From Afar: “Gary Beeck’s island had all the basic ingredients of a tropical daydream: swaying palms, epoxy-clear water, a blond frill of sand fading to jungle. But a surge of trepidation hit when Beeck, a retiree from Perth, Australia, neared the uninhabited island off Sumatra’s volcano-pocked coast in May. Later that day, the boat and crew that carried him would return to shore; Beeck would stay behind, alone. Beeck had booked a “castaway” stay on the island though the travel company Docastaway. For 12 days and with just a few basic survival supplies, he planned to live off wild coconuts, plus whatever food he could catch and forage. During the drive to the boat launch that morning, a local guide had offered a final chance to purchase provisions before leaving civilization behind—there were ripe mangoes, sweetly starchy bananas. He said no. Later, and only when it was too late to change his mind, Beeck would reconsider.”
The world’s oldest hotel has been operating for more than 1300 years
From Moss and Fog: “The oldest hotels in Europe have nothing on Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan, a traditional Japanese Ryokan that has been family run for an astonishing 52 generations. Operating since 705 AD, the hotel has all its hot water sourced directly from the local Hakuho Springs. Guests can still enjoy the same hot spring baths that visitors have been using for over a thousand years. It is located at the foot of the Akaishi Mountains, in Yamanashi Prefecture. In addition to being the oldest operating hotel, it may also be the world’s oldest continuously-operating business. Although the facilities are much younger, the business has operated continuously for over 1300 years. The Nishiyama Hot Spring is said to have had many commanders of the warring period visiting it. Amidst the unification of Japan, it is said that Tokugawa Ieyasu visited twice.”
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Archaeologists found a cult’s secret temple hidden among ancient tombs
From Popular Mechanics: “Researchers discovered a cult temple at the necropolis of Sasso Pinzuto in Tuscany, Italy, dating to the 7th century. The temple had somehow remained undiscovered among 120 tombs carved into a hillside, first found as early as 1830. Archaeologists knew all about the roughly 120 tombs dating to the 7th to 6th centuries B.C. housed on a hillside in Tuscany, Italy. But what they didn’t know—until a recent discovery—was that located within the same area was the ancient temple of a cult. That cult temple was part of the ancient Etruscan necropolis of Sasso Pinzuto and includes a slew of artifacts, such as clay slabs that give off additional details about the funerary rituals of the time, some of which may have set the stage for practices that lasted for centuries. Known as an oikos—a cult building, or more accurately, a house of the deity provides a window into the architecture of the ritualistic sites of the day.”
A missing Henry VIII portrait was found after a random post on Twitter
From the BBC: “A post on Twitter spotted randomly by an art historian has led to a portrait of King Henry VIII – hanging in a West Midland council hall – to be identified as a famous missing artwork. Adam Busiakiewicz, who works as a consultant for famous auction house Sotheby’s, said that when he saw a photo of the work hanging in the Shire Hall, Warwick, it “just stood out to me”. After inspecting it personally to test his theory, he confirmed the artwork was created for tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon and dated back to the 1590s. It was one of a collection of 22 portraits made for Sheldon, but the whereabouts of only a handful were known. The post on Twitter that caught his eye was from the Warwickshire Lieutenancy. The account had shared an image of a reception at the Shire Hall, with the portrait visible – just about – in the background.”
The “ocean women” of South Korea have free-dived for shellfish for thousands of years
From Nautilus: “Between 2012 and 2014, Seoul-based photographer Hyung S. Kim frequently visited Jeju Island, which lies off the southern coast of South Korea, to document a small group of women who still carry on an intrepid but dying centuries-old practice. Named the haenyeo—which literally translates to “ocean women”—these iconic divers harvest shellfish and other sea life from deep underwater without oxygen tanks, requiring that they hold their breath for up to 3 minutes. Today, many have passed age 60: The youngest diver Kim photographed was 38 at the time, while the oldest was more than 90. In 2016, the haenyeo were added to the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage as the number of divers has dwindled from around 20,000 in the 1960s to just 2,500 in recent years. In Japan, where the profession is thought to have originated, it is dying, too—in part due to climate change-related depletion of shellfish.”
Three young boys found a T-Rex skeleton while hiking in North Dakota
From ABC: “Two young brothers and their cousin were wandering through a fossil-rich stretch of the North Dakota badlands when they made a discovery that left them “completely speechless” — a T-rex bone poking out of the ground. It all started when Kaiden Madsen, then nine, joined his cousins, Liam and Jessin Fisher, then seven and 10, on a hike through a stretch of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management in North Dakota in July 2022. After its death around 67 million years ago, it was entombed in the Hell Creek Formation, a popular palaeontology playground that spans Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. The formation has yielded some of the most well-preserved T-rex fossils ever. But none of them knew that then. Liam said he thought the bone sticking out of the rock was something he described as “chunk-osaurus” — a made-up name for fragments of fossil too small to be identifiable.”
A female diver helped one shark and more started coming for help
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