The US planned to use nuclear bombs for construction projects
The year was 1957. The Cold War was in full swing. The U.S. was seemingly lagging behind in the technological arms race and needed to make a show, a display of power and prowess. Project Plowshare was a project in which the nation’s scientists were supposed to find something useful to do with all the nuclear expertise they had acquired throughout World War II and its aftermath. Scientists suggested that using nuclear bombs as huge shovels would offer the “highest probability of early beneficial success." One such project was an attempt to release 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under the Rocky Mountains by blasting apart caverns more than a mile deep with a trio of 33-kiloton bombs. The project team wanted to blow a path for a railway line through California’s Bristol Mountains; use nukes to expand the Panama Canal; and they wanted to use underwater explosions to carve out a harbor in Alaska. (via The Smithsonian)
His headstone says he was accused of biting a policeman with someone else's teeth
"The only man in British legal history to be convicted of biting a policeman with someone else's teeth." That is not an inscription you would imagine be on a gravestone, but it is, in a Shropshire cemetery. Is it true? Yes, says Alistair Mitchell's widow, Alexandra Preston. Her husband spent time in two prisons before his conviction was quashed. She told the BBC the four years he spent fighting a charge which he knew was false inspired him to become a barrister. The story goes back to 1990 and one of the most violent UK protests of the late 20th Century. Mitchell found himself trapped in Whitehall during the disturbances and was arrested in Oxford Street. He was convicted for assault and a claim he had bitten a police officer. His defence team were able to compare the bite mark with a cast of Mitchell's teeth to prove someone else's were responsible. But he was still convicted and spent weeks in prison. (via the BBC)
Believe it or not scientists still aren't quite sure what causes lightning
Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply mysterious. Storm clouds are opaque. They’re dangerous to approach. And they’re too big to fit in a lab. Inquisitive researchers have been sending kites, balloons, and rockets up into them for nearly three centuries, and they’ve learned a lot. But every time lightning lovers get closer to the action, they discover major gaps in their understanding. For the past 50 years, researchers have focused on one particular gap: How does the jagged channel of white-hot air we call a lightning bolt get started? Recently, the field has experienced a sort of renaissance as researchers have devised new ways to pierce the clouds. They’ve taken a slew of instruments built to study violent cosmic events and trained them on the brutality of terrestrial thunderstorms. No one has put all the pieces together, but a new understanding of lightning is taking shape. The fearsome flashes look less and less like the supersize electric sparks that physicists once imagined them to be. (via Quanta)
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.
The world's dirtiest man died at 94 after having his first bath in half a century
An Iranian hermit nicknamed the “world’s dirtiest man” for not taking a shower for more than half a century died at the ageof 94. Irna news agency reported that “Amou Haji”, an endearing nickname for an elderly person, died on Sunday in the village of Dejgah in the southern province of Fars. Haji was reported by local media not to have bathed with water or soap in more than 60 years. Amou Haji was celibate, ate carrion that he found (especially rotting porcupines), drank water from puddles and rusty oil cans, smoked animal dung using an old pipe, wore a war helmet to fend off cold, and lived in a hole that he had dug himself, or occasionally in a cinder block house constructed for him by local people. To manage his hair, he burned off the excesses with a flame. His skin was covered with soot because he "bathed" in smoke to cleanse himself. Villagers eventually persuaded him to wash for the first time. (via The Guardian)
Blue birds look that way because their feathers refract the light in a specific way
There is no such thing as a blue bird. To find out why, Smithsonian asked Scott Sillett, a wildlife biologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. “Red and yellow feathers get their color from actual pigments, called carotenoids, that are in the foods birds eat,” Sillett explains. “Blue is different―no bird species can make blue from pigments. The color blue that we see on a bird is created by the way light waves interact with the feathers and their arrangement of protein molecules, called keratin. In other words, blue is a structural color. Different keratin structures reflect light in subtly different ways to produce different shades of what our eyes perceive as the color blue. A blue feather under ultraviolet light might look uniformly gray to human eyes.”(via the Smithsonian)
Chloe Brennan only weighs 140 pounds but she lifted Ireland's famous Dinnie stones easily
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places 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 and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com
