From The Guardian: “A humpback whale briefly scooped a kayaker into its mouth off the Chilean Patagonia before quickly releasing him unharmed in an incident caught on camera. Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell, in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when a humpback whale surfaced, engulfing Adrián and his yellow kayak for a few seconds before letting him go. Dell, just metres away, captured the moment on video. “Stay calm, stay calm,” he can be heard saying after his son was released from the whale’s mouth. Experts say it’s just not possible for a humpback whale to swallow something as large as a person, since they normally consume tiny fish known as krill. While their mouths are massive — as wide as 10 feet — their throats are much smaller, roughly the size of a human fist.”
Scientist solves the mystery of the Summerville Ghost that has haunted a town since the 1950s
From The Daily Mail: “Since the 1950s, people in Summerville, South Carolina have told stories of a ghost haunting abandoned railroad tracks. Legend has it that a man working or traveling on the railroad was hit by a train and killed, and after her death, his wife began haunting the area – walking with a lantern. People have claimed to see an eerie glow hovering over the tracks and strange lights seemingly floating in the air that sometimes rush towards them or grow in size. Locals also claim to have seen shaking cars, slamming doors and whispered voices being heard without a source near houses and buildings running along the rail line. Dr Susan Hough, a geophysicist at the Earthquake Hazards Program, believes a natural explanation may be the reason for the paranormal activity. She believes the hauntings are actually after-effects of minor earthquakes.”
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Lincoln’s preferred solution to racism was to ship Black Americans to another country
From Prologue: “Abraham Lincoln, known as the Great Emancipator, may have also been known as the Great Colonizer when he supported a third direction to the slavery debate: move African Americans somewhere else. Long before the Civil War, in 1854, Lincoln said in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois: “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” By early 1861, Lincoln ordered a secret trip to modern-day Panama to investigate the land of a Philadelphian named Ambrose Thompson, who had volunteered his Chiriqui land as a refuge for freed slaves. Lincoln also supported a bill in Congress that provided money to “aid in the settlement of such free persons of African descent as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States.”
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.
In the early 1900s there was a special train that carried 200 tons of rhubarb a day
From Wikipedia: “Growing and forcing rhubarb was originally done by many hundreds of small farmers, smallholders and market gardeners. In later years some growers expanded and owned many thousands of roots and extensive forcing sheds. The Rhubarb Triangle is a 9-square-mile (23 km2) area of West Yorkshire, England between Wakefield, Morley, and Rothwell famous for producing rhubarb. In the late 19th century early forced rhubarb was sent to London in time for Christmas and was sent to Paris for the French market. A special express train carrying rhubarb was run by the Great Northern Railway Company from Ardsley station every weekday night during the forced rhubarb season from Christmas until Easter. Up to 200 tons of rhubarb sent by up to 200 growers was carried daily, until rhubarb started to become less popular after the Second World War when more exotic fruits became more available.”
First-ever scan of a dying human brain reveals life may actually flash before your eyes
From LiveScience: After an elderly patient died suddenly during a routine test, scientists accidentally captured unique data on the activity in his brain at the very end of his life: During the 30 seconds before and after the man’s heart stopped, his brain waves were remarkably similar to those seen during dreaming, memory recall and meditation, suggesting that people may actually see their life flash before their eyes when they die. Researchers made the startling discovery in 2016 while studying the brain activity in an 87-year-old Canadian man who had developed epilepsy. The team was performing an EEG to learn more about what was happening during his seizures when the man suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack. The patient’s unexpected death meant that the team had accidentally made the first-ever recording of a dying brain.”
The dance of a thousand hands
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
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