{"id":259254,"date":"2024-02-16T10:36:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T15:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=259254"},"modified":"2024-02-16T10:36:04","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T15:36:04","slug":"she-put-50000-in-a-shoe-box-and-gave-it-to-a-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/02\/16\/she-put-50000-in-a-shoe-box-and-gave-it-to-a-stranger\/","title":{"rendered":"She put $50,000 in a shoe box and gave it to a stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Cut<\/a>: “On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. \u201cDon\u2019t let anyone hurt me,\u201d I told the man on the line, feeling pathetic.\u201cYou won\u2019t be hurt,\u201d he answered. \u201cJust keep doing exactly as I say.\u201d Three minutes later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb. \u201cThe back window will open,\u201d said the man on the phone. \u201cDo not look at the driver or talk to him. Put the box through the window, say \u2018thank you,\u2019 and go back inside.\u201d When I\u2019ve told people this story, most of them say the same thing: You don\u2019t seem like the type of person this would happen to. What they mean is that I\u2019m not senile, or hysterical, or a rube.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Amber Room was coveted by the Tsars and the Nazis and then it disappeared<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Atlas Obscura<\/a>: “The Nazis have reached\u00a0Russia. They\u2019ve taken the Catherine Palace and are waiting for orders from Berlin. Soldiers pull at the wall coverings. And suddenly, in the dimness, there is a glimmer, not gold, but deeper, richer: carved garlands of acanthus leaves, rosettes, mirrors, mosaics made of agate, onyx, and lapis, and panel upon panel of lustrous brown gems. Contemporaries named it the eighth wonder of the world. But today the Amber Room is lost in layers of time, obscured by the flames and political paperwork of a great war. It had a long, eventful existence, traveled further than most rooms do, and was last seen in K\u00f6nigsberg, now Kaliningrad, Russia, in 1944, just before the city was carpet-bombed into oblivion. Then it vanished.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Sir Edmund Hillary may not have been the first man to climb Mount Everest<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From History Defined<\/a>: “When we talk about history\u2019s greatest firsts, several landmark achievements come to mind, but one is a bit of a mystery: nobody knows who was the first person to climb Mount Everest. While official records give that honor to Edmund Hillary in 1953, many historians say George Mallory may have reached that peak first in 1924. Mallory led one of the first British expeditions up the world\u2019s highest mountains. However, he disappeared, and for the longest time could not be found. His body wasn\u2019t discovered until 75 years later, very near the top of the summit. It has led to one of history\u2019s greatest mysteries: Did Mallory actually reach the top of Mount Everest?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note<\/strong><\/em>: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you <\/em>really <\/strong><\/em>like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via <\/em>my Patreon<\/em><\/a>. Thanks for being a reader!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this social network, sea ice, traditional foods and wildlife are always trending<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Hakai magazine<\/a>: “Few social networking platforms are known for inspiring positive social change these days, but an Inuit-developed app is helping Indigenous communities from Alaska to Greenland advance their self-determination. Named SIKU after the Inuktitut word for \u201csea ice,\u201d the app allows communities in the North to pull together traditional knowledge and scientific data to track changes in the environment, keep tabs on local wild foods, and make decisions about how to manage wildlife\u2014all while controlling how the information is shared. A group of Inuit elders and hunters from Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, came up with the idea for SIKU more than a decade ago to document and understand the changing sea ice they were witnessing in southeastern Hudson Bay.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mysterious disappearance of the world’s greatest free diver<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From The New Yorker<\/a>: “Natalia Molchanova was diving off the coast of Spain in 2015 and then simply never resurfaced. She was almost surely the greatest diver in the history of her sport, which is sometimes described as the world\u2019s second most dangerous activity, after jumping off skyscrapers with parachutes. In free diving, men and women descend as deep as they can on a single breath. There are eight disciplines in free diving, five of which are deep-water disciplines. The most prestigious is constant weight, in which a diver wearing fins or a monofin, a device that looks like a mermaid\u2019s tail, must return to the surface with the weight he or she wore to the bottom. Molchanova, who had the record for breath holding (nine minutes and two seconds), excelled at this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first African American architect in the state of California blazed a trail to the stars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From JSTOR Daily<\/a>: “Zsa Zsa Gabor. Frank Sinatra. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. All names that harken back to the glamor and glitz of Old Hollywood. They\u2019re also names that harken back to the career of architect Paul Revere Williams, who designed homes for them and many others in Hollywood. His work was such a defining characteristic of the era that he became known as the \u201carchitect of the stars.\u201d Williams\u2019s career is notable for his many firsts as a Black architect. He was the first African American architect licensed in the state of California. In 1923, he became the first African American architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. In 2017, he posthumously became the first African American architect to be awarded the AIA\u2019s Gold Medal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orangutans sound like they are pretty chill<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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In 1631, a Dutch guy published a book about his travels to SE Asia and it brought the word "orangutan" into Western languages. Its description of orangutans is amazing pic.twitter.com\/DDqsWoOBB0<\/a><\/p>— depths of wikipedia! (@depthsofwiki) February 15, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>