Ho Chi Bear and the Ravens
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Dubbed the Ravens, misfit American pilots in Vietnam learned they could fly, fight, and drink as they pleased in a CIA-sponsored secret war. Just one catch: They answered to General Vang Pao.
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Narratively | Substack
Discover extraordinary true stories celebrating the diversity of humanity. Click to read Narratively, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
The Snitch - The Atavist Magazine
In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.
The World’s Northernmost Town Is Changing Dramatically
Climate change is bringing tourism and tension to Longyearbyen on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
The Havana Job
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This is the previously classified story of a Hail Mary plan, a Dirty Dozen crew of lowlifes, and a woman who wouldn’t bow to authority as she fought to bring three captured CIA agents home from Cuba.
What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely
For elderly Americans, social isolation is especially perilous. Will machine companions fill the void?
The Death of Hahnemann Hospital
When a private-equity firm bought a Philadelphia institution, the most vulnerable patients bore the cost.
How SoundScan Changed Everything We Knew About Popular Music
Thirty years ago, Billboard changed the way it tabulated its charts, turning the industry on its head and making room for genres once considered afterthoughts to explode in the national consciousness
Inside Youth Baseball's Most Notorious Dad-On-Dad Rivalry
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Three Family Members, One Business. Robbing Armored Cars.
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A man returns home from the army and gets a surprising offer from his father: Join the family business and help mom & pop pull off a string of daring cross-country heists. No one expects the betrayals coming.
DNA Could Identify Somerton Man Exhumed in Australia - The New York Times
This week the police disinterred a body, found on a beach in 1948, that has puzzled investigators for decades. “There’s lots of twists and turns in this case, and every turn is pretty weird,” one said.
Exclusive: Inside the Military's Secret Undercover Army
Thousands of soldiers, civilians and contractors operate under false names, on the ground and in cyberspace. A Newsweek investigation of the ever-growing and unregulated world of "signature reduction."
A Hypnotic Look at How Japanese Samurai Swords Are Made
Paper, books, wooden joints, tea whisks — Japanese culture has, for seemingly all of its long recorded history, greatly esteemed the making of objects.
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill
All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.
West Virginia, 1972, Revisited — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER
More than two decades after his mother died, Jay Steele unearthed a Tupperware full of his mother’s Kodak photo slides. Her photos revealed a world of mud-stomping, banjo-strumming, red-clay-wandering joy, a world he never knew about until he cracked the lid of her old box.
How clothing and climate change kickstarted agriculture | Aeon Essays
What if the need for fabric, not food, in the face of a changing climate is what first tipped humanity towards agriculture?
Bob and Evelyn’s Seven-Decade Dance
In swinging 1940s Hawaii, an eager young sailor courts a trailblazing woman who dreams of joining the Navy herself. The attack on Pearl Harbor upends their lives and solidifies a romance that lasts sixty-seven years.
Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished - BBC News
How did Ruja Ignatova make $4bn selling her fake cryptocurrency to the world - and where did she go?
The Most Honored Photograph | PetaPixel
Doesn’t look like much, does it? But, depending upon your definition, this photograph, a team effort by 9 men, is the most honored picture in U. S.
The Case Against the Eagles
Fifty years after their first release, the country-rock titans led by Don Henley and the late Glenn Frey still loom large in American music. Their hits still get play and their sound is a precursor to modern Nashville. But has this biggest of bands aged well? A panel of experts…
Tome Raiders: Solving the Great Book Heist
When nearly $3.5M of rare books were stolen in an audacious heist at Feltham in 2017, police wondered, what’s the story?
Two Assholes Lost in the Woods: An Oral History of ‘Pine Barrens’
Twenty years after it aired, David Chase and Co. look back on one of the wildest, boldest, funniest episodes of ‘The Sopranos’ ever made
Love and Loss on the Great Plains
The day the fire came to the Franklin Ranch.
‘I’d Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This’
The plan to kill Osama bin Laden—from the spycraft to the assault to its bizarre political backdrop—as told by the people in the room.
The miracle of the commons
Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight
Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs
Deer can regrow their antlers, and humans can replace their liver. What else might be possible?
