The story of Undark and the Radium Girls

From Damn Interesting: "In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric. As a series of doctors attempted to solve Grace’s mysterious ailment, similar cases began to appear throughout New Jersey. One dentist took notice of the unusually high number of deteriorated jawbones among local women, and it took very little investigation to discover a common thread; all of the women had been employed by the same watch-painting factory."

London Museum's new pigeon and "poo splat" logo causes dissent in the UK

From the BBC: "The new logo for the Museum of London featuring a porcelain pigeon and a glittery poo splat is dividing opinion. The director of the museum, Sharon Ament, said the pigeon and splat represented the "grit and glitter" of the capital. However, museums newsletter author Maxwell Blowfield said pigeons were "one of the least unique things about London". The museum, which has been renamed as the London Museum, has a new premises due to open in Smithfield and a revamp is taking place at its Docklands site. Ms Ament said: “The pigeon and splat speak to a historic place full of dualities; a place where the grit and the glitter have existed side by side for millennia; an impartial and humble observer of London life." Mr Blowfield, author of the popular Maxwell Museums' newsletter, wrote: "No-one ever thinks, feels or speaks about pigeons. They’re one of the least unique things about London."

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Londoners in the 1800s were obsessed with pig-faced ladies

From Atlas Obscura: "Londoners were celebrating the recent British victory over Napoleon. The area was packed with people, forcing traffic to a crawl. As memoirist Rees Howell Gronow wrote in 1864, one carriage in particular drew the crowd’s attention. Some proclaimed that inside, they had seen an animal snout protruding from a trendy bonnet. It was none other than the infamous pig-faced lady, or so they claimed. Some shouted for the carriage to stop, crowding around the vehicle. Faced with the growing press of people, the driver hurried away. In the early months of that year, journalists and papers helped turn the pig-faced lady into something of a celebrity—despite skepticism of her existence. In the February 9, 1815, issue of The Times, one woman said she wished to “undertake the care of a Lady who is heavily afflicted in the face,” expressing her hope of a substantial salary."

The day that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stole music from the Vatican

From the Imaginative Conservative: "The Vatican knew it had a winner on its hands with Allegri’s “Miserere” and, wanting to preserve its aura of mystery and exclusivity, forbade replication, threatening anyone who attempted to copy or publish it with excommunication. But that didn’t stop the teenaged Mozart. The fourteen-year-old Mozart didn’t see himself as being a music pirate, mind you. He was just doing the thing he so excelled at, with his musical genius and photographic memory, back in the spring of 1770. He and his father Leopold were in Rome, working their way through Italy for the month as the young Wolfgang performed and studied and learned. Their timing was perfect: Rome during Holy Week. This was the only time and place you could hear Allegri’s famous “Miserere mei Deus” being sung. In the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel."

A mountaintop burial site offers a glimpse into Inca life but raises ethical questions

From Scientific American: "The highest archaeological site in the world is on top of Llullaillaco, a roughly four-mile-high sleeping volcano that sits along the border of northern Argentina and Chile. Its summit was the final resting place of Inca human sacrifices. Scientists have found traces of chicha, which is alcohol. The Inka priests prepared them to be sleepy when they were sacrificed on the summit. We found that the children also had coca leaves, probably chewed as part of the ceremony, but I imagine also against altitude sickness. Researchers have estimated that the children—a teenage girl, along with a young boy and girl—had likely walked nearly 900 miles [more than 1,400 kilometers] by this time. They started from Qusqu in what is now Peru."

A riot started in Panama City in 1856 over a watermelon and a dozen people died

From Wikipedia: "The Watermelon Riot occurred on the evening of April 15, 1856, in Panama City, then the capital of Panama State in the Republic of New Granada. After an American took a slice of watermelon from a street vendor and refused to pay for it, a verbal altercation ensued and then quickly escalated when shots were fired. An angry mob of locals converged on the site and began fighting with the Americans. Before order could be restored, at least fifteen Americans and two Panamanians were killed. American businesses, including the railroad station, were extensively damaged or destroyed. Most of the fatalities that night occurred once the police and mob had fought their way into the building. The railroad station was destroyed, sections of railroad tracks were torn up, and telegraph lines were severed. The violence in and around the station ended around dawn, reports from the time indicate."

Aging fruit bat gets taken on "flights" so he can stay active

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