It didn’t take detective novelist Agatha Christie to ferret out the séances that swept the globe a century ago—and promised a communion with the dead (one depicted above).
The new Christie-based movie A Haunting in Venice only scratches the surface of a phenomenon that engulfed leading citizens, including Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle and magician (and skeptic) Harry Houdini. Spiritualists claimed to hear dead people—and purported to fill the void for those bereft from the loss of loved ones.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIEU PALEY, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Sun or supps? A quarter of Americans and 40 percent of Europeans are deficient in Vitamin D—despite it helping with bone, immunity, and muscle strength. Between supplements and the sun, how do you know if you’re getting enough? (Above, a woman sunbathes.) Here’s what we know—and why the advice is so contradictory.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARMIN SMAILOVIC, AGENTUR FOCUS/REDUX
Raise one up: Beer, dirndls, giant pretzels (all shown above)—it’s called Oktoberfest, but it begins in September. As the largest folk festival in the word, six million people consume more than six million liters of beer. How did the celebration start?
We asked, you answered: Keep teaching cursive, dozens of our readers thundered after reading this story. Even William Coxe, a retired lawyer who has seen more garbage than gifted handwriting, makes this point: “It doesn’t have to be fancy. … It just has to be easy to read and something that the writer should be proud of.” Reader Timaree Cheney says the cursive train has already left the station: “Printing is much easier to read and most people just type anyhow these days. Cursive could be taught as an art form and I’d be happy with that.”
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Hannah Farrow, Nancy San Martín, and Jen Tse. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Alisher Egamov, Rita Spinks, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Thanks for reading!
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