LittleKnown

Have you heard about the Buffalo Soldiers, Black servicemen who served as some of our very first park rangers? Or the cyclist who attempted to bike to the South Pole? What about the French alpinist who could’ve been one of the best in the world, had he not died tragically on the highest peak in South America?I didn’t know any of these stories until I spoke with James Edward Mills, 56, who started the Joy Trip Project in 2009 to cover the people and culture of the outdoor recreation industry, and to unearth buried…

Banks are turning to an obscure government-linked lender to shore up their balance sheets following the industry’s rockiest period in years.  The Federal Home Loan Bank system—established during the Great Depression to help promote mortgage lending and now a source of liquidity for banks of all stripes—issued a record $495 billion of debt in March to fund loans, which are called advances, the system’s Office of Finance said. Banks ramped up borrowing that month as customers pulled out deposits and…

Under pressure from the U.S. government, TikTok is now facing the music with the possibility of a nationwide ban if it defies a government order to sell to an American company - unless the popular social media app can convince a high-powered panel that its data security restructuring plan sufficiently guards against national security concerns.At the heart of this social media business and national security drama is the increasingly tense relations between the U.S. and China.The video-sharing platform with 150 million U.S.…

In November 1949 Chien-Shiung Wu and her graduate student, Irving Shaknov, descended to a laboratory below Columbia University's Pupin Hall. They needed antimatter for a new experiment, so they made their own, using a machine called a cyclotron. The machine's multiton magnet was so gigantic that, according to university folklore, a decade earlier administrators had to blast a hole in an exterior wall and recruit the football team to maneuver the block of iron into the building. The magnetic field produced by a cyclotron…

Vexas would have been discovered a long time ago if it were a garden variety genetic disease, caused by an inherited genetic mutation. For instance, the single gene responsible for familial Mediterranean fever, also an inflammatory disease, was identified in 1997 by screening the DNA of families that carried the disease. But Vexas can’t run in families. Like cancer, Vexas is caused by what scientists call a “somatic mutation,” a gene mutation that develops in someone’s body after they are born.Because somatic mutations…

Data privacy falls under the ‘boring but important’ category or, realistically, just ‘boring’ for a lot of people. But you ignore it at your peril. Most people don’t realise is how valuable their personal data is. Not just to criminals who might try and trick you into handing it over on fake websites, but to legitimate websites you visit, social networks you use and companies that send you marketing emails. They don’t just want to know your name, age and address: they want to know you much better than that.…

Last Updated: January 16, 2023, 11:01 ISTFirst, only three major rail lines meet at Nagpur junction railway station.The extremely rare crossing is present and functional only at two locations in the entire country, one of which is in Nagpur.A diamond crossing in the railway system is a point where two railway lines cross forming a diamond shape but not necessarily at right angles. The extremely rare crossing is present and functional only at two locations in the entire country, one of which is in Nagpur.The rarity of…

Gretchen Morgenson / NBC News: A look at North Dimension, a little-known Alameda Research subsidiary, where the SEC says FTX told customers to wire funds to trade without disclosing the ties — Among the 130 or so companies in Sam Bankman-Fried's sprawling crypto empire, North Dimension Inc. assumed a low profile. Gretchen Morgenson / NBC News: A look at North Dimension, a little-known Alameda Research subsidiary, where the SEC says FTX told customers to wire funds to trade without disclosing the…

Last Updated: November 30, 2022, 13:01 ISTHave you ever wondered what these ten digits indicate and what travel information they hide about the passengers? Passenger Name Record (PNR) is a unique 10-digit number printed on each ticket issued by Indian Railways.The Passenger Name Record (PNR) number, which is displayed at the top centre of an online ticket or at the top left of an offline ticket, is generated by the IRCTC whenever a passenger books a train ticket for travel throughout India. It is a unique 10-digit number…

A little-known investor has poured more money into Tesla (TSLA) than Elon Musk himself, and now he is reaping the rewards with a position worth billions of dollars. We first reported on KoGuan Leo last year when he became the third largest individual shareholder in Tesla behind Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. As we reported at the time, little was known about the investor and his wealth. He is a graduate of Columbia University and New York Law School, and he founded SHI International Corp, a large IT company. Since…