It Was Much More Than Tulsa ; Fears of Environmental Disaster as Oil-Laden Ship Sinks off Sri Lanka ; and More Picks 6/4
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PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
It Was Much More Than Tulsa (Dan)
The author writes, “No one should be under the impression that the burning of ‘Black Wall Street’ in Tulsa a century ago was a one-off atrocity. In fact, it was part of a long and shameful pattern in which White mobs used murderous violence to erase African American prosperity.”
COVID-19 Is Killing Hundreds of Pregnant Women and Babies in Brazil (Bethany)
The authors write, “More than a hundred pregnant women are dying from Covid-19 every month in Brazil, more than twice the rate last year, according to government figures — a tragedy researchers largely blame on the P.1 variant of the virus that first emerged in the Amazon and overwhelmed hospitals. In total, more than 800 expectant and postpartum mothers in Brazil have died from the disease since the pandemic began.”
Fears of Environmental Disaster as Oil-Laden Ship Sinks off Sri Lanka (Dana)
The author writes, “The Singapore-registered X-Press Pearl had been on fire for almost two weeks before the blaze was put out this week. Hundreds of tonnes of oil from fuel tanks could leak into the sea, devastating nearby marine life. The Sri Lankan and Indian navies had worked jointly over the past days in an attempt to put out the fire and prevent the ship from breaking up and sinking. But rough seas and monsoonal winds hampered the operation, just outside the port of Colombo.”
She’s Stuck With $75,000 in Bills After Her ‘Health Care Sharing Ministry’ Refuses to Pay (Reader Steve)
From the Boston Globe: “Betsy Hargreaves wanted to save a few bucks on health insurance a couple of years ago so she switched to a religious-based plan. For a while it worked, cutting her monthly premium by hundreds of dollars. Then, in March, she had double hip-replacement surgery to relieve acute pain, followed by a four-day stay in the hospital and extensive physical therapy. The surgery was successful, but Hargreaves’s ‘insurer’ refused to cover any of the costs, saying her surgery was the result of a preexisting condition. She was saddled with nearly $75,000 in medical bills.”
Memphis Exhumes Body of Klan Leader Nathan Bedford Forrest From City Park (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Workers have begun digging up the remains of a Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and moving the former slave trader’s body from a park in Memphis, Tennessee, to a museum hundreds of miles away. Crews prepared to remove the graves of Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park in the busy medical district, a space which used to bear the name of Forrest, an early Ku Klux Klan leader, and a statue of the cavalryman on a horse.”
VIDEO: Scientist Risks His Life to Settle a Bizarre Physics Debate (Sean)
From Interesting Engineering: “Derek Muller’s YouTube channel Veritasium has many science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, and cool demos; however, this latest video might be his best yet. The video’s premise centers around a physics question and Muller says it all started with a brain teaser: ‘Can any wind-powered vehicle go directly downwind faster than the wind itself?’”
