I have been conflicted about how to observe the occasion. Initially we planned to just leave that note at the top of There Once Was a Man Called Curley–our writers are reluctant to bore everyone with uncompelling self-indulgence. At the same time, a decimally delicious date such as twenty seems plenty important, and the lack of a formal acknowledgement feels like a freshly missing tooth–a disconcerting vacancy that one’s tongue cannot stop probing. So this brief post stands in as something inadequate yet extant, much like Nickelback.

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The race in question occurred on 26 June 1975. Barney Curley–our protagonist, if you could call him that–owned one of the horses running later that day. But at the racecourse, as preparations were being made, Curley was nowhere to be seen. And not because he wasn’t in attendance–it was because he was taking great pains to stay out of sight. If the trackside bookmakers caught wind that he was at Bellewstown that day, or if they discovered that he was the owner of one of the horses, they would be on full alert, and take precautions with the wagers and odds. Curley had earned a reputation in horse racing circles–he was known to engage in some gambling shenanigans from time to time. But the shenanigan he was planning that day was his most ambitious to date, hands-down.

As the spectators placed their wagers and settled in around the edge of the track for a pleasant afternoon of laid back horse racing, Curley was concealed in the thicket of gorse shrubs in the center section of the oval-shaped track. This particular infield wasn’t ideal for human occupation, it was all dust and thorns. Nevertheless he stood in his trademark felt fedora, shrouded by tall shrubbery, far from the other spectators, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes.

In the distance the loudspeaker announced, “They’re off!” Curley tugged his hat down tight over his bald head as if he could hide inside of it, and peered through his field glasses toward the rumble of horse hooves. In the next five minutes, if everything went according to plan, all of Barney Curley’s considerable money troubles would be over. If the plan went sideways–if his animal was not up to the task, or there was one inopportune stumble–he would be utterly ruined.

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Four is the second-smallest positive non-prime number³. It is the only natural number where one can get the same result by multiplying its square roots (2×2), or adding them (2+2). Four happens to be the only number that has the same number of letters as its actual value⁴. The four color theorem tells us that four is an adequate number of colors for any two dimensional map–no two bordering regions would need to share a color. Four is the number of bonds that a carbon atom can make, which is why life can exist, a quality known as tetravalency. Fear of the number four is known as tetraphobia, and anyone suffering from it has almost certainly stopped reading by now, or at least uttered some four-letter words.

It’s no secret that direct donations to Damn Interesting have been on a downward trend in recent years, so we are aiming to diversify. To that end, we’ve made something new, and it’s called Omiword.

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None of that compared, however, to the morning of 27 June 1906, when a disheveled man in a medical coat burst through the narrow glass doors of the pharmacy, begging for protection. He was immediately followed by a young man with a revolver, and an angry crowd screaming in Yiddish. Lawall didn’t speak the language, but there was no mistaking the young man’s intent as he strode purposely forward and raised his gun to the doctor’s head.

It was a grim, but recognizable tableau: the young man’s stance and grip were confident, clearly marking him as a budding gangster. The behavior of the crowd, on the other hand, made no sense at all. Innocent bystanders tended to run away from gang violence, yet the pushcart vendors and housewives surrounding the apparent holdup were not frightened, or even appealing for mercy. They were shouting, quite insistently, for the doctor’s execution. And everything seemed to indicate they were going to get what they wanted.

In the weeks that followed, blame would be pointed in nearly every direction—because at that moment, unbeknownst to Lawall, similar scenes were playing out all over the neighborhood, with other doctors, teachers, reporters, and even utility workers being assaulted by hordes of people howling at them in Yiddish. By the time it was over, the incident would be measured as one of the largest riots ever in New York City, and the confrontation at Lawall’s Pharmacy would be mentioned only in passing, if at all. Another name, however, would be repeated over and over again: Adeline E. Simpson, the principal of Public School No. 110.

