From MIT: “Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice, and to put a communications satellite on lunar orbit. But the mission will also bring something that’s never been installed on the moon or anywhere else in space before—a fully functional 4G cellular network. Using point-to-point radio in space wasn’t much of an issue in the past because there never have been that many points to connect. Usually, it was just a single spacecraft, a lander, or a rover talking to Earth. And they didn’t need to send much data either. But it could soon get way more crowded up there: NASA’s Artemis program calls for bringing the astronauts back to the moon as early as 2028.”
A ceremonial gavel used by Canada’s Black Watch Regiment is from the 1814 White House
From Dokumen: “On 13 September 1958, the 3rd Battalion Black Watch returned to Philadelphia. The battalion flew and were met at the airport by a guard of honour from the 111th. The September visit marked the second time in 195 years that “The Black Watch Chair” would be occupied. The formal banquet included a double-tiered head table, and was held at Philadelphia’s exclusive Union League. The guest speaker was the adjutant general of the Pennsylvania National Guard, AJ Drexel Biddle, Jr. He was followed by the assistant to the Canadian military attaché to Washington, Colonel John B Allan, who presented a fine Highland claymore from the Queen Mother on behalf of the Imperial Black Watch to George H Roderick, the assistant secretary of the United States Army. On Sunday, an exhibition game of CFL Football was played between the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. At halftime, the 111th and Black Watch paraded and exchanged mementoes. The 111th colonel presented a wooden gavel, carved from a window of the original White House, burned by a British fleet in 1814.”
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A massive asteroid strike destroyed an ancient Middle Eastern city 3,600 years ago
From SingularityHub: “As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph. The rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles above the ground, with a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Clothing and wood immediately burst into flames. Swords, spears, mudbricks, and pottery began to melt. Almost immediately, the entire city was on fire. Some seconds later, a massive shockwave smashed into the city. Moving at about 740 mph, it was more powerful than the worst tornado ever recorded. About a minute later, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho, which was also demolished.”
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.
Someone stole a statue of author F. Scott Fitzgerald but no one knows why
From LitHub: “A statue of the Long Island Jazz Bard was removed from outside a Minnesota building where the author once attended school—a place formerly known as the St. Paul Academy. The building’s current owner commissioned Aaron Dysart, a mixed media artist fascinated with the intersection of the built and non-built environment, to design the sculpture. Fitzgerald published some of his earliest work at St. Paul’s. The statue was first reported missing on February 3rd. But the political will to find him did not reach fever pitch until a few days later. And per a local police report, the statue is believed to have been cut free with bolt cutters. So we have the how, the who, the where. But the why evades us. For what kind of fandom motivates someone to free a statue?”
Scientists have found a mysterious radioactive anomaly beneath the Pacific Ocean
From ScienceAlert: “A strange radioactive ‘blip’ has been detected deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. Analyzing several thin layers of seafloor crust, scientists in Germany have identified a sudden surge in the radioactive isotope Beryllium-10 sometime between 9–12 million years ago. The beryllium-10 blip was detected in the seabeds of the Central and the Northern Pacific. It’s unknown where the sudden surge came from, but researchers have a few ideas. Beryllium-10 is a radioactive isotope that is continuously produced by cosmic rays interacting with Earth’s atmosphere. Maybe, more than 9 million years ago, there was “a grand reorganization” of the ocean currents that meant beryllium-10 was deposited more in the Pacific, suggest Koll and colleagues. Or it could be from the cosmic fallout of a near-Earth supernova, or our Solar System’s passage through a cold, interstellar cloud, both of which would result in more cosmic ray activity.”
A mechanic fixes a plane’s broken landing gear from a car going 90 miles per hour
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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