That time the US built a fort and put it in Canada by mistake
From Amusing Planet: "During the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, the border between British Canada and upstate New York saw some of the fiercest fighting, much of which took place around Lake Champlain. This freshwater lake situated across the US-Canada border provided the British a direct invasion route into the heart of America. Had this important travel corridor from the mighty Saint Lawrence to the Hudson fell into the hands of British troops, the results of the American Revolutionary War could have been very different. Anxious to prevent another invasion attempt, immediately following the War of 1812, America decided to fortify the shores of Lake Champlain. A small sandy spit called Island Point was chosen as the site for an octagonal fort. The fort, when finished, was to have 30-foot-high walls and 125 cannons that could blow out of waters any British ship attempting to sail past. Construction of the fort began in 1816, and continued for two years when a survey conducted jointly by the United States and Great Britain discovered a problem — the fort was being built on the wrong side of the border. The actual border passed almost a mile south of the fort. Once the embarrassing mistake was discovered, construction of the fort was hastily stopped and the unnamed citadel earned the nickname “Fort Blunder”.
Apple exec's inspiration for HyperCard – a precursor to the web – came on an LSD trip
From Mondo2000: "In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California. Knowledge, it seemed to me, consists of the “How” connections between pieces of information, the cause and effect relationships.Wisdom, it seemed to me, was a step further removed, the bigger perspective of the “Why” connections between pieces of knowledge. Why, for reasons ethical and aesthetic, should we choose one future over another? I thought if we could encourage sharing of ideas between different areas of knowledge, perhaps more of the bigger picture would emerge, and eventually more wisdom might develop. Sort of a trickle-up theory of information leading to knowledge leading to wisdom. This was the underlying inspiration for HyperCard, a multimedia environment that empowered non-programmers to share ideas using new interactive media called HyperCard stacks."
Airport security found 1,500 tarantulas in boxes that said they contained chocolate cake
From the Washington Post: "Customs officials smelled that something was amiss even before they unpacked roughly 1,500 tarantulas that had been hidden in boxes that should have been filled with about 15 pounds of chocolate-flavored cake.The tarantulas — large and hairy arachnids — were in a packet addressed to be shipped from Vietnam to North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany. The venomous spiders were crammed into small plastic containers that were then filled into the bright-red cake boxes.A “noticeable smell” — inconsistent with the alleged contents — emanated from one of the packages when it was opened, Cologne Bonn Airport officials said in a news release Monday. Maja Ley, a spokesperson for the Cologne Main Customs Office, said that the majority of the smuggled tarantulas were alive when discovered. The survivors were placed in professional care. The person responsible for the package, which was discovered about three weeks ago, is a now a suspect in an investigation, Ley said. The fact that some of the arachnids died violates Germany’s animal welfare regulations."
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.
Texas has a dog race just for Dachsunds and it is both a joke and a very serious event
From Texas Highways: "When the starting gates open it’s like each wiener dog in this preliminary heat of six racers is auditioning for a different dog food commercial. Not one dachshund stays in their grassy lane or plays by the script. The stout, short-haired fellow in the pink collar comes out as crookedly as a baby tooth and drops off the back of the pack. Ahead of him, a golden-haired lowrider hustles so hard his ears fly behind him. The ears of the wiener dog in the yellow collar next to him swing straight up like devil horns with each stride. Several sausage links ahead of the nearest competitor, a long-haired specimen in a blue collar bounds on the diagonal toward her owner at the finish line, tail erect as a sail, flaunting her rich white coat and chestnut markings. The Buda Wiener Dog Races, now in their 28th year, are like comic-con for the tubular canines with stubby legs and Napoleonic personalities. For one April weekend, a mass of people gathers for a pet parade, a costume contest, live music, a barbecue cookoff, and the sprint to be crowned the fastest wiener dog."
Even linguistic experts don't know why words like knight and knock lost their k sounds
From Oxford University Press: "We know that in English words beginning with kn– and gn– the first letter is mute. Even in English spelling, which is full of the most bizarre rules, this one causes surprise. But no less puzzling is the rule’s historical basis. At one time, know, knock, gnaw, and their likes were pronounced as they still are in related Germanic languages, that is, with k– and g- in the onset. What happened to those k- and g- sounds? According to the evidence of contemporary observers, the destruction of k and g before n happened about five centuries ago, that is, shortly before and in Shakespeare’s time. Why did it? A few analogs of the change in English have been found in German Bavarian dialects, but nothing even remotely resembling the loss of k and g before n has happened elsewhere in Germanic. Our best books on the history of English describe in detail the loss of k and g before n but are silent on the causes."
Visualizing Newton's first law of motion with a leap into a snow-covered fence
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