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But growing up in the capital city of Reykjavík in the 1950s, neurologist Dr. Kári Stefánsson heard stories that left him curious. Stefánsson’s father had come from Djúpivogur, an eastern coastal town where everyone still spoke of a Black man who had moved there early in the 19th century. “Hans Jónatan”, they called him—a well-liked shopkeeper who had arrived on a ship, married a spirited woman from a local farm, and became a revered member of the community.

The local census did record a man by the name of Hans Jónatan, born in the Caribbean, who was working at the general store in Djúpivogur in the 19th century—but that was all. No images of the man had survived, and his time in Iceland was well before any other humans with African ancestry are known to have visited the island. If tiny, remote Djúpivogur did have a Black man arrive in the 19th century, the circumstances must have been unusual indeed.

It was an intriguing puzzle—and solid grounds for a scientific investigation. Given the amount of homogeneity in the baseline Icelandic population, the genetic signature of one relative newcomer with distinct ancestry might still stand out across a large sample of his descendants. Geneticists thus joined locals and history scholars, and they pieced together a story that bridged three continents.

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While we are away, on 06 September 2023, Damn Interesting will be turning 18 years old. To celebrate, here are the first emojis to ever appear in the body of a Damn Interesting post: 🎂🎉🎁

If you become bored while we are away, you might try a little mobile game we’ve been working on called Wordwhile. It can be played alone, or with a friend. If you enjoy games like Scrabble and Wordle, you may find this one ENJOYABLE (75 points).

Launch Wordwhile →

And, as always, there are lots of ways to explore our back-catalog.

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Rather than linger any longer on this tedious topic, here are some home-grown dad jokes. If there is any order in this universe, the comments section will fill with more of the same.

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Newton proposed that celestial bodies were not the sole sources of gravity in the universe, rather all matter attracts all other matter with a force that corresponds to mass and diminishes rapidly with distance. He had been studying the motions of the six known planets–Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus–and by expanding upon the laws of planetary motion developed by Johannes Kepler about eight decades earlier, he arrived at an equation for gravitational force F that seemed to match decades of data:

Where m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects, r is the distance between their centers of mass, and G is the gravitational constant: ~0.0000000000667408. But G is only an approximation; humanity may never know the precise value because it is impossible to isolate any measuring apparatus from all of the gravity in the universe.

Fellow astronomers found that Newton’s theory seemed to be accurate–universal gravitation appeared to reliably forecast the sometimes irregular motion of the planets even more closely than Kepler’s laws. In 1705, Queen Anne knighted Isaac Newton to make him Sir Isaac Newton (though this honor was due to his work in politics, not for his considerable contributions to math or science).

In the century that followed, Newton’s universal gravitation performed flawlessly. Celestial bodies appeared to adhere to the elegant theory, and in scientific circles, it began to crystallize into a law of nature. But in the early 19th century, cracks began to appear. When astronomer Alexis Bouvard used Newton’s equations to carefully calculate future positions of Jupiter and Saturn, they proved spectacularly accurate. However, when he followed up in 1821 with astronomical tables for Uranus–the outermost known planet–subsequent observations revealed that the planet was crossing the sky substantially slower than projected. The fault was not in Bouvard’s math; Uranus appeared to be violating the law of universal gravitation.

Newton’s theory was again called into question in 1843 by a 32-year-old assistant astronomer at the Paris Observatory, Urbain Le Verrier. Le Verrier had been following the Uranus perturbations with great interest, while also compiling a painstaking record of the orbit of Mercury–the innermost known planet. He found that Mercury also departed from projections made by universal gravitation.

Was universal gravitation a flawed theory? Or might undiscovered planets lurk in extra-Uranian and intra-Mercurial space, disturbing the orbits of the known planets? Astronomers around the world scoured the skies, seeking out whatever was perturbing the solar system. The answer, it turned out, was more bizarre than they could have supposed.

