How the NBA got into business with a ruthless African dictator

From ESPN: "In the summer of 2018, inside a national arena that felt more like a small-college gym, the NBA commissioner shot free throws with the president of Rwanda. It was a meeting of disparate men with complementary motives. Adam Silver, a lawyer and NBA lifer who grew up in a wealthy New York suburb before presiding over one of the most progressive leagues in sports, was in Rwanda to build on a mission to extend the NBA's reach to every corner of the world. Paul Kagame, a former rebel general credited with stopping one of the worst atrocities in modern history but who for years had been assailed as a dictator who smothers opposition through arrests, disappearances and killings, was looking to forge a partnership that would boost Rwanda's economy and, critics say, distract the world from his human rights record."

A physicist explains why he would rather fight a horse-sized duck than 100 duck-sized horses

From Wired: "First, this duck could obviously not fly. You can just imagine how big the wings would have to be for a 3,000 kg bird. It's not going to happen. But the problems aren't just with flying. What about the duck's legs? A duck-sized duck has two approximately cylindrical legs. Looking at the duck image, I measure a leg radius of about 0.005 meters. What is the compression pressure in these legs for a normal duck? It would be weight of the duck divided by the total cross-sectional area. If we ramp this up to our horse-sized duck, what happens? The mass increases and so does the radius of the leg. The horse-sized duck is 6.85 times larger than a duck. The leg would also be 6.85 times larger. This would give a horse-duck compression pressure close to 100 times the pressure of a normal duck. I think this duck would just sit there quacking - but really loud quacks. I could just toss some rocks at it until I was declared the winner."

The brothers who asserted their right to free speech in Tudor England

From the Smithsonian: "In the autumn of 1566, the Parliament of England gathered at the Palace of Westminster in London. The session was fraught from the outset, with many members of the House of Commons urging their queen, Elizabeth I, to establish the succession to the English throne—an issue of paramount importance, as many believed that if she died without a clearly defined heir, the kingdom would descend into civil war. Upon hearing that the Commons was once again seeking to meddle in the matter, Elizabeth sent a command that the topic be dropped. On November 11, 1566, Paul Wentworth, the member for Buckingham, rose within the Commons to speak. He asked "whether her highness’ commandment, forbidding the Lower House to speak or treat anymore of the succession, … be a breach of the liberty of the free speech of the House or not.” His comments sparked a heated debate."

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When he was still a student, Bill Gates solved a math problem about stacking pancakes

From NPR: "Before Bill Gates became a household name, he went to Harvard. His sophomore year, he was assigned a complicated mathematics problem. His paper on the solution was published, and until recently it remained the best solution to that problem: stacking pancakes. Imagine you work at a diner and the cook is really fast but he's not the most organized guy. And when he piles up the pancakes, sometimes the biggest pancake is on top and the smallest one is in the middle and it's just a mess. So your job is to sort them using a spatula. You can only put the spatula in someplace in the stack and just flip the pancakes above you. And you have to figure out a series of flips that will sort the stack so that you get the biggest pancake on the bottom, the second biggest one above that, all the way up to the smallest one. It turned out to be a very difficult math problem."

Surprising element found in traces of Tycho Brahe’s alchemy lab

From CNN: "While Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is best known for his celestial discoveries made in the 16th century — before the invention of the telescope — he was also an alchemist who brewed secret medicines for elite clients. But what exactly Brahe worked on in his alchemical laboratory, located beneath his castle residence and observatory called Uraniborg, has been something of a historical enigma. The covert nature of Brahe’s work was common among alchemists of the Renaissance, who kept their knowledge close to the vest. Today, only a few of his alchemical recipes remain. Uraniborg, situated on the island of Ven off the coast of Sweden and named for the muse of astronomy, Urania, was demolished after Brahe died in 1601. Now, researchers who conducted a chemical analysis of glass and pottery shards recovered from the site say they’ve uncovered new clues to what took place in the Renaissance scientist’s laboratory centuries ago."

How the humble George Foreman Grill became a multibillion-dollar behemoth

From The Hustle: "The larger grill, bolstered by QVC appearances, the new infomercial, and Foreman’s celebrity, began to sell. Word of mouth regarding the grill’s quality did the rest. Salton had ~3k different products, and 90% of its mail was related to the Foreman grill — most of it positive. The company sold $5m worth of grills in 1996. Sales ballooned to ~$200m in 1999 and more than $300m in 2000. Foreman’s share was huge. He told AARP magazine his monthly royalty check once totaled $8m, although Dreimman says Foreman’s monthly total reached ~$4m — a number that fits closer to reported sales figures and quarterly royalty totals the company booked in 1999. At the end of that year, Salton reached an agreement to buy Foreman’s name in perpetuity for $137m, paid out in increments of roughly $20m over five years."

Shrek the sheep, who got lost for six years, has 60 pounds of wool removed

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