When The Going Gets Weird

@index.newsletter.mathewingram.com.ap.brid.gy

Links that interest me, and maybe you 🌉 bridged from https://newsletter.mathewingram.com/ on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/

3 followers0 following82 stories

Longform Stories

A missing Sherpa was found alive on Everest after six days

A Nepali climbing guide thought to have died on Mount Everest has been found crawling down to Base Camp, six days after he was last seen alive. Dawa Sherpa was last seen above Camp 3, at around 24,600…

1d ago·6 min read·1163 words

Edison may not have been the first to record the human voice

On December 7, 1877, Thomas Edison walked into the offices of Scientific American and placed a metal device on a desk. With a turn of a crank, Edison astonished the dozen or so staffers who had gather…

1d ago·6 min read·1193 words

He won the lottery 14 times with math so they changed the rules

Romanian-born mathematician Stefan Mandel used simple probability and a massive ticket-buying operation to win lottery jackpots 14 times. Born into a poor Jewish family in Romania in 1931, Mandel deve…

3d ago·6 min read·1183 words

He ran an $11M fraud scheme from prison and just escaped

A Georgia man convicted of leading an $11 million fraud scheme while in custody through contraband phones is now on the run after officials say he escaped from a federal prison camp. The United States…

4d ago·6 min read·1049 words

A teenager fixed a 35-year-old problem with oxygen sensors

A Kitchener, Ont., teen has won the best project award for innovation at the Canada-Wide Science Fair. Eigenpulse: Eliminating Demographic Bias in Pulse Oximetry and Remote PPG from First Principles w…

5d ago·6 min read·1093 words

Italian photographer made a pinhole camera out of pasta

Berlin-based Italian photographer Paride Ambrogi recently combined two of his loves, photography and pasta, in a brilliant, possibly tasty way. Ambrogi made the Ravihole Camera, a working pinhole came…

May 29·6 min read·1103 words

Russian hitman busted because he used Google Translate

When Denis Alimov passed through the arrivals hall of El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá on the morning of February 24, 2026, he had the outward appearance of a middle-aged Russian tourist esca…

May 28·6 min read·1133 words

The rise and fall of the world's only female yakuza gangster

In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only wom…

May 27·6 min read·1136 words

He was renovating his basement and found an underground city

In 1963, a Turkish resident who simply wanted to expand his house ended up making an unexpected and monumental discovery. While knocking down a wall in his basement, he found a mysterious room—then an…

May 26·6 min read·1171 words

What it's like to suffer from locked-in syndrome

There is one time of day when Dawn Faizey Webster can feel normal. It’s after dinner, once she has been changed into her pyjamas and she is lying in bed, watching television. After a certain amount of…

May 25·6 min read·1156 words

Seven-foot-four basketball player trained as a Shaolin monk

Master Yan'an has trained at the Shaolin Temple in China since he was 6 years old. He has climbed the roughly 1,500 stone steps up Wuru Peak to the Bodhidharma Cave thousands of times. None of the ste…

May 22·6 min read·1086 words

How Hemingway's love of boxing changed salad dressing

In 1925, Ernest Hemingway published In Our Time, his first collection of short stories, which included his first published boxing story, “The Battler.” On a cool Tuesday evening in October of 1955, th…

May 21·6 min read·1120 words

This folksy fast-food icon had a few skeletons in his closet

The seventh of May 1931 was a hot, dusty day in Kentucky. Alongside a dirt road, a service station manager named Matt Stewart stood on a ladder painting a cement railroad wall. His application of a fr…

May 20·6 min read·1139 words

The US planned to use nuclear bombs for construction projects

The year was 1957. The Cold War was in full swing. The U.S. was seemingly lagging behind in the technological arms race and needed to make a show, a display of power and prowess. Project Plowshare was…

May 19·6 min read·1130 words

Man uses legal loophole to declare himself a Swiss king

A Swiss man named Jonas Lauwiner has drawn attention after declaring himself the “king of Switzerland” and assembling a patchwork of land parcels without paying for them. His unusual rise is not based…

May 15·6 min read·1164 words

She saved the NASA moon mission multiple times

It’s July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are about to land on the moon. They will be the first humans to set foot on Earth’s only natural satellite. Suddenly, the onboard computer flashes: “…

