Her research on the brains of UK cab drivers changed science

From the WSJ: "Eleanor Maguire wasn’t great at navigating the streets of London, and she started to think that the brains of the people who were expert navigators—the city’s famous cabdrivers—might actually be different than hers. She burst into her lab at University College London and told her mentor, Chris Frith, that she’d just seen a movie called “The Knowledge” about a group of would-be London cabdrivers, and that it had given her an idea for a scientific study. Frith told her to go for it. Maguire, who had cancer and died Jan. 4 at age 54, specialized in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a key role in memory. In a series of studies, she demonstrated that human memories aren’t movies that we replay in our minds the way we watch movies on TV. Rather, they are imperfect scenes that we construct in our minds. When we’re thinking about where we want to go, our brains construct scenes that show us how to get there."

The game of Ultimate Frisbee is helping to heal some of the wounds in the Middle East

From Reason: "Starting an Ultimate Frisbee league to repair a war-torn country sounds like the plot of a buddy comedy, yet it's a reality in Iraqi Kurdistan. After German and American aid workers introduced Frisbees to the country in 2019, the sport quickly caught on. By 2023, the scrappy Duhok Shepherds team was flying to Dubai for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Ultimate Club Championship. It was the first time many team members had left Iraq. By November 2024, the team was competing in Doha, Qatar, their uniforms proudly displaying both the Iraqi national flag and the Kurdish tricolor. Invented by New Jersey high schoolers in the 1960s and popularized by hippies, the sport is now the basis of a European relief effort. Beyond those aid organizations, European players have run grassroots fundraising efforts to get the Iraqi Ultimate league off the ground."

Handmade nails used to be in such demand they were Thomas Jefferson's main source of income

From Why Is This Interesting? "Nails have been produced since at least the Bronze age. Each individual fastener was then hand forged by specialized blacksmiths, known as nailors. Unlike the round shaft of a modern wire nail, the flat sides of a cut nail form a long wedge. When this wedge is oriented perpendicular to the grain, a cut nail causes the wood to form prongs, gripping with nearly twice the strength of a modern wire nail, and making it less likely to split the board. The tedious handmade nature of nails made them a valuable commodity, and nails were even often used as informal currency. This value is still represented in how nails are sized in the penny system (1d, 2d, 6d, etc.) Nails were so valuable in the US colonies that laws were written to prevent colonists from burning their homes down when they moved, simply to reclaim the nails. For a time, Thomas Jefferson’s primary source of income was nail making."

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.

This Japanese construction company has been in business for over 1,440 years

From Wikipedia: "Kongō Gumi Co. is a Japanese construction company founded in 578 A.D., making it the world's oldest documented company. The company mainly works on the design, construction, restoration, and repair of shrines, temples, castles, and cultural heritage buildings. A 3-metre-long 17th century scroll traces the 40 generations back to the company's start. It has continued operation through the founder's descendants. As with many distinguished Japanese families, sons-in-law often joined the clan and took the Kongō family name. This allowed the company to continue with the same name when there were no sons. While Kongō Gumi historically specialized in traditional architecture, increased competition from major construction companies due to the growing use of concrete in shrines and temples resulted in the company becoming a subsidiary of the Takamatsu Construction Group in January 2006."

This combination of tennis and racquetball predates the game we know as tennis

From Granta: "The way real tennis is played now, by about 4,000 active players on approximately fifty surviving and new-built courts in Britain, France, the US, and Australia, has changed little since the early modern period. Like lawn tennis, it is played on a double-ended court divided by a net. Like squash, it is played indoors and players can hit the ball off the walls to create angles and spin (a type of shot known as a ‘boast’). The serving player opens the game by sending the ball onto a sloping roof that runs along the length of the court to her left. Her opponent waits at the opposite end and may either volley the ball or wait for it to bounce. The goal of both players is either to hit one of several point-scoring targets dotted around the court, or to force their opponent to make an error. In real tennis, a double-bounce doesn’t mean a lost point. Instead, an ancient and complicated set of rules known as the ‘chase system’ comes into operation."

A retired US Marine pilot breaks the law by flying under the Eiffel Tower in Paris

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