Irv Arenberg, an 85-year-old retired ear surgeon, lives in Arizona and counts among his patients the late artist Vincent van Gogh. Arenberg was a teenager when he first encountered Van Gogh, in the guise of the 1956 biopic Lust for Life, and he became fascinated by the Dutch artist, whom he gradually got to know through undergrad art-history classes and the posters he hung in his dorm room. In 1990, after years of practicing medicine and reviewing Van Gogh’s case history via his hundreds of letters, Arenberg published a paper in JAMA diagnosing Van Gogh as suffering not from epilepsy, as the artist’s physician claimed a century earlier, but from Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear affliction that can cause vertigo, of which Van Gogh complained, and tinnitus, a persistent ringing in the ears. Ménière’s, to Arenberg, could better explain Van Gogh’s decision to slice off his ear. After retiring, in 2017, Arenberg recommitted himself to studying Van Gogh and became convinced that art historians had made an even more alarming mistake: Van Gogh had not committed suicide. He’d been murdered. (via Air Mail)
An earthquake in 2011 moved parts of Japan eastward by five or six millimetres
When the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake struck off the coast of Japan in 2011, its seismic shivers did more than ripple through the planet. At least one wave traveled 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) down to the boundary between Earth’s mantle and liquid outer core, where it was reflected right back to the surface. And there, according to a new analysis of earthquake data from across Japan, it may have done something scientists have never identified before. GPS observations from the time of the earthquake showed that parts of Japan shifted eastward by up to 5 to 6 millimeters. The reflected wave, says a team led by seismologist Sunyoung Park of the University of Chicago, may be what gave Japan that eastward nudge. The Tōhoku earthquake remains one of the most closely studied natural disasters in history. Scientists are still combing through the observations it generated, searching for clues about how major earthquakes unfold and what happens in their aftermath. (via Science Alert)
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Hidden tunnels dating back to the reign of Henry the VIII found under English boarding school
On the grounds of a storied English boarding school, workers discovered entrances to brickwork tunnels, as well as a cache of centuries-old artifacts. They date back to the Tudor era — when the schoolgrounds hosted a country estate of Henry VIII. New Hall School was founded in what is now Belgium in 1642 as a Catholic school for girls, then was forced to relocate by the French Revolution in 1794. In 1799, the school took up residence in Essex, England — about 50 miles northeast of London — inside a building of royal caliber: the Palace of Beaulieu. Originally, the building was called New Hall, and it belonged to nobleman Thomas Boleyn, a courtier during the 16th-century reign of Henry VIII. In the early 1500s, the king purchased the country estate from Boleyn, then spent more than £17,000 pounds to enlarge and decorate the place. Henry VIII spent a great deal of time there through the 1520s, hunting and meeting with advisers. (via the Smithsonian)
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.
Chicago gangster was buried in a coffin shaped like a Cadillac with tires and working headlights
William Morris “Flukey” Stokes was a reputed mobster from Chicago known for his silk suits, diamond rings, and flamboyant lifestyle as a drug trafficking kingpin and pool hall owner. Stokes garnered international notoriety for the arrangements he made for his son Willie the Wimp’s funeral. The younger Stokes followed his father’s example trafficking narcotics and rivaled his dad’s appetite for gambling. Flukey said his son was “a fine young man; he was very well liked and did a lot of gambling.” Willie the Wimp was buried in a custom-designed casket made to resemble a Cadillac Seville. At his viewing he was propped up in the coffin with his hands on the steering wheel. The casket had functioning headlights and taillights that blinked, whitewall tires, a windshield and a vanity license plate that read “Wimp”, Stokes’ nickname. He wore “a flaming red suit, a jaunty gray hat and diamond rings with $100 bills between his fingers.” (via Wikipedia)
A famous Japanese sword was given to a US Army officer in 1946 then disappeared
The Honjō Masamune, forged in the 13th or 14th century and passed from shōgun to shōgun as a symbol of the Tokugawa dynasty, is considered one of the finest Japanese swords ever made. It was designated a National Treasure in 1939. In December 1945, the last owner, Tokugawa Iemasa, surrendered it along with 13 other heirloom swords to a police station in Mejiro, complying with the American occupation’s order to disarm Japan. In January 1946, the Mejiro police transferred the swords to a man identified as ‘Sgt. Coldy Bimore’ of the Foreign Liquidations Commission of AFWESPAC (Army Forces, Western Pacific). Neither the sergeant nor the sword has been identified or located since. Only vague theories exist as to the location of the sword, which was not re-designated under Japan’s 1950 cultural property law because its whereabouts were unknown. (via Boing Boing)
The pufferfish spends a week creating a massive sand mandala to attract a mate
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places 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 and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com