May 14·6 min read·1101 words

The screech when peeling tape is tiny supersonic sound bursts

The screeching of peeling tape is a familiar albeit annoying sound. However, despite decades of study, its source has remained elusive. The peeling of adhesive tape from a solid surface is known to pr…

May 12·1 min read·83 words

Police officer volunteered to get human remains from a crocodile

A police officer has recalled the moment he was lowered from a helicopter into a crocodile-infested river in South Africa as part of an effort to recover human remains. Captain Johan Potgieter was tas…

May 11·1 min read·98 words

The man who blew up a nuclear plant and then disappeared

At 21, Rodney Wilkinson was the best fencer in South Africa: national champion in foil and sabre, second in epee. He had toured Europe and Argentina. He had not stood on the Olympic podium, because So…

May 8·1 min read·99 words

Beekeeper jailed for opening the hives to protect a neighbor

A beekeeper has been jailed for six months after she set swarms of her insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to carry out an eviction at a friend’s house. Rebecca Woods insisted she only released h…

May 7·1 min read·94 words

Secret chambers have been discovered in a Giza pyramid

Researchers from Cairo University and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have located two air-filled spaces within Giza’s Menkaure pyramid that hint at a possible secret entrance. The Menkaure p…

May 6·1 min read·89 words

A heroic quest to find the best free restaurant bread in the US

Here is the promise you and I must cling to across the thousands of words that follow: At some point within this text, I will reveal to you what—after 555 responses, 13,000 miles of travel, and months…

May 5·1 min read·103 words

The occult history of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Jack Parsons was one of the most influential figures in the history of the American space program. He also stood accused of espionage, and held a deep fascination with the occult. By 1939, Parsons and…

May 4·1 min read·89 words

Friends for 60 years found out that they were brothers

Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane were born in Hawaii 15 months apart. The duo met in 6th grade and have been friends for 60 years. While they've shared a very close bond, they never thought they we…

May 1·1 min read·93 words

The voices told her she had a brain tumor and they were right

As the woman was reading, she heard an unfamiliar voice say, "Please don't be afraid. I know it must be shocking for you to hear me speaking to you like this, but this is the easiest way I could think…

Apr 29·1 min read·105 words

FBI is looking into the suspicious deaths of 10 top scientists

The FBI is looking for any connections among the recent deaths and disappearances of at least 10 scientists who had ties to government science projects or other sensitive information. Those who have d…

Apr 28·1 min read·90 words

A strange bank robbery with one of the great notes of all time

It was 2004. I was 31. I was up for several days on meth and drinking heavily for the past month or so. I decide to go rob a bank and take my son to Tijuana, Mexico to see my biological father – his n…

Apr 27·1 min read·117 words

He invented flash memory but he got nothing in return

Fujio Masuoka invented flash memory, a technology used in semiconductors with sales of $76 billion in 2001. These chips went into products worth more than $3 trillion, including automobiles, computers…

Apr 24·1 min read·89 words

He made small talk in Finland and was accused of being drunk

Hollywood actor Jason Segel spent an extended period of time in the Tampere region of Finland in late 2024, filming a movie. "I always try to be friendly. I say hello and ask how people are doing. How…

Apr 23·1 min read·99 words

A quadriplegic makes music with his brain implant

Galen Buckwalter didn’t hesitate to get a craniotomy in 2024 as part of a brain implant study at Caltech. The 69-year-old research psychologist wanted to contribute to cutting-edge science that could …

Apr 22·1 min read·89 words

The author of a popular thriller is a Harvard-trained brain doctor

The bestselling author known to the world as Freida McFadden has revealed her true identity. McFadden, whose prolific output includes "The Housemaid" and other domestic thrillers, uses a pseudonym, wi…

Apr 21·1 min read·95 words

If you make lasagna in a metal pan you could create a battery

Batteries are devices that store electrical energy in the form of chemical energy, which convert that energy into electricity to conduct it. Your TV remote, mobile phone and mid-sized sedan all have d…

Apr 20·1 min read·98 words

A 75-cent mistake put him on the trail of a German hacker

Though his vocation was astronomy, Clifford Stoll’s knowledge of computer systems was what paid the bills when he took a job as a system administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It …

Apr 17·1 min read·99 words

What is the Cylob Cryptogram and what does it mean?

