We now think of Dame Barbara Cartland in her hot-pink guise as a romantic novelist, but in the early 1930s she was a sparkier sort of woman. Her early novels and plays raised eyebrows due to their racy nature and she wrote some rather naughty gossip columns. She was also interested in technology. In the summer of 1931, she was involved in a series of experimental glider flights. Gliders had existed in some form for around 75 years but Cartland funded a project to develop long-distance gliders that could be towed into flight by aircraft. Previously, a glider had to be launched manually from a high place or more commonly, towed along a runway by a mechanical winch. The first major flight of the “Barbara Cartland” glider was on the 20th June 1931. A bag of letters was flown from near Maidstone to a destination near Reading. The journey took just over an hour. Its tow aircraft was flown by Flt Lt Ewen Wanless with Cartland as a passenger. This was possibly the first use of “glider mail”. (via Playing Pasts)
Northern Canada has an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake
Turns out that Canada is home to the only known location of the most recursive island in the world. Say hello to Yathkyed Lake, Nunavut. As the name suggests, a ‘recursive’ island or lake is like a nesting doll of nature. There is only one (discovered) island in a lake on an island in a lake on island in a lake and that is located in one of the most remote parts of Canada – Yathkyed Lake, which is north of the Manitoba border and right in the heart of Nunavut. Ironically, the lake is just south of the geographical centre of Canada, if you find the mid-point of the East-West and North-South extremities of the country. Unfortunately, knowing that the world’s most recursive lake exists in Canada is about as far as you can get. Notwithstanding the incredibly difficult terrain and lack of infrastructure, Yathkyed Lake appears to be owned by a Canadian mining company, so it’s not even open to the public. (via Curiocity)
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Before he became 007 Sean Connery got mixed up in a real Hollywood mob scandal
A few years before landing his breakthrough role as James Bond in 1962’s Dr. No, Sean Connery shared the screen with Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place. Turner was in a relationship with a guy named Johnny Stompanato, who was a bodyguard and enforcer for notorious mobster Mickey Cohen. As Connery and Turner were working on the film in England, Stompanato showed up to the set. Shortly after, Connery got word that Stompanato had been threatening Turner and was refusing to allow her to go on filming. He went down to Turner’s dressing room to see what the problem was, and that’s when things escalated. An argument ensued, and at one point, Stompanato grabbed hold of Connery and headbutted him. Connery retaliated with a punch to the ear, which evidently brought the altercation to a swift end. Stompanato ended up getting stabbed to death by Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. (via Vice)
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.
Golfing buddies both got a hole-in-one on the same hole on the same day
A hole-in-one is a great feat for any golfer. But what if two people who are golfing together sink an ace on the same day and at the same hole? The odds of such a feat are 17 million to 1. And yet, that’s exactly what happened to Shawn Brown and Trevor Fackrell on June 26 at the Galt Country Club in Cambridge, Ont. The two golfers were part of a foursome on the mild and overcast day, and were on the downhill, par-three 14th hole. Fackrell, a left-hander, got the first hole-in-one. “It was a perfect 8-iron for me, and I just stood up, and hit it pure and it landed about six feet short of the hole, took one little hop and just jumped into the hole and it was incredible,” he said. Brown congratulated Fackrell, then the right-hander stepped up to tee off. Brown and Fackrell are no strangers to golf. Brown has about five holes-in-one and Fackrell has six. Fackrell is also the former head golf professional at Burlington Golf and Country Club and past president of the Professional Golf Association of Ontario. (via the CBC)
If you plug a pickle into an electric current it will start to glow at one end
At an otherwise formal meeting of the Electrostatics Society of America, electrical engineer Joshua Méndez Harper pulled out a jar of pickles, a power strip and some electrodes. He skewered each end of a pickle with an electrode and flipped the switch. The pickle sizzled in protest, then glowed bright orange at one end. As an aroma of singed pickle wafted over the audience, he shut off the power. It’s a decades-old scientific parlor trick, and now Méndez Harper’s group at Portland State University in Oregon may have figured out why. Pickles are typically soaked in a salty brine. Since saltwater consists of ions, pickles are able to conduct electricity. But the glow’s cause is debated. One idea is that pickle juice boils at the electrode, creating a pocket of vapor that blocks current flow, causing sparks to fly across the gap. Another idea involves electrolysis, where electric current breaks water into a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. That mixture is explosive, so heat from the electrode might trigger small blasts. (via Science News)
Amsterdam airport has a clock that looks like it has a man inside it painting the lines
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