From New York: “Gene Fleming was well known in Hastings. An eccentric inventor, he lived on a sprawling, unusual estate — a Navy ammunition depot he and his wife had renovated just outside . In September 1988, Fleming visited his brother-in-law‘s farm and noticed a new goose — it didn’t have feet and was struggling to get around. Fleming was enamored with the strangely deformed creature. Once home, Fleming strapped Rock ’n’ Roll to a skateboard. The goose toppled off. So he went out and bought a pair of size-zero patent-leather baby sneakers from a local shoe shop, filled them with rubber padding, and fitted them over the goose’s stumps. The transformation was immediate: The goose could walk. On October 10, 1988, the Hastings Tribune published an article, called “Goose Steps in Style,” chronicling Andy’s unlikely journey. Later that week, the Associated Press picked it up. Within weeks, Andy’s presence was requested in malls, schools, and nursing homes across the state.”
How the color blue came to be associated with the Virgin Mary
From The Paris Review: “Blue is a color with long-standing mystical associations. Perhaps this is because blue is the color of the sky, something we can always see but never reach, or perhaps it’s because, as chemist Heinz Berke points out, early humans had no access to blue because blue is not what you call an earth color … You don’t find it in the soil. Blue was elusive, and this made it valuable. The earliest stable blue was made from lapis lazuli, the mining of which began in Afghanistan around six thousand years ago. For millennia, blue has been a sacred and costly hue, more valuable even than gold. And in the Christian world, the most valuable color was reserved for the most elevated of virgins. Enter Marian blue. Marian blue became the official color of Jesus’s mother in the early fifth century. Painters typically depicted Mary in a red gown or wrapped in a pink mantle. But slowly, blue began to replace red as the color of choice.”
Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.
Once you notice this unusual typeface you can see it almost everywhere
From Ares Luna: “In 2007, on my first trip to New York City, I grabbed a brand-new DSLR camera and photographed all the fonts I was supposed to love. But there was one font I didn’t even notice, even though it was everywhere around me. Last year in New York, I walked over 100 miles and took thousands of photos of one and one font only.The font’s name is Gorton. At one point someone explained to me Gorton must have been a routing font, meant to be carved out by a milling machine rather than painted on top or impressed with an inked press. Some searches quickly led me to George Gorton Machine Co., a Wisconsin-based company which produced various engraving machines. A lot of typography has roots in calligraphy, but not Gorton. Every stroke of Gorton is exactly the same thickness — typographers call such fonts ‘monoline’. And every type designer will tell you: This is not how you design a font.”
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.
She was a Hollywood actress with a secret that could have ended her career
From the New York Times: “In 1936, Merle Oberon became the first Asian actress to be nominated for an Oscar for her role in “The Dark Angel.” There was no barrage of splashy news headlines to follow. This was because Merle wasn’t widely known to be a person of color: Years before, as she was beginning her career, she decided to pass as white, hiding her South Asian identity to make it in an industry that was resistant to anything else. Originally named Estelle Merle Thompson, Merle in Bombay, India. In London, Merle came to know Alexander Korda, a studio executive who helped invent her back story: She was the daughter of two European parents, and her birthplace was the island of Tasmania. As Merle acted in films, including “Men of Tomorrow” and “Wedding Rehearsal,” her profile rose, and the British press grew smitten with the rising star.”
She is the only person known to have been struck by a meteorite and survived
From Wikipedia: “At 12:46 PM on November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell through the skies above Sylacauga, Alabama. It split into at least three fragments, with one of the fragments falling through a roof and then landing on Ann Hodges, who was napping on her couch. The meteorite left a 3-foot wide hole in the roof of her house, bounced off a radio, and hit her on her upper thigh and hand, giving her a large bruise. Hodges and her mother, who was in the house at the time, thought the chimney had collapsed as there was a lot of dust and debris. Hodges’ husband Eugene came home later that evening, unaware of what had happened to his wife. She told him there was a “little excitement.” That night she did not sleep well and ended up going to the hospital the next day due to being distressed by the incident, rather than for her physical injury.”
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