Visiting a London bookshop in the 1990s, musician DJ Cylob noticed a pile of booklets near the entrance, with a note indicating that they were free. He asked an assistant about them, and she said that…

Apr 16·1 min read·94 words

Inside a corporate retreat that went very badly wrong

Senior executives at the tech company Plex were eager to treat their 120 fully remote staffers to a weeklong corporate getaway in a tropical paradise. The plan for the Honduras trip was simple: Compan…

Apr 15·1 min read·96 words

When a bra maker got the job of making the first NASA spacesuit

In 1966, when seamstresses at the International Latex Corporation arrived at its new Apollo Suit shopfloor in Frederica, Delaware, they were essentially “taught to sew again from scratch.” And for goo…

Apr 14·1 min read·94 words

Bobby Brown fried chicken in cocaine when he was 10

Brown says he was unaware his mother sold cocaine to support the family and while away, he decided to fry chicken, a meal his mother taught him to cook. He grabbed a bag of what he believed was flour …

Apr 13·1 min read·104 words

Kentucky cops arrest man for riding a horse while drunk

The driver, Kentucky cops say, had just left a liquor store, smelled of alcohol, and was found “partially slumped over” the controls of his brown vehicle. As a result, Jorge Hernandez, 48, was arreste…

Apr 10·1 min read·91 words

A Masonic lodge in France harbored a mafia hit squad

Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads. Thirteen of the defendants face l…

Apr 9·1 min read·88 words

The creator of the SAT exam was an infamous racist

As you read this, hundreds of thousands of high school students across the country are busy preparing for the most important test of their lives so far — the dreaded SAT. The most common college entra…

Apr 8·1 min read·99 words

Two hikers found a can with $300,000 in gold coins inside

A field in an overgrown Czech Republic forest has, for nearly 100 years, served as the hiding place for a secret stash of nearly 600 gold coins and other precious metal goods tucked into a stone wall.…

Apr 7·1 min read·102 words

Climbing Everest has become a magnet for insurance scams

In Nepal, helicopter rescue on high altitude is, by any measure, a genuine lifesaving operation. At high altitude, where oxygen thins and weather changes without warning, the ability to airlift a stri…

Apr 6·1 min read·88 words

When a fake Cartier and a fake Rockefeller went into business

That fall, with her sights set on even bigger targets, Bartzen headed to Palm Beach and began hanging around with someone who appeared to be a genuine member of the scion class: a much younger man who…

Apr 3·1 min read·97 words

CIA officer says he stopped Iran from getting the nuclear bomb

Chalker told me that he wanted to repair his reputation. He had always been an American patriot, he insisted, and to prove it he was willing to talk publicly, for the first time, about his years of cl…

Apr 2·1 min read·96 words

An adrenaline junkie’s quest to become a cocaine kingpin

The British de Havilland DH-112 Venom is one of the most iconic combat jets of the Cold War, with a distinctive two-pronged tail design that stretched out far behind the main body of the aircraft and …

Apr 1·1 min read·95 words

Quadruple amputee cornhole pro shoots man while driving

A noted professional cornhole player who is a quadruple amputee is behind bars after authorities said he shot and killed a front seat passenger Sunday night while he was driving in Maryland. Dayton We…

Mar 30·1 min read·96 words

He was the most successful double agent of all time

Juan Pujol was born in Barcelona in 1912 to a family of moderate means and liberal political beliefs. The onset of war in 1939 convinced him that he should make a contribution to the good of humanity.…

Mar 27·1 min read·93 words

His obsession with jewelled eggs destroyed his family

When I was growing up, my mother used to refer to the egg as “your father’s ego”, while to the rest of the world it was known as the Argyle Library Egg by Kutchinsky. I felt a mix of pride and bafflem…

Mar 26·1 min read·103 words

A flood of beer sounds great but one in London in 1814 was not

The Horse Shoe Brewery stood at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road. In 1810 the brewery, Meux and Company, had had a 22 foot high wooden fermentation tank installed on the pre…

Mar 25·1 min read·103 words

Blobs of goo fell from the sky and we still don't know why

When police officer David Lacey was on patrol on August 7, 1994, and noticed drops hitting his windshield, he didn't think much of it. He turned on his wipers and kept on driving. But the wipers didn’…

