promotional ad for nuclear tourism. He got an idea to capture the lead dancer at the Sands Hotel in a swimsuit in the shape of a fluffy mushroom cloud. In the photo, the high-heeled showgirl is smiling with arms outstretched as the desert unfolds behind her like a stage."

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.

They found 6,000-year-old human remains but no one shares their DNA

From Popular Mechanics: "Around 6,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers who migrated south settled in the Bogotá Altiplano of what is now Colombia, transitioning to an agricultural society over the next 4,000 years. Then they vanished. Whoever these people were, they disappeared from the genetic record. The team of researchers who discovered them through fragmented DNA in their skeletal remains have not been able to find any ancient relatives or modern descendants. They are strangely not related to Indigenous Columbians, having more of a connection to people who now live on the Isthmus of Panama and speak Chibchan languages. It could be possible that they spread through the region, mixing with local populations for so long that their genes were diluted, but no one can be sure. Some findings suggest that they are not directly descended from the first people to settle in that part of Colombia."

She was one of the premier athletes of the 1930s with medals in both track and golf

From Wikipedia: "Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias was an American athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball, and track and field. She won two gold medals and a silver in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships. She set four world records, winning two gold medals and one silver medal in track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. In the 80-meter hurdles, she equaled the world record of 11.8 seconds in her opening heat. In the final, she broke her record with an 11.7 clocking, taking gold. In the javelin, she also won gold with an Olympic record throw of 43.69 meters. In the high jump, she took silver with a world record-tying leap of 1.657 metres. By 1935, Didrikson began to play golf and became America's first female golf celebrity. she made the cut in every PGA Tour event she entered. In January 1945, Zaharias became the first (and currently only) woman in history to make the cut in a regular PGA Tour event."

How to stop a speeding car in style

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