The first London to Paris telephone service begins – archive, 1891, when the laying of a cross-Channel subsea cable enabled the first international telephone service between Britain and France. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/from-the-archive-blog/2021/mar/10/london-to-paris-telephone-service-begins-archive-1891

America's suggestions for handling the Waco standoff, as found in FBI #FOIA files https://wellactually.substack.com/p/fbi-waco-foia-letters

"Antivirus creator John McAfee, 75, was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona after the Spanish high court had authorised his extradition to the U.S., the Catalan justice department said."
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/john-mcafee-found-dead-prison-after-spanish-court-allows-extradition-2021-06-23/

This was such a heartwarming thing to see!
https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/hbo-max-intern-test-email-twitter

>> Queen Victoria changed all that, popularizing the raising of big and beautiful chickens, many bred with birds imported from Asia. The monarch’s interest in fancy chickens ignited what was then called “hen fever,” during which the price of a pair of chickens climbed as high as $700 (the equivalent of $24,000 in 2021) before the bubble burst in 1855.

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/fancy-fowl/

Guys, I swear I’m only transitioning so I can cheat at girls’ sports https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/guys-i-swear-im-only-transitioning-so-i-can-cheat-at-girls-sports

A new collection at the Strong National Museum of Play in New York will celebrate America's beloved prime-time competitions https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-history-new-archive-preserve-game-show-memorabilia-180977992/

DIY Book Scanner https://www.diybookscanner.org/

This most sumptuous of all Renaissance instructive manuals explained the use of the astrolabe (for calculating the altitude of stars) and other instruments used for computing planetary positions. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337061

Western mapmaking, with focus on property ownership and reinforcing power structures, led to widespread erasure of Indigenous people their traditional lands. Now, Indigenous cartographers are actively working to counter that erasure by decolonizing maps. https://www.opb.org/article/2020/11/28/indigenous-peoples-in-oregon-and-beyond-are-decolonizing-maps/

Turn your computer screen into a mood light. Let it be a soothing screensaver for chillaxing, meditation, or sleeping https://defonic.com/moodlight.html

Confidence isn't knowledge, I wrote in 2008; in fact, confidence can prevent knowledge and innovation from happening, because an unquestioned belief means you never measure, never test, never look at alternatives. https://www.cio.com/article/2373826/careers-staffing-fighting-the-superstitions-of-software-development-questioning-the-assumptions.html

Asked by his press agent if he cared to take a trip to his old Bowery haunts as a stunt for a magazine layout, Jimmy Durante sighed, smiled gently, and said, “Sure. I got a real neuralgia for da old place.” (1950) https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/11/jimmy-durante-winner-by-a-nose/

The forgotten art of letter-locking. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210616-how-the-forgotten-tricks-of-letterlocking-shaped-history

Airbnb is offering to pay 12 digital nomads to travel the world for a year https://www.airbnb.ca/d/liveanywhere

Monumental floral sculptures at the New York Botanical Garden until October 2021. These are WOW. https://trendland.com/cosmic-nature-yayoi-kusama-new-york-botanical-garden/

Support for same-sex marriage in the United States is now at an all time high of 70%, up from 60% in 2015 when it was legalized, and from 27% in 1996, when Gallup first started asking the question. https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486/record-high-support-same-sex-marriage.aspx

This website lets you create your own drum track https://www.sequencer64.com/sequencer/session

Observing the visible features of Martian landscapes, Giovanni Schiaparelli began seeing things almost immediately — shapes that resembled dim lines, crisscrossing the extraterrestrial desert. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/martian-canal-maps

"Who are your heroes in real life? Ben Bradlee and Muhammad Ali." https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/06/norman-lear-answers-the-proust-questionnaire