How a gambler called The Joker took down the Texas lottery

From the WSJ: "In the spring of 2023, a London banker-turned-bookmaker reached out to a few contacts with an audacious request: Can you help me take down the Texas lottery? Bernard Marantelli had a plan in mind. He and his partners would buy nearly every possible number in a coming drawing. There were 25.8 million potential number combinations. The tickets were $1 apiece. The jackpot was heading to $95 million. If nobody else also picked the winning numbers, the profit would be nearly $60 million. Marantelli flew to the U.S. with a few trusted lieutenants. They set up shop in a defunct dentist’s office, a warehouse and two other spots in Texas. The crew worked out a way to get official ticket-printing terminals. Trucks hauled in dozens of them and reams of paper.Over three days, the machines screeched away nearly around the clock, spitting out 100 or more tickets every second."

Her school won the state championship even though she was the only one competing

From Now I Know: "As a junior, Bonnie Richardson represented Rochelle, Texas in the state’s Division 1A championships, a group at the time comprising about 400 of the smallest public high schools in the state. And she did so alone. She was the only student from Rochelle to qualify for any event held at the state championships — and she qualified for almost all of them. On the first day, in 90 degree heat, she competed in the high jump, long jump, and discus. On the second day, she ran in both the 100m and 200m sprints. She didn’t qualify in the two relay races, which makes sense, given that she didn’t have three teammates to run with her. Richardson won the high jump and the 200m. She came in second in the long jump and 100m dash. In the discus, she placed third. In total, she earned 42 points for Rochelle High — more than enough to secure the state team title for her school, despite the team consisting of one person."

Why does Japan have some traffic lights that are blue instead of green? It's complicated

From Espunis: "If you’ve had the chance to visit Japan, you might have noticed an unusual feature in the traffic lights: they display blue lights instead of the conventional green. In most countries, traffic lights follow the international standard set by the Vienna Convention on Traffic Signals in 1968, using red, yellow, and green to regulate traffic. However, Japan breaks this pattern with blue lights instead of the traditional green. The reason lies in Japan’s cultural and linguistic history. In ancient times, the Japanese language did not clearly differentiate between green and blue, using the word “aoi” to describe both colors. Although modern Japanese has distinct words for blue and green (“midori”), the transition was not immediate. During World War II, distinguishing between these colors became critical. The need to paint aircraft carriers in a shade closer to blue highlighted the importance of distinguishing blue from green."

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 1,900-year-old papyrus details an elaborate Roman tax-evasion scheme

From the New York Times: "It may not have been the tax-evasion trial of the century — the second century, that is — but it was of such gravity that the defendants faced charges of forgery, fiscal fraud and the sham sale of slaves. Tax dodging is as old as taxation itself, but these particular offenses were considered so serious under Roman law that penalties ranged from heavy fines and permanent exile to hard labor in the salt mines and, in the worst case, damnatio ad bestias, a public execution in which the condemned were devoured by wild animals.The allegations are laid out in a papyrus that was discovered decades ago in the Judean desert but only recently analyzed. According to the ancient notes, the tax-evasion scheme involved the falsification of documents and the illicit sale and manumission, or freeing, of slaves — all to avoid paying duties in the far-flung Roman provinces of Judea and Arabia."

A famous Chinese author decided to make friends with his government censor

From The Guardian: "It is 2013 and I am a bestselling author and a verified Weibo user with a small blue capital V after my name. In a little over two years, I publish more than 1,800 posts on Weibo. Many of these posts criticise or ridicule the Communist party. They are wildly popular, generating countless comments and reposts. I am frequently praised for my bravery, but upon reflection, my indirect criticism and mockery is not true bravery. At most, I hit a few aces. In this, I am no different to many public intellectuals of this time who never point at the elephant in the room and call for an end to Communist party rule. By May 2013, I have close to 4 million followers on Weibo. Such large accounts are allocated a personal censor, known as a Weibo gatekeeper. Mine is Jia Jia. Sometimes she tells me the names of the people and the events that cannot be mentioned. When she refers to such matters, she speaks softly, her tone suggesting that this is a consultation, as though she were a sister or a close friend."

Christian folk singers sang One Toke Over the Line in 1973, unaware of the subject matter

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