Author: Mathew Ingram

From Nathan Lawrence for IGN: “If you’re a Luc Besson fan, you’ve likely seen at least one of the flashy trailers for his latest movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Like many big-budget movies these days, Valerian is based on a comic. If the Valérian and Laureline comics don’t ring a bell, that’s okay: you’re not alone in not knowing about the French source material. The thing is that while the trailers for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets may look like a colourful Star Wars prequel rip-off, the reality is that the Valérian and Laureline comics were birthed a decade before the original Star Wars movie hit the big screen in 1977. There’s been a lot of discussion about just how much of an influence Valérian was on Star Wars. It’s a controversial topic.”

In many best-selling trucks and cars, the engine noise you hear is at least partly fake

From Drew Harwell for the Washington Post: “Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you’ll hear a meaty, throaty rumble — the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades. It’s a sham. The engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. And it’s driving car enthusiasts insane. Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks. Softer-sounding engines are actually a positive symbol of just how far engines and gas economy have progressed. But automakers say they resort to artifice because they understand a key car-buyer paradox: Drivers want all the force and fuel savings of a newer, better engine — but the classic sound of an old gas-guzzler.”

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Continue reading “Star Wars was inspired in part by a French science-fiction comic”

From the University of Alaska, via Kottke.org: “An unexpected find in a University of Alaska Fairbanks archive has revealed more information about the oft-debated April 1910 Sourdough Expedition climb of Denali, North America’s highest mountain. Photographs found by UAF Geophysical Institute professor Matthew Sturm in the university’s Rasmuson Library archives in October show the climbing party at about 16,500 feet — far higher on the 20,310-foot mountain than previously seen. The New York Times on June 5, 1910, carried three full pages about the climb under the headline “First account of conquering Mount McKinley” and included a photograph made at about 11,000 feet. Within weeks of the Times story, however, the climb was largely discredited as a hoax and remained so until 1918 when Hudson Stuck published his book on his successful 1913 ascent of the south — and higher — summit.” (More here)

Mozart’s musical creations were inspired in part by his pet starling

From Emily Hogstad for Interlude magazine: “On 27 May 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart bought a pet starling bird at a Viennese pet shop. Normally historians and musicologists don’t pay much attention to composers’ pets, but this starling wasn’t your average pet. Because when Mozart recorded the thirty-four kreutzer expense in his diary, he also transcribed a melody purportedly sung by his new bird. He included two versions: one that the bird sang, and another that was “cleaned up” for insertion into a piece of concert music. This pet store purchase actually raises some serious musicological questions. Mozart wrote on the score that he completed the work April 12, and he wrote in his expense diary that he bought the concerto-singing bird on May 27. The earliest public performance of the concerto (that we know of, anyway) was by a Mozart student on June 13. So what came first: the concerto or the birdsong?”

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Continue reading “Amateurs got to Denali’s peak first, but no one believed them”

From Rosemary Giles for War History Online: “Nakano Takeko was born into a well-respected samurai family in April 1847. From an early age – sources indicate she began as early as six years old – she was exposed to the ways of combat and weaponry. Her teacher, Akaoka Daisuke, also taught her the literary arts and calligraphy and she was taught to wield the naginata, a Japanese pole weapon with a curved blade. The Boshin War marked the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of imperial rule in Japan. Even though she was immensely qualified, Nakano Takeko wasn’t supposed to fight, given she was a woman. This didn’t stop her. At only 21 years old, she put together an ad hoc group of female warriors (Onna-musha) called the Jōshitai. Alongside her 40-year-old mother and 16-year-old sister, several other women joined.”

Michelangelo and the invention of the Star Fort

From Sheehan Quirke, also known as The Cultural Tutor: “An unusual little village in the Netherlands’ called Bourtange is built in and around a star fort. This was a type of military fortification which first appeared in Italy in the 15th century as a response to the rise of cannons in warfare. They were, in essence, replacements for the old Medieval castles with their huge towers and ramparts. The star fort was designed with low, angled walls to deflect cannon balls and built from brick rather than stone, which shattered upon impact with cannon balls. Its unsual overall plan ensured that enemies would always be in the line of fire, even when right up against the walls. None other than Michelangelo who played a major role in the early development of the star fort, when he was employed to design defences for the city of Florence. They soon spread all around Europe and, despite being a necessary reaction to the changing technologies and realities of war, even started to shape some ideas about city and urban planning.”

