From Chris Lewicki: "Some mistakes feel worse than death. A February evening in 2003 started out routine at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. I gowned up in cleanroom garb and passed into the High Bay 1 airlock in Building 179 where nearly all of NASA’
From Eren Orbey for the New Yorker: "One night in August of 1999, on a summer trip back to Ankara, our dad was murdered. G was twelve and I was three. We were both there when it happened, along with our mom, but I was too young to remember.
From Kat Eschner for Smithsonian magazine: "Throughout his brief presidency, John F. Kennedy kept a paperweight on his desk made out of half a coconut shell preserved in a piece of wood. It was one of two mementos Kennedy retained of the most dramatic moment in his World War
From Jessica Watkins at Atlas Obscura: "I joined the national team as a junior in college. At the time, rugby wasn’t in the Olympics, so the women’s national team was working toward the Rugby World Cup. Eventually, I was able to participate, and a little bit later
From Dan Lewis at Now I Know: "If you visited the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain before 2012, you would have seen a fresco painted on its walls titled “Ecce Homo” (or “Behold the Man”), a depiction of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. Originally painted in
From Joe Biel: "Kittie Knox is the reason that bicycling is more than just another leisure sport for the wealthy. As a Black teenager, she created the world that she wanted to see from the seat of her bike. Today, you can see the results of Kittie’s success
From Patricia Lockwood at the LRB: "The invitation said ‘black dress for Ladies’. ‘You’re not allowed to be whiter than him,’ my husband, Jason, instructs. ‘He has to be the whitest. And you cannot wear a hat because that is his thing.’ We are discussing the pope, who
From Kim Ju-Song for The Dial: "Aspiring writers in North Korea must register with the Korean Writers’ Union and participate in annual writing workshops. KWU editors evaluate each work on its ideological merits before allowing its publication. There are particularly strict rules regarding how the leaders and the Party
From Laura Kiniry for Atlas Obscura: "Four centuries ago, the settlers of a small French outpost perched on the north bank of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis River came up with the novel idea of founding an organization that would not only feed its members, but also uplift spirits during
From Janice Kai Chen for the Washington Post: "Internet speeds have come a long way since the days of the dial-up modem, but sometimes you can’t beat the millennia-old method of carrier pigeon. Ancient Greeks used the so-called rats of the sky to spread results of the Olympic
From Hilary Hanson for HuffPost: "In the wake of orcas attacking boats around Portugal and Spain, sailors are turning to unorthodox tactics in an attempt to deter them. One piece of advice going around is to blast heavy metal music underwater to keep orcas away. But a marine mammal
From Lucy Davies for the BBC: "In the 1930s, Jasper Maskelyne was a superstar magician, performing to sell-out crowds at variety theatres all over Britain. A 1931 poster for his stint at the London Palladium billed him "England's Greatest Illusionist". Maskelyne's greatest hoax