From the New York Times: "Challenged by his friend, the swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, Harry Prieste shinnied up a 15-foot flagpole at the end of the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, and stole the official flag. The Irish linen flag came home with Prieste to Los Angeles, the
From The Week: "Though the Allies considered some highly inventive schemes to beat Adolf Hitler, few are more bizarre than an alleged plot to make the Fuhrer lose interest in world domination by secretly drugging him with female sex hormones. Cardiff University professor Brian Ford says he uncovered the
Editor's note: Mathew here. A little bird told me that the message I sent out earlier today, asking you (okay, begging you) to subscribe to this newsletter, didn't have a big "Subscribe" button on it for those of you who had already signed up
Hi everyone – Mathew Ingram here. If you're getting this email, then you signed up at some point for my newsletter, When The Going Gets Weird (in case you're wondering, that name is a reference to a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, in which he said "
From Washington Post: "The ball blazed five feet over the goal’s crossbar. Even the team’s security guard couldn’t hide his frustration, kicking the dirt, wondering aloud why Capiatá’s fate had been put in Marset’s hands. Over the next two years, the reasons would become
From Wired: "The first picture Neil Armstrong ever snapped from the surface of the moon shows a jettisoned waste bag that may well contain poop. The Apollo crews left a total of 96 bags of waste, including urine and feces, across their six landing sites, which are still sitting
From Now I Know: "After the Manhattan Project came to a close, nuclear weapons testing continued for decades. In 1957, the government detonated 29 bombs in the Nevada desert as part of Operation Plumbbob, hoping to develop better weapons. The researchers dug a 500 foot deep hole, dropped the
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Born in 1874 in Albany, N.Y., Charles Fort started his career as a journalist and aspiring fiction writer until his uncle’s death in 1906 left him with enough money to pursue his paranormal research full time. By then he had already
From The Guardian: "Millions of Britons were forced to drink subpar cups of tea last November due to the record-breaking low pressure caused by Storm Ciarán. The low pressure caused the boiling point of water to drop below the 100C temperature some experts recommend to extract the full
From the Washington Post: “Anna Kohler was running late as she darted toward the L train that was about to leave a New York subway station for her neighborhood in Brooklyn. Like many subway commuters, Kohler, 29, hoped for an uneventful trip to the Morgan Avenue station where she was
From the CBC: "It's a call Carolyn Abraham won't soon forget. In the spring of 1999, while working as the senior medical reporter for the Globe and Mail, Abraham received a tip from McMaster University — the office of Sandra Witelson, to be exact, a professor
From The Free Press: "This is a story that ends with my own assisted death in Switzerland." That is how the suicide note began. Allan Kassenoff was standing in the driveway of his Westchester home on Saturday, May 27, 2023, when he read it. His wife, Catherine, had