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Five white men stood in the swaying grass on the other side of the field, watching the horse move closer. Four wore blue uniforms, another in civilian attire. One of the uniformed men was tall and stout, with bright blue eyes and a large, curling mustache. He watched the proceedings with an air of self-importance. The surrender of the man on horseback might have been inevitable, sure, but it was nevertheless a nice feather in his cap. Perhaps his superiors would finally grant him that promotion after this whole affair was over.

The other four men were more apprehensive. All of them were experienced in fighting American Indians on the frontier, but this opponent had been different. One man, with a full, dark beard and right arm missing below the elbow, looked at the approaching chief with grudging respect. The man had lost his arm in the American Civil War 15 years earlier, so he knew battle well. And in his opinion, the man across the field was a tactical genius, a “Red Napoleon.” Despite overwhelming odds, this Red Napoleon had wormed his way out of battle after battle, somehow always coming out on top.
Until now, that was. Now he was surrendering to the U.S. military.

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As developers paved paradise along the coast, in the hills and mountains of Bali’s interior the authorities implemented a program of policies dubbed Bimbingan Massal, or “Massive Guidance”, intended to increase rice production and modernise agriculture in line with the latest international thinking. Massive Guidance was a credit scheme funded by the Asian Development Bank, which strongly incentivised adoption of new Western-developed farming methods in the form of ‘technology packets’ containing fast growing and high-yielding rice varieties, artificial fertilisers, and pesticides. These innovations had already lifted millions out of poverty and hunger elsewhere in the world, as part of a global transition from traditional to high intensity farming practices—the so-called Green Revolution.

The authorities knew that Bali already boasted a remarkably bountiful landscape of traditional wet rice cultivation. Rice is semi-aquatic, and around 6,000 years ago, humans discovered that submerging the crops under several centimetres of water for large parts of the plant’s growing cycle kept weeds at bay, greatly improving production. But there was no reason—the experts figured—why Green Revolution methods couldn’t increase the island’s rice production yet further.

From 1970, the government urged Bali’s growers to dig deep into their new technology packets and repeatedly sow as much high-yield rice as possible as quickly as possible. For a few years, this approach bore rice. There were small but measurable increases in yields, sufficient to convince the authorities that the program showed promise, but maybe wasn’t quite massive enough.

In the middle of the decade, things started to go wrong. Plagues of insects and other pests attacked rice crops, often faster than the new pesticides could beat them back. And farmers in some areas experienced faltering irrigation flows and dry fields—something previously almost unknown on Bali’s verdant rice terraces.

In the midst of this emerging disaster, a young, long-haired anthropologist from America arrived on the island. When he realised the scale of the slow-motion catastrophe, he started asking some fundamental questions. Eventually, with the help of modern computing, he and his team of American and Balinese scientists would slowly reveal a never-before-seen organisation that had shaped the island for a thousand years—one which was now in danger of collapse.

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We at this website know, reluctantly, that “d*mn” is not always a welcome word. Additionally, we are aware that we have a few articles sporting even saltier vocabularies (settle down, Colonel Sanders!). Countless school teachers have admonished us for our casual profanity, the use of which makes it difficult to share our otherwise engaging content with young, impressionable students. Innumerable parents had clucked their tongues at us for our uncouth lexicon. We want you to know that we heard your feedback, waited about 17 years, then created a less profane mirror site so teachers can share stuff with students or whatever. And here it is 👇👇👇

You can visit that site directly, or replace the “damn” with “dang” for any URL on our site. Do so, and 97.43228% of the profanity will be defenestrated like a flibbertigibbet. Hot damn, that’s couth!

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But Wilson pushed on, knuckles white. He would not turn back, and he had no intention of crashing into the Arabian Sea. He sought a larger goal, a quest he believed to be his God-given destiny: to crash his plane into Mount Everest.

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So it made perfect sense when, in September of 1905, George “Rube” Waddell set out to smash the straw hat of his friend, Andy Coakley. At the time, both men were professional baseball players for the Philadelphia Athletics, and they were traveling home by train with the rest of the team after a disappointing loss to the Boston Americans (who would eventually be known as the Red Sox.) Waddell wasn’t especially concerned with hat etiquette; he was just an oafish, playful man who would take any excuse for a physical prank. Coakley, however, was understandably irritated by the assault, and he swung his heavy suitcase at Waddell in self-defense, striking him in the left shoulder.

