From the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Born in 1874 in Albany, N.Y., Charles Fort started his career as a journalist and aspiring fiction writer until his uncle’s death in 1906 left him with enough money to pursue his paranormal research full time. By then he had already been collecting reports of various anomalies and strange occurrences, living in Manhattan and making regular pilgrimages to the New York Public Library to scour scientific journals and foreign newspapers. He gathered up accounts of frogs and fish raining from the heavens, mysterious disappearances, strange animal mutilations, unexplained flying objects, and anything else that seemed to lie outside the domain of accepted science. Encouraged by the novelist Theodore Dreiser, Fort tried first to string this news of the weird into two books he called X and Y: The first suggested that humans were being controlled telepathically by sinister beings on Mars, the second that there existed a secret malevolent civilization at the South Pole.”
Google Earth led a team of scientists to discover an untouched mountaintop rainforest
From The Verge: “In 2018, what is left to explore in the world? It seems unlikely, say, that humans might find an untouched forest to study, someplace that hasn’t been bulldozed and burnt and exploited within an inch of its life. But that’s exactly what happened this past spring, when a Welsh researcher, Dr. Julian Bayliss, led a 28-person team that included scientists specially selected for their different talents as well as logistics experts, rock climbers, and filmmakers to the top of a mountain in Mozambique. The story of the Mount Lico expedition began six years ago when Bayliss, a conservation scientist and butterfly expert, happened to spy a small forest atop a mountain using Google Earth. While locals were aware of Mount Lico, its tall, sheer walls meant that it was nearly impossible to access, which made it likely that the land on top was untouched by humans.”
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Edith Clarke, the first female electrical engineer, designed the Hoover Dam’s turbines
From IEEE Spectrum: “Edith Clarke was a powerhouse in practically every sense of the word. From the start of her career at General Electric in 1922, she was determined to develop stable, more reliable power grids. And Clarke succeeded, playing a critical role in the rapid expansion of the North American electric grid during the 1920s and ’30s. During her first years at GE she invented what came to be known as the Clarke calculator, a slide rule that let engineers solve equations involving electric current, voltage, and impedance 10 times faster than by hand. Her calculator and the power distribution methods she developed paved the way for modern grids. In 1919 she was the first woman to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT, and three years later, she became the first woman in the United States to work as an electrical engineer.”
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The world’s loneliest whale sings at a frequency unlike any other
From Now I Know: “Most whale sounds occur in the 15 to 25 Hertz frequency range, but one whale known as the 52 Hertz whale, is the only one scientists have found that creates a sound at a much higher frequency, which means it likely cannot communicate with the other whales. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have been tracking the whale since detecting its strange noise in 1992 using hydrophones, a series of underwater listening devices originally used to track submarine movements. They said its sonic signature is clearly that of a whale, but nothing like the normal voice of the giant blue or the next biggest species, the fin, or any other whale for that matter. Its life of solitude is exhibited also by its odd migratory pattern.”
The Lobster War between France and Brazil hinged on whether lobsters crawl or swim
From the UK Archives: “It was in the 1960s, during a tense period in Franco-Brazilian relations that a fishing incident occurred, and escalated into what we now know as the Lobster War. In 1961, a group of French fishermen enjoyed a successful fishing session off the Moroccan coast when they found a spot off the coast of Brazil, where spiny lobsters thrived at depths of 250–650 feet. The Brazilian legislation on fishing borders allowed foreign ships within a distance of 12 miles off the coast, but the fishermen came closer. The Brazilian Navy demanded that the fleet of French fishing boats return to deeper waters. The French referred to the agreement of 1956 (which also covered fishing) and refused to cooperate. Brazil’s main argument was that lobsters crawl along the continental shelf and therefore belonged to Brazil. The French, on the other hand, claimed that lobsters swim and, therefore, belonged to anyone catching them in the ocean.”
A small aquatic plant called duckweed could revolutionize the food ecosystem
From The Conversation: “The idea of eating aquatic plants might sound unappetizing at first. However, in certain regions of South East Asia, farm animals and humans have been eating a small plant called duckweed for a very long time. There are several species of duckweed, distinguishable mainly by the size of their leaves. These plants are remarkably simple: a tiny leaf floating on the water with a tiny root that is not even anchored to the ground. At first glance, duckweed may seem innocuous and even a little too common to be of any interest. But beneath its humble appearance, this plant has the potential to become a veritable protein factory. In fact, when grown in optimal conditions, duckweed can contain up to 45 per cent protein, making it an excellent source of this essential nutrient. Studies have shown that one hectare of duckweed can produce between 10 and 18 tonnes of protein per year. In comparison, soy beans, the most widely grown legume in the world, produce just 0.6 to 1.2 tonnes.”
Andrea Love’s stop-motion felt art
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