They built a balcony on the WTC and started a conspiracy theory
From Rolling Stone: "On March 19, 2000, Florian Reither stepped out of the 91st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center through a hollowed-out window and stood on a makeshift wooden balcony. This vertiginous performance wasn’t the act of a brazen stuntman, crazed trespasser, or suicidal employee. It was the work of the Austrian art collective known as Gelitin, which consists of Florian Reither, Ali Janka, Wolfgang Gantner, and Tobias Urban. Titled the B-Thing, the feat saw the four men, now all in their fifties, secretly construct a balcony inside the World Trade Center, temporarily attach it, and briefly stand on top of it, floating dreamily above New York City. In the 25 years since, those involved have largely avoided speaking about the event again. Outside of esoteric circles, it’s still relatively obscure. For a long time, many skeptics believed it never even happened and claimed that it was a hoax on a vast scale."
A prop from the movie Citizen Kane that was going to be thrown out sold for $15 million
From the BBC: "A prop central to the celebrated opening scene of Citizen Kane - widely regarded as one of the best films ever made - has sold at auction for $14.75m. The wooden Rosebud sled, one of at least three known to have survived, was long thought to have been lost until it was given to director Joe Dante in 1984, saving it from destruction. It is now the second most expensive piece of memorabilia to have ever been sold - a pair of ruby slippers used in The Wizard of Oz sold for $32m in December. The version sold on Thursday had not been seen for many years until it ended up in the hands of Dante. He told Heritage auctions how he was making the film Explorers in 1984 on the same studio that was formerly owned by RKO Radio Pictures, which produced Citizen Kane. Dante said crews were on site clearing out storage areas when one worker, who knew he liked vintage films, asked if he wanted it."
A programmer built a fully functional replica of ChatGPT inside the game Minecraft
From Gamespot: "Minecraft is a sandbox limited only by your imagination and creativity, a fact that is on full display in the latest YouTube video from creator sammyuri. Using Minecraft's vanilla redstone mechanics, the gamer somehow managed to create a functional small language model that runs within the game. It joins previous examples of over-the-top engineering in Minecraft, which include a working computer that you can play Minecraft on while inside the game itself. The latest project, dubbed CraftGPT, occupies a volume of 439 million blocks – so big that the distant horizons mod was needed to showcase everything in the video. The small language model features 5,087,280 parameters and was trained in Python on the TinyChat dataset. While functional, sammyuri suggests tapering expectations as the model can often go off topic, produce responses that aren't grammatically correct, or simply spit out total garbage."
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.
Most of the artificial sugar substitutes like saccharin were discovered by accident
From Saveur: "Saccharin, named for the Latin word for sugar, was discovered accidentally in 1897 by a Johns Hopkins University researcher who was looking for new uses for coal tar derivatives. He forgot to wash his hands before lunch and tasted something sweet on his fingers. (Similar versions of this story occur in the accidental discoveries of cyclamate, aka Sweet'N Low, and aspartame, too.) After tasting everything in his lab to determine the source, he figured out it was benzoic sulfimide, a coal tar derivative that is 300 times sweeter than sugar. (Fun fact: Monsanto got its start in 1901 selling saccharin.) By 1907, saccharin was already widely used in sodas and canned goods, but most Americans had no idea it was in their food. The sweetener was eventually banned in 1912, but the decision was reversed during World War I, when sugar rations necessitated the use of saccharin as a substitute, and the ban was never reinstated."
George Washington's dentures were made of hippopotamus ivory and teeth from slaves
From Northcutt Dental: "Nearly every U.S. schoolchild has heard the story of George Washington and his wooden teeth. It’s speculated that the wooden teeth myth may have started as his false teeth began to stain, possibly taking on the appearance of wood. Washington’s teeth were actually made out of an even more fascinating assortment of materials. They included ivory from a host of African creatures like elephants, hippopotamus & rhinoceros to human teeth. According to MtVernon.org, a site for the museum dedicated to the first president, there was a sordid tooth trade amongst the poorer in the community, who would sell their teeth to dentists, who then used them in dentures for the more wealthy. Teeth from the deceased were also collected by some. There are also receipts that Washington purchased teeth that came from slaves."
When you need to bow the deepest but you married a gymnast
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
