The crypto bros, the sex slave and the torture townhouse

From New York: "Woeltz and Duplessie transformed the five-story townhouse they were staying in on Prince Street into an after-hours nightclub, filling it with young employees from Brandy Melville around the corner. The parties were wild and sometimes unnerving; the hosts bragged about ties to intelligence agencies and showed off guns, knives, and cattle prods. The same security team that accompanied them to clubs — some of whom were off-duty New York Police Department officers — patrolled the house at all hours.This went on for months, until one morning, on the eve of Memorial Day weekend, when a 28-year-old man dashed from the townhouse onto the sidewalk, barefoot and bleeding from his head. He staggered down the street and flagged a cop. He’d just escaped from a nightmare, he claimed in a lilting Italian accent. Two crypto investors had held him captive and tortured him for weeks for the passwords to his cryptocurrency accounts. The man, Michael Carturan, was taken to a hospital. Police soon arrested his alleged captors, Duplessie and Woeltz."

The body of a man who fell into a crevasse in Antarctica 65 years ago has been found

From the BBC: "The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier. The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe. He has now been formally identified as Dennis "Tink" Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey. He was stationed at Admiralty Bay, a small UK base with about 12 men on King George Island, roughly 120 kilometres (75 miles) off the northern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The snow was deep and the dogs had started to show signs of tiredness. Dennis went on ahead alone to encourage them, but he wasn't wearing his skis. Suddenly he disappeared into a crevasseHe grabbed onto a rope that was lowered down. The dogs pulled on the rope and Dennis was hitched up to the lip of the hole. But he had tied the rope onto his belt, and as he reached the lip, the belt broke and he fell into the crevasse again."

Someone keeps stealing, fixing and then returning this California man's airplane

From the LA Times: "While Jason Hong was celebrating his 75th birthday, he suddenly found himself thinking about his 1958 Cessna Skyhawk, a white and red single-engine beauty with colorful stripes. Hong headed to Corona Municipal Airport after church on July 27, but when he got there, the plane was not where he’d left it. Hong was dumbfounded. It was gone. As Hong would come to find out, the colorful aircraft had been flown across Southern California by an unknown pilot, unnoticed, at least twice before and then simply returned to the airport. Both Hong and police were left scratching their heads.The first time he discovered it missing, Hong reported it to Corona police, unsure that he’d ever see the plane he’s owned for nearly 30 years again. After all, he thought, who steals an entire plane?Then on the morning of July 29, he got a call from La Verne Police, telling him his plane was found in Brackett Field Airport."

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.

Why do witches ride brooms? The history behind the legend

From History.com: "The evil green-skinned witch flying on her magic broomstick may be a Halloween icon — and a well-worn stereotype. But the actual history behind how witches came to be associated with such an everyday household object is anything but dull. From the beginning, brooms were associated primarily with women. Despite this, the first witch to confess to riding a broom or besom was a man: Guillaume Edelin. Edelin was a priest from Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He was arrested in 1453 and tried for witchcraft after publicly criticizing the church’s warnings about witches. His confession came under torture, and he eventually repented but was still imprisoned for life. Anthologist Robin Skelton suggests the association between witches and brooms may have roots in a pagan fertility ritual, in which rural farmers would leap and dance astride poles, pitchforks or brooms in the light of the full moon to encourage the growth of their crops. This became confused with common accounts of witches flying through the night on their way to orgies and other illicit meetings."

A prank chair from the Danish royal court shows the eternal popularity of fart jokes

From Atlas Obscura: "Rosenborg Castle is the home to many trappings of the Danish monarchy, including the crown jewels and the thrones of the king and queen. It is also home to a less regal chair, one that displays an unexpected love of practical jokes. Located in the Regalia Room (just off of the Knight's Hall), the chair contains a bellows and pipe mechanism that makes it sound like the sitter is breaking wind. Two metal bars then extend out from under the armrests, locking the sitter in place. It's at that point that the water starts to flow. Starting from a tank built into the chair's backrest, water runs into a container that makes it sound like the sitter is peeing. Another pipe takes water to valves built into the armrests, which spurt the water onto the sitter's pants. Finally, pipes carry water under the seat and out the front of the chair. There is a history of such chairs at court in various European countries, though it's unclear if the chairs were used solely as entertainment or if they were also used to embarrass."

The downsides of owning a dog

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