Tom Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot while he was in the Army
From SF Weekly: "A rumor had circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs. "What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says. "And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O."
He deliberately crashed into another car but it was for a good reason
From Now I Know: "In the video clip, the grey hatchback on the side of the road keeps going straight, exiting the grass and going on to an on ramp. But the car doesn’t stay on the road for long. It quickly veers to the right, entering the grassy shoulder again and riding along the side rail. As the shoulder wanes, the rail diverts the car onto the highway, where it continues unabated for a few more seconds. But then, it rear ends a whiteish car, causing a bunch of damage and coming to a halt. At first blush, the video shows a garden-variety car accident. But if you watch the video again, the white car pulls into the merge lane and slows to a near stop, all but guaranteeing that he’ll be crashed into. It’s a weird choice, one that very obviously would result in the accident. Except that it wasn’t an “accident” at all. The driver, Henry Temmermans, wanted this to happen. He was trying to save the other driver’s life. And he succeeded."
The brain starts firing up an immune response when you even look at a sick person
From Scientific American: "The brain activates front-line immune cells in response to the mere sight of a sick person, mimicking the body’s response to an actual infection, a study shows. The results required the use of brain scans and blood tests, as well as less conventional technology: a gaming kit. Study volunteers donned virtual reality (VR) headsets to view human avatars with rashes, coughs or other symptoms of illness — avoiding the need to expose volunteers to pathogens. Andrea Serino and his colleagues outfitted healthy volunteers with Google’s Oculus Rift headsets and showed them avatars that approached closer and closer, although the avatars never ‘touched’ the participants. Some avatars showed signs of having an infectious illness; others were controls that looked healthy.Another group of volunteers did not see the avatars but received an influenza vaccination, representing exposure to an actual pathogen."
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.
A look at what master inventor Leonardo da Vinci had on his to-do list
From Open Culture: "Da Vinci would carry around a notebook, where he would write and draw anything that moved him. “It is useful,” Leonardo once wrote, to “constantly observe, note, and consider.” Buried in one of these books, dating back to around the 1490s, is a to-do list. And what a to-do list. NPR’s Robert Krulwich had it directly translated and here are some of the entries: Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle; Get Messer Fazio (a professor of medicine and law in Pavia) to show you about proportion; Get the Brera Friar (at the Benedictine Monastery to Milan) to show you De Ponderibus (a medieval text on mechanics); [Talk to] Giannino, the Bombardier, re. the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes (no one really knows what Da Vinci meant by this); Ask Benedetto Potinari (A Florentine Merchant) by what means they go on ice in Flanders."
He drank all of the 102 cocktails recognized by the International Bartenders' Association
From Adam Aranson: "The International Bartenders Association, or the IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones that they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, akin to the American Kennel Club’s registry of recognized dog breeds or a jazz musician’s Real Book of musical standards. As of 2025, there are 102 IBA official cocktails, and as of July 12, 2025, I’ve had every one single of them. The journey has taken me to some interesting places, and now that it’s done, I have a little story to tell for each cocktail. I’m not gonna tell you all 102 stories, but I do want to debrief the experience. Drinking all 102 cocktails turned out to be unexpectedly tricky, and for reasons you’ll soon understand, I might be one of the first people in the world to do it."
If you want to do insurance fraud don't hit a car with a dashboard camera
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