Or perhaps, as some reporters heard it, Coakley closed the train door to keep Waddell out, and Waddell slammed his shoulder against it repeatedly trying to break through. Possibly the blundering Rube simply slipped and fell all on his own. Most agreed it had happened at the station in Providence, Rhode Island, but maybe it was outside on the platform in New London, Connecticut. No one could get their story straight on how Rube Waddell had injured his shoulder, which was especially odd considering he was the Athletics’ star pitcher. The paychecks of more than a dozen teammates, trainers, and coaches—not to mention thousands of baseball gamblers—hinged directly upon the strength of Waddell’s left humeral ligaments, yet his sudden and complete inability to pitch was being justified with only vague rumors about suitcases and hats. Each reporter who asked was given a similar but never identical version of the same ludicrous story, leading some to suspect the worst: that Rube Waddell had never been injured at all.

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When Marang reached his destination—an unassuming, four-story, yellow brick office building—he opened the door. Inside, an expansive ground-floor office space was filled with rows of desks, workers on telephones, and the soft buzz of white-collar commerce. Marang had come to meet Sir William Alfred Waterlow, Knight Commander of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire. Sir William was also the joint managing director of this place of business: Waterlow & Sons Limited, engravers of fine currency, postage stamps, and other official documents. A gentleman seated at a small receptionist desk directed Marang to the staircase.

Marang ascended to find a spacious office occupied by Sir William—a towering specimen of British upper crust. Marang produced a bundle of documents: it included his calling card; a letter of introduction from an esteemed Dutch engraving firm; a diplomatic letter certifying that its carrier had power of attorney over the current dealings; and a wax-bound, notarized contract festooned with international consular stamps.

The contract was basic and boring—it authorized Waterlow & Sons to print a run of banknotes for the Bank of Portugal, something the firm had done before. Of course Sir William was happy to do additional business with his Portuguese clients. Later, however, he would learn that in sitting down with this innocuous-looking Dutch trader, he was entangling himself and his firm in a heist of history-making proportions.

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Normally, Rogers didn’t care much for rules or regulations. He was a trespasser. The 29-year-old regularly climbed Portland’s city bridges, radio towers, and high rises, often at night to avoid police. He’d also recently lost his job as a radio engineer, so work no longer interfered with his exploits. But the newly installed tight security around Mount St. Helens made compliance necessary.

The officer waved him through, and Rogers drove into the Red Zone. Even if his pass hadn’t worked, he would have found another way in. Rogers knew the terrain surrounding this mountain better than anyone.

Nothing was going to keep him from his grand plan: hiking into the newly formed Mount St. Helens crater. And he was going to do it on 18 May 1981—the anniversary of the day this mountain nearly took his life.

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He was still lounging with his drink and his reading when the loudspeaker crackled to life over the murmur of café chatter. There was a phone call for Mr. Wiesenthal, the disembodied voice announced.

When he rose to take the call (it was the friend; he had to cancel), many of Wiesenthal’s fellow café-goers stood up, too. Then they broke into applause. A spontaneous standing ovation might have startled the average person, but it wasn’t the first time crowds of strangers had risen to their feet in Simon Wiesenthal’s presence. Though when this happened back home in Vienna, it had sometimes been to spit at him.

Neither the love nor the hate fazed the 56-year-old though. Certain occupational hazards were to be expected when you were one of the world’s preeminent Nazi hunters.

Wiesenthal returned to his table to collect his things. When he got there, he found it occupied by three women who, he presumed, had pounced on the prime location. But the women weren’t there for his spot—they were there for him.