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Continue reading “The female warrior who was one of the last Samurai”

From Michael Waters for Atlas Obscura: “Beginning in the 1920s, nightclub-goers in Berlin who feared face-to-face encounters could communicate with beautiful strangers from across the room. All they needed to do? Turn to the nearest pneumatic tube. Two nightclubs in particular—the Resi and the Femina—pioneered the trend. At the Resi (also called the Residenz-Casino), a large nightclub with a live band and a dance floor that held 1,000 people, an elaborate system of table phones and pneumatic tubes allowed for anonymous, late-night flirtation between complete strangers. Phones were fixed to individual tables, and above many was a lighted number. Singles needed only to look around the room, note the number, and then direct a message to that table.”

Einstein and Oppenheimer’s relationship was complicated

From Hillary Busis for Vanity Fair: “Though Einstein and Oppenheimer both lived and worked at Princeton after the war—specifically at its Institute for Advanced Study, where Oppenheimer served as director from 1947 to 1966—they were not particularly close friends. But they did enjoy each others’ company. In 1948, knowing Einstein’s love of classical music, and knowing that his radio could not receive New York broadcasts of concerts from Carnegie Hall, Oppenheimer arranged to have an antenna installed on the roof of Einstein’s modest home. This was done without Einstein’s knowledge—and then on his birthday, Robert showed up on his doorstep with a new radio and suggested that they listen to a scheduled concert. Einstein was delighted.”

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Continue reading “People in 1920s Berlin nightclubs flirted using pneumatic tubes”

From Luisa Rollenhagen for Deutsche Welle: “Imagine if your rent was 88 cents — a year. And it hadn’t changed for the past 500 years. Welcome to the Fuggerei. Located in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, the Fuggerei is considered to be the oldest social housing project in the world and continues to provide subsidized housing for Augsburg residents facing financial hardship. One of the Fuggerei’s most unique aspects is its unchanged yearly rent of one Rhenish guilder, which corresponds to less than €1. Today, about 150 people live in the Fuggerei, spread out across 140 apartments. The Fuggerei gets about 30 to 40 applicants a year, with a waiting list that’s currently 80 people long.”

In the 1800s there was an amusement park where LaGuardia Airport is now

From Larry Margasak for the American Museum of Natural History: “From 1886 through the first two decades of the 20th century, New Yorkers escaping the summer heat flocked by boats and trolleys to North Beach, Queens. Their destination: one of the great beaches and amusement parks of that era. Its formal name, when it opened on the North Shore of Long Island on June 19, 1886, was Bowery Bay Beach. But many New Yorkers knew it as “The Coney Island of Queens.” The pristine recreation area was opened by William Steinway and a partner. Steinway was best known as a manufacturer of the world-famous Steinway pianos, but that wasn’t his only area of interest. Bowery Bay Beach was part of a grand business scheme in Queens. It included Steinway’s piano factory, a new village for Steinway employees and other working-class New Yorkers, an electric trolley system, hotels, a grand pier to receive steamboats, and a dock and pier.”

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Continue reading “The rent in this 500-year-old housing project is a dollar a year”

From the BBC: “A masked man drove a stolen van through the quiet streets of Aspra Spitia in central Greece. Parking outside a branch of the National Bank, he forced his way inside carrying an AK-47 rifle. He ordered staff to open the ATM, and snatched 150,000 euros. Then he took 100,000 euros from the cash boxes, and in moments he was gone. It was February 2010, and the Greek economy was in crisis caused, many believed, by greed and corruption in the banks. One man was making them pay. In October, he robbed two banks in the same day. In Eginio, near Thessaloniki, a robber smashed through the windows of the National Bank, then did the same at the Agricultural Bank just 100 yards down the street, escaping with 240,000 euros. In a crime spree spanning three decades, the man known to many as the Greek Robin Hood has taken millions from state-owned banks and kidnapped industrialists, while liberally distributing cash to the needy.”

