Posting these a little early today because I've got one of those meetings shortly, where you can't be sure if it'll last five minutes or fifty-five 
Happy invoicing!
- The Stalingrad Incident - ”Robert Robinson was walking home on the cobblestone sidewalks of Stalingrad one night when a Russian coworker approached with a warning: ‘Robinson, on the night you arrived … the Americans got together and decided to drown you in the river.’” During the Great Depression, skilled American workers accepted jobs in Soviet Russia. But the one black man among them found that American racism came along for the ride.
- Is a Smart Gate the Key to Habitat Connectivity? - ”What do a wildlife conservationist, a herd of trained elephants, a jazz composer, and an architect have in common? In the South African bush, this unlikely quartet has banded together to develop an artificial intelligence-powered gate and sound system to help the region’s swelling elephant population make better use of its available range.” Strictly speaking, they should fence the humans in and let the elephants roam freely. But it’s a step in the right direction
- 17,000-year-old skeleton reveals earliest evidence of Stone Age ambush and human conflict - ”In a recent discovery revealing one of humanity’s earliest known episodes of conflict, researchers have uncovered evidence that a young man buried nearly 17,000 years ago in what is now northern Italy was killed in a violent ambush.” More details in the paper Projectile weapon injuries in the Riparo Tagliente burial (Veneto, Italy) provide early evidence of Late Upper Paleolithic intergroup conflict.
- Protecting Blue Corridors - Interactive map showing where cetaceans and others travel: ”Whales and dolphins rely on critical ocean habitats – areas where they feed, mate, give birth, nurse young, socialize, and migrate – for their survival. These areas are connected by migratory pathways known as blue corridors, essential to their life cycle… Protecting Blue Corridors brings together 30 years of satellite tracking and scientific data to visualize key ocean habitats and migratory networks.”
- The tide predictions for D-Day - ”Based on the physics of Newton and Laplace, the big brass tide-predicting machine designed by Lord Kelvin was crucial for the success of the Normandy invasion in World War II.” Always nice to hear of machines that look like something dreamt up by Heath Robinson doing something crucial
- A septic tank in this tiny Arizona town could crack a 2006 cold case - ”Phoenix native Keith King… walked away from his girlfriend’s house in a T-shirt and flip-flops. He plodded over the windswept rocky terrain, dotted with pinyon and juniper trees, for a hike. Then he was never seen again. It was as if he’d been beamed up by one of the extraterrestrials he believed in and sometimes believed himself to be.” Now his daughter Lindsey and a private investigator think they’ve solved the mystery.
- Caught in the nets - Chris Sams on two North Korean submarines that were captured on spy missions to the south: ”When the submarine was opened the South Korean military found nine bodies, five sailors had been executed (four with shots to the head) by their Officer whose body was found with a gunshot wound to the head. The other three bodies had also committed suicide but why? Was this because there was a fear of capture or a fear of what would happen if they were returned to North Korea?”
- Based on a True True Story? - ”Scene-by-scene Breakdown of Hollywood Films.” If you’ve ever wondered just how much and which parts of a Hollywood film are true to the story on which it’s based, this is for you: click on a film and it expands to show a scene-by-scene timeline with details of what the film says and what, if anything, the source material said at the same point in the story.
- Neston Colliery - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this look at a coal mine on the Wirral which made interesting use of the water that is usually pumped out of such workings: ”Deep inside the mine beneath the floor level, two underground canals known as Navigation's were dug in out in the summer of 1791 for the purpose of transporting coal to the exit shaft… The two canals were dug 55m and 86m below sea level and spread out underneath the Dee Estuary, which at the time was a hive of activity.”
- Bill Atkinson — Gallery - Bill Atkinson, one of the people who brought the Apple Macintosh into being and popularised hyperlinks with HyperCard, died last Thursday. Later in life, he turned his hand to nature photography: ”I have spent thirty-five years refining my vision as a photographer. I have hiked through forests and deserts, lugged my camera gear through rain, mud and snow, and sought out the special light that reveals hidden beauty. Through intimate landscapes and close-up details, my photographs highlight and celebrate the wonders of nature.” He photographed these two starfish on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, in 1996
Happy invoicing!
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