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But margins were low, and Bayley was always on the lookout for new ways to drum up publicity for his so-called “low roller” operation. He didn’t care where the ideas came from. Staff at the Hacienda were considered family, and Bayley regularly asked the advice of maids, bellboys, cooks, and anyone else who might have something useful to offer. So when a slot machine mechanic and former Army pilot named Bob Timm suggested breaking a world record—specifically, the world record for the longest endurance flight in a piloted plane—Bayley was willing to listen.

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So generalissimo Chiang turned to Du Yuesheng of the infamous Green Gang of Shanghai, a criminal brotherhood rooted in equal parts menace and murk. Du was the leader of this criminal enterprise, and the bloated, gleaming international city lived and died by his word. It was the power of death which most interested Chiang that spring. He wanted nothing less than complete power over all of China, and to get it, he was willing to trade the lives of thousands and allow the establishment of a vast narcotics empire. Others might have balked at trading the murder of a few thousand political opponents for this goal, but neither Du nor Chiang felt any such hesitation.

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“The last Dictate of the Judgement, concerning the Good or Bad, that may follow on any Action, is not properly the whole Cause, but the last Part of it, and yet may be said to produce the Effect necessarily, in such Manner as the last Feather may be said to break a Horses Back, when there were so many laid on before as there want but that one to do it.”

For the past few years, we at Damn Interesting have been hearing from scores of long-time fans who were under the mistaken impression that we had ceased all operations years ago. These fans are typically delighted to hear that a) we are still writing and podcasting; and b) there is a wealth of new content since they last visited. When we ask them what caused the assumption of our demise, they invariably cite the fact that our posts disappeared from their Facebook news feeds.

This trend roughly coincides with Facebook’s introduction of “boosting” for pages; in this new model, according to the stats we can see, Facebook stopped showing our posts to approximately 94% of our followers, demanding a fee to “boost” each post into an ad, which would make it visible to more of our audience. We lost contact with tens of thousands of fans practically overnight. We don’t mind paying for a service if it is valuable, but we absolutely don’t want to reach our audience by buying ad space on Facebook. Yuck. But no other option is given to reach the many people who previously followed our posts, and who presumably want to continue to do so.

We established our Facebook page in 2008 as the fledgling social media site was gaining in currency, and we continued to maintain our page on the side, mostly as an afterthought. In the intervening years Facebook evolved from a dubious curiosity into a megacorporation that is firmly in the service of bad ideas. In a move that feels long overdue, we at Damn Interesting are abandoning all interactions and connections with Facebook.

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In mid-1995, the volcano at the heart of the island began releasing steam and gas. On 25 June 1997, it started rumbling ominously and flinging enormous boulders miles into the air. On 4 August, the volcano let loose with a full-fledged eruption, and the government sent evacuation orders to hundreds of people living below it. Clouds of smoke, lava, and ash gushed out of the volcano. The pyroclastic flow enveloped the capital city of Plymouth and 20 smaller towns, burying them in an obstinate stew of geological ingredients and killing at least 19 people. The southern two-thirds of Montserrat was rendered uninhabitable and marked as an exclusion zone.

The eruption wiped out the island’s capital, the one airport, the one seaport, and most of the agriculture. Montserrat’s government took refuge in the remote northern town of Brades. The island’s population, which had reached about 12,000 by the mid-1990s, fell by more than half as locals fled, many becoming permanent residents or citizens of the United Kingdom. Tourism took a huge hit, both because conditions were much more hazardous and the island was much less accessible without an airport or seaport. A few extreme adventure-seekers were undeterred, but the volcano kept rumbling; a 2003 eruption set off a tsunami.

A new airport in northern Montserrat opened in 2005. With support from the British government (and Beatles producer George Martin, who had owned an internationally known recording studio on the island), Montserrat has been building a replacement capital and seaport at Little Bay. The volcano has been quiet since 2010. However, even as of 2021, the island’s population is only about 5,000. Most of the southern end of Montserrat remains off-limits or dangerous, or both. Plymouth is unsalvageable, but the abandoned town is still the legal capital of the island, even with a population of 0.

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