A list of curious facts
One: In 1958, a group of Soviet ornithologists at St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum made an unlikely discovery—this Mughal painting of a dodo:
This treasure was only the second known painting of a live dodo—which went extinct in the 1660s. And it is the only known artwork to show a live dodo’s entire body. The painting dates back to 1610. The artist is Ustad Mansur—the great painter who was a member of the court of Emperor Jahangir—whose rule marked the “Golden age of Indian science and observation.”
But why was the dodo—native to Mauritius—wandering around Mughal India? The likeliest answer:
Scholars dived into the archives and soon came across a reference in the 1620s writings of the English traveller Peter Mundy, who mentioned two dodos brought to Surat by Portuguese sailors. One of these dodos, they concluded, must have made its way inland and been gifted to the Mughal court.
If you’re interested, Scroll has the pre-colonial history of gifting animals—long before panda diplomacy was a thing. Sam Dalrymple’s Substack has a fab introduction to Jahangir’s passion for the natural world—with paintings of everything from zebras to dodos.
Two: Did you know that electric vehicles are not a new invention? The first EVs were invented by a Scotsman—Robert Anderson who built a “motorized carriage” sometime between 1832 and 1839. But its batteries weren’t rechargeable—so not exactly practical.
Soon after the rechargeable battery was invented in 1859, Thomas Parker built prototype electric cars in England. An American version first appeared in a city parade in 1888. So why didn’t the electric car ever take off? The same reason Indians have been slow to embrace the EV—where is the bijli? Most of rural America in the 1920s didn’t have electricity. So it was far more practical to opt for Ford’s petrol-fueled Model-T. Of course, Big Oil also had very good friends in Washington—who doled out generous tax incentives that eventually killed the EV. Car & Driver has a cool history of the EV—and lovely photos. Our fave EV is this 1899 racecar from Belgium—the first to break the 100-km/h barrier. (New York Times)
Three: Now that exercise has become an exercise in vanity, it was only inevitable that someone would invent a workout version of the ‘dupe’. Say hello to Fake My Run—which will churn out feku runs—”in exacting detail, complete with mapped routes”—that you can upload to exercise-tracking services like Strava—like so:
FWIW, its inventor, Arthur Bouffard, created the software as a protest:
Running used to be a very personal sport that was mainly practised to challenge yourself, to improve your physical and mental health, to stay in shape, to compete with others, to discover new parts of the world, etc. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen running increasingly shift towards becoming a social status and way of signalling a lifestyle.
Every activity can be turned into an Instagram story, every marathon can become a TikTok video. And social running apps are the spine, the solid, irrefutable proof of those very achievements.
Daily Mail via MSN has more on the website and the trend that inspired the protest.
Bonus fact: Speaking of websites with a cause, our fave is called ‘Owls in Towels’. Yes, it offers exactly what it says: lots of adorable owls wrapped snugly in towels. But this isn’t just a cute internet gimmick—it’s an effort to raise awareness about owl rescues. When owls get injured or fall sick, they are swaddled in towels to keep those sharp talons and beaks out of the way while they’re treated. So every towel-wrapped owl you see, like the cutie below and in our lead image, is on the road to recovery. So yay!