Mar 24·1 min read·103 words

He said he was kidnapped and forced to play football for his life

Mauricio Morales was leading a group of migrants he had found at a bus station through Mexico City’s San Rafael neighbor­hood. They had just crossed a busy boulevard and were making their way down a s…

Mar 23·1 min read·99 words

Amelia Earhart sent distress signals that were ignored

Dozens of previously dismissed radio signals were actually credible transmissions from Amelia Earhart, according to a new study of the alleged post-loss signals from Earhart's plane. The transmissions…

Mar 20·1 min read·85 words

A skull sitting in a bank vault in Paris could be Henry IV's

After his assassination on May 14, 1610, King Henry IV was embalmed and prepared for the grave. This was followed by about seven weeks of preparation and ceremony before he was buried at the basilica …

Mar 19·1 min read·98 words

Dostoevsky wrote a book in a month to pay off gambling debts

At the age of 39, Dostoevsky starts publishing a literary magazine called Time with his brother. The following year the magazine is forced to close, due to a misunderstanding with the government about…

Mar 18·1 min read·98 words

After she killed her husband she wrote a book on grief

A Utah woman who wrote a children's book about coping with grief after her husband's death was convicted of aggravated murder in his death by poisoning him with fentanyl. Jurors on Monday also found K…

Mar 17·1 min read·96 words

He says the infamous skyjacker D. B. Cooper was his father

The FBI is reinvestigating infamous thief D.B. Cooper’s unsolved 1971 skyjacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305, despite having publicly declared the case closed in 2016. Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., a Vi…

Mar 16·1 min read·90 words

French spy was born a man but lived their life as a woman

The Chevalier d’Éon was born Charles d'Eon de Beaumont on October 5, 1728, and would go on to be a French soldier, spy, diplomat and in mid-life, a woman named Charlotte. D’Eon’s military exploits in …

Mar 13·1 min read·98 words

He says he is the ruler of a new country on the Danube river

“Terra nullius.” Under international law, this Latin phrase meaning “nobody’s land” describes an area of land unclaimed by any sovereign nation-state. In an age where nearly every inch of the world’s …

Mar 12·1 min read·94 words

Instead of breaking out of a prison he broke into one

Lieutenant Thomas Conrad was standing in a control room in Nashville’s new central jail when he noticed something off with one of the key rings hanging on the wall. It was midday on December 30, 2019,…

Mar 11·1 min read·92 words

A Spanish billionaire fell to his death and his son is a suspect

One afternoon in March 2024, Spanish society gathered at a prestigious Barcelona business school to celebrate Isak Andic, an unassuming Turkish-born entrepreneur who used to sell embroidered blouses i…

Mar 10·1 min read·93 words

A hockey dad ran a $12 million fraud against his friends

As Perardi approached the terrace, he saw that his friend, Kota Youngblood, sat at one of the tables. Youngblood was tall and imposing, with a paunch and black hair that framed pale skin. He was dress…

Mar 9·1 min read·98 words

Casual Fridays were invented as a way to sell Hawaiian shirts

My city’s ‘Casual Fridays’ workplace default is not a coincidence, nor an act of free will by our bosses. It is the result of an extremely successful lobbying campaign. Specifically: A coordinated 196…

Mar 6·1 min read·85 words

4chan knew about Epstein's death before it was public

Among the many mysteries surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is how, exactly, a website famous for pornography and white nationalism got the scoop on his death. At 8:16 a.m. on August 10, 2019, an anonymous 4…

Mar 5·1 min read·89 words

Her cells created billions in value for drug companies

Novartis has settled a lawsuit by the estate of Henrietta Lacks that alleged the pharmaceutical giant unjustly profited off her cells, which were taken from her tumor without her knowledge in 1951 and…

Mar 4·1 min read·88 words

He lives like a monk but he dines like a king

A couple of months ago, a man arrived for his 50th dinner at Nisei, the one-Michelin-starred Japanese fine-dining restaurant in Russian Hill. As he sauntered up Polk Street in his signature white tenn…

Mar 3·1 min read·99 words

He found Stalin's daughter living in a Wisconsin retirement home

Svetlana, who was then eighty-one years old, lived in a senior citizens’ center in Spring Green, Wisconsin. When we met, she was dressed in baggy gray sweatpants and sunglasses. She was short and comp…

