A heroic quest to find the best free restaurant bread in the US
Here is the promise you and I must cling to across the thousands of words that follow: At some point within this text, I will reveal to you what—after 555 responses, 13,000 miles of travel, and months of monomaniacal research—I have determined to be the best free restaurant bread in America. I will not attempt to slither to the moral high ground, arguing that best is a meaningless measure, or insisting that all bread is dear in its own way. Even if you attempt to betray me—for instance, by merely scanning the text that follows for the phrase Here it is: the best free restaurant bread in America—I will uphold my end of the bargain. Though it strikes the ear as an insoluble query, there is a correct answer—right now, known only to God (and to me, an agent of his will), but erelong to the steadfast reader. (via The Atlantic)
A newspaper boy dropped a nickel on the ground and it popped open to reveal a microfilm
On June 22, 1953, a fourteen-year-old newspaper boy collecting for the Brooklyn Eagle was paid with a nickel that felt too light to him. When he dropped it on the ground, it popped open, revealing that it contained microfilm. The microfilm contained a series of numbers. After agent Louis Hahn of the FBI obtained the nickel and the microfilm, the agency tried to find out where the nickel had come from and what the numbers meant. On the microfilm, there were five digits together in each number, 21 sets of five in seven columns and another 20 sets in three columns, making a total of 207 sets. There was no key for the numbers. The FBI tried for nearly four years to find the origin of the nickel and the meaning of the numbers. It was only when KGB agent Reino Häyhänen chose to defect in May 1957 that the nickel was linked to the KGB. (via Wikipedia)
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Continue reading “A heroic quest to find the best free restaurant bread in the US”The occult history of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jack Parsons was one of the most influential figures in the history of the American space program. He also stood accused of espionage, and held a deep fascination with the occult. By 1939, Parsons and his wife Helen Parsons-Smith had fully embraced the teachings of the Ordo Templis Orientis, a central hub for Aleister Crowley’s spiritual and religious philosophy. Crowley taught that a Thelemite’s central ambition was to achieve a higher state of existence by embracing one’s “True Will,” or one’s ultimate purpose beyond selfishness or ego. In pursuit of that goal, many aspects of Parsons’s life blurred the boundaries between science and mysticism. As a Thelemite, he performed ritual magic, including banishing impure elements with pentagrams, invocating the power of the “Holy Guardian Angel,” and offering daily adorations to the sun. (via Supercluster)
These two women are twins but due to a rare event they have different fathers
Lavinia and Michelle know that those of us who haven’t shared a womb with a sibling can be fascinated by twins: their similarities, how they differ, whether there’s any kind of mysterious synergy between them. They aren’t identical twins. They share the same striking eyes, but the lower halves of their faces are different. Their personalities differ, too. But they share many things, including the almost inconceivable circumstances that brought them into the world, and which only came to light four years ago, when they were 45 and both took DNA tests from the genealogy firm Ancestry. Their results of those tests revealed something never before documented in British history. Lavinia and Michelle are twins who grew together in the same womb, were born from the same mother, and delivered within minutes of each other – but have different fathers. (via The Guardian)
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Continue reading “The occult history of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory”Life for philosophers after the apocalypse
A trip to Perugia, Turin and the Ligurian seaside
My wife and I have spent a number of years travelling to Perugia, a small town in Umbria, just a couple of hours north of Rome, for the fantastic journalism festival that is put on there by our friends Arianna and Christopher (Arianna was adamant that it not be called a conference when they started it). We haven’t been for the past couple of years for a number of reasons, but this was the 20th anniversary of the festival, so we had to go — and it was our 10th visit; we went for the first time in 2013 (in addition to the past couple of years when we didn’t attend, we missed a couple due to COVID). It was great to be back in the old city, which dates back to the Etruscan empire in the year 300 or so. One of the things we make sure to visit every year is a fascinating circular church that was originally a pagan temple, built in about 500 AD or so. You can just walk in and look around whenever you want — it is still used as a church — and nearby is an ancient tower from the same period that has a small museum you can visit as well.
Across from the main conference hotel there’s an escalator that goes down into the ruins of an ancient palace known as the Rocco Paolina, named for Pope Paul III, who built it in the 1500s after he took control of the city following the great Salt War. It seems that the new pope decided to levy a new tax on salt, which enraged the Perugians — according to legend, traditional Perugian bread is baked without salt, in memory of this grudge from 500 years ago. The pope squashed the rebellion with his armies, and took control of the city, and it remained under papal control until Italy was unified in 1860. Also, from what I understand, a guy named Frank from Assisi was injured in a war between Perugia and Assisi (which is about a two-hour drive away across a valley) in the year 1200 or so, and later got really religious and decided to become a monk, and eventually became Saint Francis of Assisi. The murals in his cathedral are truly spectacular.
Continue reading “A trip to Perugia, Turin and the Ligurian seaside”Friends for 60 years found out that they were brothers
Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane were born in Hawaii 15 months apart. The duo met in 6th grade and have been friends for 60 years. While they’ve shared a very close bond, they never thought they were related, until a DNA website revealed their relationship. Robinson was adopted, and Macfarlane did not know who his father was, so the pair were always searching individually for information on their families. For years, Macfarlane had tried unsuccessfully to find clues about his father. With the help of his daughter, they began sifting through matches he got on a DNA website. One of the top matches was username Robi737. Macfarlane-Flores told KHON-TV, that her father’s best friend, Robinson, flew 737 airplanes for Aloha Airlines, and his nickname was Robi. The pair soon learned that they shared a birth mother. (via USA Today)
Archeologists have found honey in 3,000-year-old Egyptian tombs that is still edible
Modern archeologists, excavating ancient Egyptian tombs, have often found something unexpected amongst the tombs’ artifacts: pots of honey, thousands of years old, and yet still preserved. Through millennia, the archeologists discover, the food remains unspoiled, an unmistakable testament to the eternal shelf-life of honey. There are a few other examples of foods that keep–indefinitely–in their raw state: salt, sugar, dried rice are a few. But there’s something about honey; it can remain preserved in a completely edible form, and while you wouldn’t want to chow down on raw rice or straight salt, one could ostensibly dip into a thousand year old jar of honey and enjoy it, without preparation, as if it were a day old. Moreover, honey’s longevity lends it other properties – mainly medicinal – that other resilient foods don’t have. Which raises the question: what exactly makes honey such a special food? (via The Smithsonian)
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Continue reading “Friends for 60 years found out that they were brothers”