He woke up in the morgue but went on to win the horse race

Ralph Neves was understandably disoriented when he woke up in the morgue. The slab was cold and the tag around his toe pressing into the skin. His heart, declared stopped an hour before, was racing so hard it was nearly beating out of his chest. The last thing Neves remembered, he was riding a horse at Bay Meadows on May 8, 1936. He looked down and saw one bare foot, one still in his riding boot and blood all over his pants. But he could deal with that later. Bing Crosby had promised the winningest jockey of the season a $500 gold watch. And 19-year-old Ralph wanted that watch, whatever the cost. He hobbled out of the morgue, a retinue of shocked doctors and nurses on his heels. He spotted a train station nearby and made a break for it. Parked there was a taxi driver; Neves hopped in, and told the driver to get him back to the racetrack. (via SFGate)

Mystery surrounds a metal "book" found in a Jordanian cave which could be centuries old

An exhaustive scientific analysis conducted on the  — a collection of metal books that were reportedly found in a cave in Jordan and made public in March 2011, generating since then an intense debate between supporters of their ancient origin and those who consider them a forgery — has succeeded in offering the most detailed assessment to date of their origin, without being able to definitively resolve the controversy but opening a crucial door to their possible antiquity. The study, led by the Ion Beam Centre at the University of Surrey and published in a scientific journal, concludes that the tests conducted do not allow the objects to be conclusively dated beyond 200 years, but they also cannot demonstrate that they are a modern fabrication, leaving their provenance in a zone of scientific uncertainty that requires further investigation. (via La Brujula Verde)

Those ubiquitous white ceramic mugs you find in every diner were developed for the US Navy

Sit down for a cup of coffee in any American diner, and the chances are it’ll be served in a thick, bright white mug with a broad, curved handle, and characteristically inward-curving, hourglass-like sides. These iconic white mugs are a quintessential element of modern Americana (unfortunately making them one of the most stolen items from restaurants and diners across the country). But where did this unique design come from? And why does practically every diner in the United States serve the same one? The advent of the Second World War had had a somewhat unexpected complication: on board the U.S. Navy’s warships, rough seas were causing coffee cups to slide across work stations and tabletops, tumble to the floor and smash. To solve the problem, the Navy issued an appeal, and among the companies that responded was Victor Insulators, based in the town of Victor in upstate New York. (via Mental Floss)

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.

The founder of shoe giant Bata had an office located inside a large elevator

Baťa's Skyscraper in Zlin, Czechia may look like another drab, nondescript mid-century office building. However, it is unique in that it was one of the first skyscrapers constructed in Europe, all the way back in 1938. Built for the Baťa shoe company's headquarters in a streamlined Constructivist design, the building was equipped with many of the modern conveniences of the time, plus one: an office for president Jan Antonin Baťa inside an elevator! What seems like a massive feat of engineering was actually not that difficult, even back then. Making an elevator 6 by 6 meters in size had already been done for cargo purposes. Electricity was already provided to elevators for lighting purposes, so adding additional cables for wall outlets or air conditioning could also be done. There is even a sink, which operates quite primitively with a water tank above and wastewater bin below. Periodically, the former would be filled and the latter emptied. (via Atlas Obscura)

The supermarket shopping cart was invented by an indigenous store owner in the 1930s

Sylvan Goldman, a businessman and Oklahoma native, was working for a California grocery wholesaler after World War I when he became fascinated by the new “supermarkets” that put everything under one roof. Still, he noticed a problem: Shoppers were buying only what they could carry in bags and baskets. In 1920, he and his brother, Alfred, brought the supermarket concept back to Oklahoma, where they established their own chain of stores. But Goldman still fretted over the persistent problem of shoppers being limited by their arms. Goldman’s first prototype for a shopping cart, in 1936, was wonderfully crude. It consisted of two folding chairs placed seat-to-seat with wheels attached to the bottom and a basket on top. He introduced the first official shopping cart on June 4, 1937, at the Humpty Dumpty grocery store in Oklahoma City. Goldman hired attractive models to shop while pushing the carts, showing other shoppers how convenient and fashionable they could be. (via the Smithsonian)

An AI graphics engine imagines if Washington vs. Trump was a video game

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places 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 and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com