Mar 2·1 min read·96 words

How Sean Penn saved a man trapped in a Bolivian prison

Sean Penn always knew that rescuing Jacob Ostreicher from his years of Bolivian imprisonment would be difficult. Ostreicher, a then-52-year-old Hasidic businessman who had moved to the country from Br…

Feb 27·1 min read·90 words

He woke up in the morgue but went on to win the horse race

Ralph Neves was understandably disoriented when he woke up in the morgue. The slab was cold and the tag around his toe pressing into the skin. His heart, declared stopped an hour before, was racing so…

Feb 26·1 min read·109 words

A murder so preposterous that stupidity was used as a defense

Oliver Karafa and Yun Lu “Lucy” Li were a perfect match. Karafa was the consummate pretty boy: his brown hair always coiffed just so, his tennis shoes pristine. With no post-secondary education and li…

Feb 25·1 min read·98 words

A teenaged girl struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1931

When World War II came to America, baseball was one of the early victims. Many Major League players were in their early 20s and, therefore, subject to the draft. the owner of the Cubs, Philip K. Wrigl…

Feb 24·1 min read·98 words

He wrote a murder mystery and now his death has become one

More than halfway through the crime novel he wrote, Robert Fuller describes the frustration of a detective locked in a mystery. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Now what?” he said aloud. It has been a…

Feb 23·1 min read·95 words

There are thousands of secret tunnels throughout Europe

Around 2,000 strange tunnels have been found around central Europe. These aren’t like the well-known catacombs of Paris or Rome. Known as the erdstall, these passages are extremely narrow, never more …

Feb 20·1 min read·91 words

This tiny island had a coup almost every year for 24 years

"You know that island between Mozambique and Madagascar that you visited," she said. "Was it called Anjouan? Well, there's been a coup." Actually, there had been 24 coups in as many years, the pace ac…

Feb 18·1 min read·95 words

ALS stole his voice but AI let him sing again one more time

There are tears in the audience as Patrick Darling’s song begins to play. It’s a heartfelt song written for his great-grandfather, whom he never got the chance to meet. But this performance is emotion…

Feb 17·1 min read·96 words

Mysterious Chinese couple have dozens of surrogate kids

In the delicate jargon of the fertility industry, a woman who carries a child for someone else is said to be going on a “journey.” Kayla Elliott began hers in February, 2024. Elliott already had four …

Feb 16·1 min read·95 words

Why did Olympic ski jumpers try to make their penises larger?

In the run-up to this year’s Winter Olympics, and even as the Games have got underway, a scandal has been brewing: allegedly, some competitive ski jumpers may have artificially enlarged their crotch a…

Feb 13·1 min read·88 words

NY home contains a hidden door to the Underground Railroad

Hidden inside a historic 19th century house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan is a secret sanctuary. Ever since the Merchant’s House Museum opened its doors to the public in 1936, visitors have lined…

Feb 12·1 min read·97 words

She paved the way for IVF technology by falling asleep

One procedure has enabled the births of more than 10 million babies around the world, and nearly 3 percent of United States births per year — and it only became available relatively recently. People h…

Feb 11·1 min read·93 words

What is the Stonehenge-like structure in Lake Michigan?

Does an mini-Stonehenge stand underwater in Grand Traverse Bay, part of Lake Michigan? In 2007, looking for shipwrecks in this area, which was a busy 19th- and 20th-century maritime trade route, Mark …

Feb 10·1 min read·85 words

The mother of the atomic bomb who never won a Nobel Prize

There is a memorable scene in “Oppenheimer,” the blockbuster film about the building of the atomic bomb, in which Luis Alvarez, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, is reading a news…

Feb 9·1 min read·90 words

He experiences seizures but only while doing a Sudoku

A team of doctors working at the University of Munich reported the unusual case of a young man who experiences epileptic seizures every time he tries to solve a sudoku puzzle. The 25-year-old right-ha…

Feb 6·1 min read·97 words

Agatha Christie disappeared for 10 days and no one knows why

On the evening of 3 December 1926 the couple fought and Archie left their home to spend a weekend away with friends, including his mistress. Agatha departed the house later that same evening. The next…

Feb 5·1 min read·97 words