Etidorhpa: One of the earliest works of psychedelic fiction by a US pharmacologist

From Public Domain Review: “The book is Etidorhpa; or, the End of the Earth: the Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey. Imagine the progeny of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and an experiment in automatic writing by a member of Havelock Ellis’ peyote-munching cohort. Now steep that vision in Masonic paranoia, fringe geological theories, and a surprisingly earnest account of spiritual longing. Published by the Cincinnati-based pharmacologist John Uri Lloyd in 1895, the novel features psychonautical learning long before Albert Hofmann discovered LSD. Lloyd breezily describes evaluating “the alkaloidal salts of morphine, quinine, cocaine, etc.” The author dined with Mark Twain, fished with Grover Cleveland, was employed by the Smithsonian to survey the licorice yields of the Ottoman Empire, and left behind one of the most remarkable private libraries in the United States.”

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Continue reading “How an infamous Greek bank robber became a folk hero”

From Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated: “Three weeks after they fell in love, they were freediving with dolphins off the coast of Honduras in front of cameras for his new Mexican TV series, then with sea lions off the Galapagos and with humpback whales off the Dominican Republic. Well, at least she was. He watched in astonishment as the 45-ton whales cavorted with her in a watery waltz. She shed the air tank, bubbles and noise. She became the mermaid. In a drawing she titled Pleasure Shared, she was naked, her hair fanning in the water, her back arched in abandon, her legs splayed beneath a shark. A cloud hung over her enchantment, a gnawing fear: He feared nothing Standard diving protocol? Rules made for others. At any moment the man she loved could die.”

Stories tell of an entrance to the Underworld in Mexico, and now experts think they found it

From Moira Ritter for the Fresno Bee: “Hundreds of years ago Francisco de Burgoa, a Dominican priest, shared the story of a group of Spanish missionaries who explored the ruins of an ancient church in Oaxaca, Mexico. Burgoa claimed that the missionaries had discovered an underground temple with a vast system of tunnels and four interconnected chambers. Three of the four chambers held the tombs of high priests and kings, but the fourth was more perplexing. Inside the last chamber was a door into a cavern that led deep underground — so deep, that the ancient Zapotec people believed it held an entrance to the Underworld, also known as Lyobaa. Burgoa said the missionaries sealed all entrances to the underground caverns. Since then, only the palaces and church have remained. That is until recently, when a group of archaeologists and experts conducted an extensive study of the site — and possibly discovered the legendary chamber.”

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Continue reading “Two of the top freedivers went down, only one came back”

From Megan Cassidy and Gabrielle Lurie for the San Francisco Chronicle: “Thirty-five hundred miles southeast of San Francisco, a dirt road in Honduras shared by pickup trucks and oxcarts cuts through mostly abandoned farmland. On the outskirts of a small village, a jewel-toned mural appears like a mirage: the Bay Bridge, sparkling at night, stretching across a 10-foot-high wall. In a nearby town square, a skinny child in a Steph Curry T-shirt climbs a tree. A few blocks away, a three-wheeled mototaxi whizzes by, a San Francisco Giants sticker affixed to its bumper. More extravagant emblems of San Francisco appear unexpectedly and often, alongside crumbling adobe huts, stray roosters and heaps of singed garbage. Handsome new homes, some mansions by local standards, some mansions by any standard, rise behind customized iron gates emblazoned with San Francisco 49ers or Golden State Warriors logos.”

How I learned to be blind

From Andrew Leland for the New Yorker: “I first noticed something wrong with my eyes in New Mexico. I was a freshman in high school. We hung out at Hank’s house; he was our charismatic leader, and his mom was maximally permissive. One night, in Hank’s room, our friend Chad sat on a beanbag chair, packing a pipe with weed. After dark, we hiked up the hill behind the house to get a view of the city. The moon was bright, but I found myself tripping on roots and stones and wandering off track. At one point, I walked right into a piñon tree with prickly branches. My friends laughed, and I played up my intoxication for effect. Eventually, though, my mother brought me to see an eye doctor. After a series of tests, he sat us down and said that I had retinitis pigmentosa, or R.P., a rare disease affecting about a hundred thousand people in the U.S.”

