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From Red Bull: “Suddenly she was on top of me with her 3-inch claws digging into my lower back. And that’s when the first bite tore deep into my shoulder and ripped open my deltoid muscle. That was followed by bite after bite on my arms, back and head. And then it was over and the bear was gone. I felt so relieved and lucky to have survived as I started hiking back to my truck. And then without warning, the bear attacked again. I heard and felt the crunch of the bone in my arm and the tendons getting ripped off the muscles. My eyes filled with blood as the bears claws ripped a 5″ gash along the side of my head. I thought I may die right here on the trail in a pool of my own blood.”

Unlocking the secrets of the ancient Voynich manuscript

From The Conversation: “The Voynich manuscript has long puzzled and fascinated historians. Carbon dating provides a 95% probability the skins used to make the manuscript come from animals that died between 1404 and 1438, and the document is covered in illustrations of stars and planets, plants, zodiac symbols, naked women, and blue and green fluids. But the text itself – thought to be the work of five different scribes – is encrypted with an unknown cipher. My coauthor and I propose that sex is one of the subjects detailed in the manuscript – and that the largest diagram represents both sex and conception, both of which were considered at the time to be ‘women’s secrets.'”

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Continue reading “He was attacked by a grizzly bear twice in one day and survived”

From the SCMP: “Organ transplants save lives – but, a recent study suggests, they may also come with an unexpected side effect: profound personality changes. A paper published in the medical journal Transplantology discusses how a number of transplant recipients have experienced major, long-lasting changes in their thoughts, actions and behaviour. Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the United States set out to investigate the question of whether transplants affect personality, and surveyed 23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients. Almost 90 percent of transplant recipients reported personality changes following their surgery.”

This sci-fi author had a secret life writing Army manuals on psychological warfare

From Annalee Newitz: “Cordwainer Smith was a mid-twentieth century author who wrote about human-animal hybrids of the distant future who led a revolution against their cyborg masters. It was only later that I discovered that Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, an intelligence operative who wrote the first Army manual devoted to the practice of psychological warfare in 1948. Linebarger’s father was a judge in the Philippines who became a devoted follower of Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-Sen. So Paul published science fiction as Cordwainer Smith and realist fiction under the name Felix C. Forrest, and worked to overthrow the Communists in China – not for the glory of America, but to continue the nationalist project of his mentor Sun Yat-Sen.”

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Continue reading “Organ transplants can lead to changes in personality”

From Crimereads: “The prisoner hauled before a Brooklyn judge in 1928 did not look the part of one of the most notorious criminals in history. He squinted at the world through round-framed spectacles. When he removed his broad-brimmed hat, the sudden exposure of the baldness beneath added years to his appearance. The man was sixty-eight, born the year before the outbreak of the Civil War. He had been arrested more than a dozen times and had spent years in New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison. In the press, he was crowned the “dean of confidence men” and “the biggest of the big-time” swindlers. His name was John McCarthy. And he was the con man who sold the Brooklyn Bridge.”

This town kept its nuclear bunker a secret for more than three decades

From The Smithsonian: “West Virginia’s Greenbrier resort has been a playground for princes and politicians since its opening in 1778. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountain town of White Sulphur Springs, the Greenbrier has expanded over the centuries, so, when the resort broke ground on a new wing in late 1958, no one was surprised. But locals soon noticed something odd about the project. The hole dug for the foundation was enormous, and vast amounts of concrete arrived every day on trucks, along with puzzling items: 110 urinals, huge steel doors. But locals kept their suspicions private, and nearly 35 years passed before the rest of the country learned the truth: the bunker buried 720 feet underground was equipped to hold every single member of Congress.”

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Continue reading “The con artist who sold the Brooklyn Bridge”

From the CBC: “A group of parents has filed a lawsuit against a Montreal-area high school art teacher and his school board after students found their classroom artwork available for purchase on the teacher’s personal website last month. The parents of 10 young students at Westwood Junior High School in Saint-Lazare, Que., an off-island suburb west of Montreal, filed the lawsuit for $1.575 million, or $155,000 per plaintiff plus punitive damages, against the teacher, Mario Perron, and the Lester B. Pearson School Board for copyright infringement. According to the lawsuit, the teacher assigned his 96 students a project called “Creepy Portrait” in January, in which students drew a portrait of a classmate or themselves inspired by the style of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The students submitted their projects in February and were shocked to stumble upon their classroom artwork being sold after finding their art teacher’s website.”

The butterfly in the prison yard: Life in an Iranian prison

From The Sunday Longread: “Conservationist Niloufar Bayani was released, along with three of her colleagues, after spending six years in a notorious Iranian prison. Six years passed after Bayani was arrested by the IRGC. Apart from a five-day period when she was released on furlough, she spent the entire time behind bars. The IRGC is a separate entity from Iran’s regular armed forces, operating as one of the most powerful paramilitary organizations in the Middle East and a locus of power that has control over much of Iran’s politics. “I was interrogated blindfolded while standing, spinning, or sit-and-standing,” Bayani wrote in letters published by the BBC. “Threatened with the arrest and torture of my 70-year-old mother and father… threatened with physical torture by being shown images and descriptions of torture devices…[and] heard hours of detailed descriptions of suffering and pain.”

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Continue reading “Parents sue teacher for selling students’ artwork online”

From CBC News: “We may soon learn more about what happened when dozens of crew members from the movie “Titanic” were fed soup laced with a hallucinogenic drug while filming in Nova Scotia. A new report from the province’s privacy commissioner told Halifax Regional Police to disclose more details about the August 1996 incident, which sent around 80 “Titanic” crew members to hospital in Dartmouth, N.S., including director James Cameron. Initially fearing food poisoning, all had in fact unknowingly eaten lobster chowder spiked with the drug phencyclidine, which is also known as PCP and angel dust. Speaking about the infamous incident, crew members have described a long and strange night of chaos and confusion that even involved a hospital conga line.”

Eugene Fodor’s famous travel guide was written in part by CIA spies

From Why Is This Interesting: “Much is written in the press about the link between the Central Intelligence Agency and Hollywood, but what’s less well-known is the U.S. government’s influence on the travel industry. Eugene Fodor, publisher of one of the most successful guide book series of all time, was an officer for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) during WWII. He specialized in psychological warfare, interrogated prisoners, and wrote propaganda leaflets that were airdropped into the Neapolitan territories. After the war he founded his eponymous company where he employed not only traditional stringers to write copy but also, at the behest of the CIA,  spies—“travel writer” being a good cover for an agent sent into enemy territory.”

Note: 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.

Continue reading “The cast and crew of Titanic were drugged with PCP”