Great stuff to read and unrelated historic illustrations of UFOs

1561, celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg (Wikipedia entry)

OK, the Northeast blizzard is now (literally) water under the bridge. But someday there will be another blizzard. And you'll need things to read. So here's my latest roundup of about two dozen links to articles, essays and journalism you might find interesting. Bookmark them for an emergency! Print them out and stash them in your drawers! (Final note: Not all of these are from the past two months. But a great read is still a great read.)

Books & reading and writing

• Nerdy Book Club: "Climbing the closets for books: why book ownership is so important" by Susan Knell
• The Atlantic: "Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories" by Colleen Gillard
• Medieval books: "X-rays expose a hidden medieval library" by Erik Kwakkel
• The Washington Post: "In the age of Amazon, used bookstores are making an unlikely comeback" by Michael S. Rosenwald
• The Guardian: "Japanese bookshop stocks only one book at a time" by Alison Flood
• The New York Times: "Incredible Bulk at a Comic Book Warehouse in Brooklyn" by Corey Kilgannon
• The MOO Blog: "Social Post: Postcrossing on Connecting the World" (An interview with Postcrossing Director Paulo Magalhães and Community Manager Ana Campos)
• The Atlantic: "All Stories Are the Same: From Avatar to The Wizard of Oz, Aristotle to Shakespeare, there’s one clear form that dramatic storytelling has followed since its inception" by John Yorke

History

• The Guardian: "How London might have looked: five masterplans after the great fire of 1666" by Adam Forrest
• Resilience: "Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s" by Kris De Decker
• Longreads: "The little-known history of one hall in the American Museum of Natural History" by Jaime Green
• The Atlantic: "The Traveling Salesmen of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex" by Robinson Meyer
• Atlas Obscura: "Exploring the forgotten Art Deco artifacts of the New Yorker hotel" by Luke Spencer

1783, luminous UFO seen from Windsor Castle (UFO Evidence website)

Current affairs

• Smithsonian.com: "Could the Funeral of the Future Help Heal the Environment?" by Erin Blakemore
• The New York Times: "Unemployed, Myanmar’s Elephants Grow Antsy, and Heavier" by Thomas Fuller
• The New Yorker: "The Siege of Miami: As temperatures climb, so, too, will sea levels" by Elizabeth Kolbert
• The New York Times: "Why the Post Office Makes America Great" by Zeynep Tufekci

Arts & culinary

• Los Angeles Review of Books: "'He'll try to keep his sanity / With the help of his robot friends' (on 'Mystery Science Theater 3000')" by Ian Williams
• The New York Times Magazine: "Does Anybody Still Loathe Phil Collins? (Even ‘In the Air Tonight’?)" by Charles Aaron
• Matte Shot: "1941: The Special Visual Effects"
• Priceonomics: "An Oddball In YouTube's World" by Caleb Garling (Lede: "Stephen Parr's collection of archival cultural and historical films is so extensive that people sometimes call to ask whether he has footage of the Civil War.")
• The New York Times: "The Improbable Rise of Mississippi Roast" by Sam Sifton (a fabulous food story and a nifty bit of online archaeology)
• NPR: "The Past Is Littered With Foods Of The Future" by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft
• Esquire: "The Contestant Who Outsmarted The Price Is Right" by Chris Jones

A great read that will make you cry

• The Morning News: "The Last Dying Cat" by Gregory Martin

1803, Utsuro-bune ("Hollow Ship") on the eastern coast of Japan (Wikipedia entry)