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Continue reading “This is the hometown of San Francisco’s worst drug dealers”

From Stewart Brand at Works In Progress: “At the very beginning of the auto industry, no less than three radically different design-for-maintenance philosophies fought it out. One lost, but not because of maintenance issues. The other two won big by rejecting each other’s approach to maintenance. Electric automobiles were the first to market, almost fully formed by the 1890s. The electric car appeared to have all of the good points of the horse and buggy with none of its drawbacks. It was noiseless, odorless, and very easy to start and drive. No other motor vehicle could match its comfort and cleanliness or its simplicity of construction and ease of maintenance. Gasoline-powered internal combustion engines were arriving at the same time, but they were a pain to run. Owners who could afford it hired a chauffeur to repair and drive the complex machines.”

A group of shipwrecked boys survived on a remote island for over a year

From Dan Lewis at Now I Know: “In June of 1965, six Tongan boys — all between 15 and 17 years old — decided to skip school. They attended a Catholic boarding school at St. Andrew’s College in Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital, on the island of Tongatapu. For reasons unclear, the boys decided that it wasn’t enough to go into town for the day; they really wanted to escape the strict schooling environment. They hastily stole a small boat, measuring only about 24 feet long, and set out to sea. They anchored for the night a few miles offshore, probably expecting to return home the next day. But the weather had other ideas. A storm struck their ship, snapping the rope that tied them to the anchor, and for the next eight days, their tiny ship was tossed. The quickly-deteriorating ship crashed down on the shore of a barely-charted, deserted isle known as ‘Ata.”

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Continue reading “There were reliable, easy-to-use electric cars a century ago”

From Dan Lewis: “The pink above is brighter than most computers can display. If you want to see just how bright the pinkest pink can get, you’ll have to see it with your own eyes. The good news is that you can buy some. For about $5, the maker of the pink, artist Stuart Semple, will sell you a 50-gram jar of it which you can turn into paint. Oh, but there’s a catch. Here’s the relevant text from the page: “*Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor.” To understand why, you need to know about something called Vantablack, which Wikipedia describes as “the blackest artificial substance known, absorbing up to 99.965% of radiation in the visible spectrum.”

Why the story of George Orwell’s forgotten first wife still matters

Amanda Hooten writes for the Sydney Morning Herald: “Eileen O’Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936 and became Eileen Blair (George Orwell’s real name was, rather prosaically, Eric Blair). But Funder found she was virtually missing from Orwell’s own, often deeply personal, writing about his life. This was odd, Funder thought – especially since, as she dug deeper, she discovered a woman who was, according to seemingly everyone who knew her, a truly remarkable person. Eileen Blair was a woman who won a scholarship to and earned an English degree from the University of Oxford, at a time when women were barely admitted to higher education. She was a woman who not only performed every skerrick of the domestic work in her life with Orwell, but also supported him financially for at least two years of their nine-year marriage.”

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Continue reading “The battle of the blackest black versus the pinkest pink”

From Sujatha Gidla in LitHub: “When people in this country ask me what it means to be an untouchable, I explain that caste is like racism against blacks here. But then they ask, “How does anyone know what your caste is?” I explain it like this. In Indian villages and towns, everyone knows everyone else. Each caste has its own special role and its own place to live. The untouchables, whose special role is to labor in the fields of others or to do other work that Hindu society considers filthy, are not allowed to live in the village at all. They must live outside the village. They are not allowed to enter temples, or to come near sources of drinking water used by other castes. But how do people know your caste when you go elsewhere, to a place where no one knows you? There they will ask you, “What caste are you?” And you cannot refuse to answer.”

Why American diners look the way they do

From Jason Kottke: “Architect Michael Wyetzner says that American diners took their cues from trains – the word diner came from the dining car on a train. Many of the design elements in a diner are based on the necessities of dining on a train in a railroad car, like booth seating and counter seating, and an open kitchen. On the exterior, you have that stainless steel smooth curvature, you’ve got that Art Deco typography. And then on the interior you have the checkered floor, you have the booths, you have the globes, and you have the jukebox. In the early part of the 20th century, trains were the dominant form of travel. If you look at some of the earliest diners, they were in fact, actual train cars that were placed permanently on the ground.”

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Continue reading “What it’s like to grow up as an Untouchable in India”