The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between An
While captive in a Navy program, a beluga whale named Noc began to mimic human speech. What was behind his attempt to talk to us?
Exclusive Excerpt: An Icy Death at the Bottom of the World
In the first look at one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated books, Madhouse at the End of the Earth, the author describes a terrifying tragedy that foreshadowed the horrors awaiting a group of turn-of-the-century explorers in uncharted Antarctica.
Fifteen Years Forsaken
A true story of castaways on a lost and hostile scrap of land, all thanks to some meddlesome Frenchmen and terrible luck.
Queen of the S.R.O.
In gritty 1980s New York, one West Village flophouse became a last-chance refuge for addicts, criminals, LGBTQ runaways, and anyone with nowhere left to go. And my mom was their queen.
The Blue Hole in the Red Sea Is the Deadliest Dive Site in the World
It doesn't have the nicest coral formations nor the most fish. But the Blue Hole in the Gulf of Aqaba is a magnet for divers, primarily because of its reputation. Dozens of adventurers have lost their lives here over the years and, when they do, Tarek Omar pulls them back to the…
'The Clouds Cleared': What Terminal Lucidity Teaches Us About Life, Death and Dementia
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Just before Alex Godfrey’s grandmother died from dementia, she snapped back to lucidity and regaled him with stories of her youth. Could moments like this teach us more about the human brain?
The Challenges of Animal Translation
Artificial intelligence may help us decode animalese. But how much will we really be able to understand?
How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists
The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information.
The Rise and Fall of a Double Agent | The Walrus
Cameron Ortis was an RCMP officer privy to the inner workings of Canada's national security—and in a prime position to exploit them
The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks | Hakai Magazine
From unappetizing “fishbricks” to cultural darlings, the 1950s convenience food has enjoyed a winning streak—no less so than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Tales Told by Sewage, Public Health and Privacy Collide
Sewage epidemiology has been embraced in other countries for decades, but not in the U.S. Will Covid change that?
The girl in the Kent State photo and the lifelong burden of being a national symbol
In 1970, an image of a dead protester at Kent State became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him?
This Basketball Season Is Missing One Thing: Prince
Five years after his death, let's remember one of the most unique talents ever to be drawn to the game
The Cold War Over Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out.
Hathi
Millions suffered through terror and upheaval in the turbulent years following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of them was a baby elephant from India — A new story from India to the world, each week on FiftyTwo.in
The guards caring for Chernobyl's abandoned dogs - BBC Future
The descendants of pets abandoned by those fleeing the Chernobyl disaster are now striking up a curious relationship with humans charged with guarding the contaminated area.
Tardigrades: Nature's Great Survivors
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The microscopic animals can withstand extreme conditions that would kill humans, and may one day help in the development of Covid vaccines. How do they do it?
How Did a Self-Taught Linguist Come to Own an Indigenous Language?
The Penobscot language was spoken by almost no one when Frank Siebert set about trying to preserve it. The people of Indian Island are still reckoning with his legacy.
A 23-Year-Old Coder Kept QAnon and the Far Right Online When No One Else Would
Nick Lim provides tech support to the U.S. networks of White nationalists and conspiracy theorists banned by the likes of Amazon.
The Low-Key Carter-Era Pleasures of “The Muppet Show”
On the original show, which is now streaming for the first time on Disney+, bits of fabric and glue and yarn become complexly real.
The Great Cottonmouth-Catching Get-Rich-Quick Scheme of 1956
As a reptile-obsessed teen, I ran away to hunt lizards in the Everglades, then hatched a plan to milk venom from deadly snakes. It went even more comically wrong than you're thinking.
The John Patterson Kidnapping in Mexico - The Atlantic
In 1974, John Patterson was abducted by the People’s Liberation Army of Mexico—a group no one had heard of before. The kidnappers wanted $500,000, and insisted that Patterson’s wife deliver the ransom.
Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky | Air transpo
The long read: In 2019, the body of a man fell from a passenger plane into a garden in south London. Who was he?
Hiking the Mountain Trails Less Traveled in Colorado – Texas Monthly
The hills are alive with socially distant adventures.