There's a Polish cemetery that's just for suspected vampires

A 400-year-old grave held the body of a young woman, the rusted blade of a sickle over her throat and a padlock fastened to her foot — the macabre signs of a community terrified the deceased would rise again. Archaeologists unearthed Zosia, as the skeleton was nicknamed, from an unmarked burial site in 2022 near the village of Pień in northern Poland. Now, some of the same scientists have published the first systematic research on Zosia, using ancient DNA and other cutting-edge analyses in an attempt to understand who the woman was, how she died, and why she, and perhaps others buried in the same field around 400 years ago, appeared to have been feared as vampires or demons. Several feature body arrangements or objects that the study described as deviant or atypical. These included a child buried face down, a skeleton positioned as in a crucifixion, graves with stones placed around the skull as if to prevent biting or movement, as well as other graves with sickles and padlocks. (via CNN)

This Arkansas fiddler made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry when she was 99

Violet Hensley, who grew up in Arkansas learning from her father how to carve and play a fiddle, and whose nearly 60-year performing career reached its peak at age 99, when she debuted at the Grand Ole Opry, died on Aug. 7 at her home in Yellville, Ark., in the Ozarks. She was 109.Her daughter Sandra Flagg, a guitarist, confirmed the death. By the time she turned 99, Ms. Hensley had performed old-time mountain music — not bluegrass, which she deemed too fancy — at the Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Mo., for more than 50 years; played on radio stations and at schools; recorded at least two albums, one of them, with family members, called “Old-Time Hoedowns”; and appeared on TV programs like “Captain Kangaroo,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee.”She also handcrafted 73 fiddles — she played No. 4, which she made in the 1930s — thus acquiring nicknames like “The Whittlin’ Fiddler” and “Stradivarius of the Ozarks.” (via the NYT)

The long, tangled, and mostly wrong history of the psychedelic toad

In the 1960s, while Schultes was continuing his ethnobotanical research, 5-MeO-DMT was detected in numerous other plants around the world, including a type of grass that could cause grazing sheep to convulse uncontrollably, a phenomenon known as “staggers.” Then, in 1964, the molecule showed up in an animal for the first time, detected in the skins of Sonoran Desert toads, a species that had formerly been of interest only to the occasional herpetologist. This breakthrough was thanks to an Italian chemist named Vittorio Erspamer. Earlier in his career, Erspamer had discovered the neurotransmitter serotonin. In the early 1960s he received 21 Sonoran Desert toad specimens that had been skinned and dried in Arizona. The findings were striking. All toads produce bufotenine, but this was the only species among some of the most chemically diverse animals in the world that contained 5-MeO-DMT. (via Longreads)

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.

Angela Lansbury moved to Ireland because her daughter was involved with Charles Manson

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury was a British and American (later also Irish) actress and singer. In a career spanning 80 years, she won numerous accolades including six Tony Awards, six Golden Globe Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, 18 Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. In 1949, Lansbury married actor and producer Peter Shaw, and they remained married until he died in 2003. They had two children together and Lansbury became the stepmother of Shaw's son from his first marriage. While Lansbury repeatedly stated that she wanted to put her children before her career, she admitted that she frequently had to leave them in California for long periods when she was working elsewhere. In the 1970s, Lansbury moved the family to Ireland. In contemporary newspaper interviews, Lansbury stated the move was because of her children's use of drugs, her daughter's involvement with Charles Manson, and a desire to remove them from that environment. (via Wikipedia)

No one knows what happened to the missing Pedro Mountain Mummy

John Adolfi, a creationist in Syracuse, New York, searched for many years for Noah’s Ark and a race of giants who supposedly walked the Earth. But until he died last November, the elusive Pedro Mountain Mummy found in Wyoming in 1932 still clearly haunted him. In 2005, Adolfi posted a $10,000 reward for the tiny mummified remains of the 7-inch-tall “Pedro,” as he came to be known in the region. Pedro hasn’t been seen in public since 1950, but in the past 76 years the mummy has been the source of extraordinary speculation about its origin. Adolfi’s goal was to have the mummy tested through DNA samples, magnetic resonance imaging, and improved X-ray technology to establish exactly what it was so he could disprove the theory of evolution. Countless newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Pedro, who is also the subject of a host of videos on YouTube and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1994. (via Cowboy State Daily)

Watching robots run in the Robot Olympics

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