I first learned of this in an Unsolved Mysteries episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MTjTUhwigw, it's worth a watch if you liked the show.
The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their careers mostly didn’t overlap. There were a few years, but Houdini was earlier. Even given that, I’d say yes. The thing about Houdini was not just that he was famous M, but he really didn’t have any competition. Chaplin, even at the height of his fame, there were others that weren’t far behind (Buster Keaton, say)
That argument seems to depend on how famous he was relative other celebrities. But in absolute numbers, how many people knew about them, I think should count higher.
There is no objective, absolute measure of fame.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much. Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions. Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.
> contradictions in the Bible
The church selected the relevant books, written by many authors over 1000 years. While some evangelical sects may claim internal consistency, it's mostly a straw man. The sources/purposes of the relevant books explain most inconsistencies already (namely that most Jewish law doesn't apply to gentiles, because Jesus was a new covenant with all peoples.)
Gospel harmonies deal with the biggest hole: The gospels don't have any reason to be inconsistent. But that's easy to respond to too: They were written in response to other writings, each other and popular ideas, in dialogue with each other, just as the "historical" books etc. or modern history books and internet comments are made in dialogue with each other. Christians say this approaches truth, where the order of events of Jesus' thorning are less relevant than his message of love etc.
This lens leads to many interesting readings, e.g. the bible can be seen as a vengeful god killing off other gods (by his chosen people killing worshipers of other gods) and then learning to be nice and instead choosing all peoples.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much. Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions. Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.
What the fuck does this have to do with the price of eggs?
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#85Surprised neither the article nor anybody in the comments mentioned that the event inspired the movie Agatha with Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman. It's at least not bad.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#86Quite the story! I never heard about this before, and I’m a huge fan (admittedly that’s fan of the books though, rather than the author herself). The story/novel mentioned in the article (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) is famous in literary circles for $reasons - if you haven’t read it and you enjoy reading that sort of book, you’re missing out! (It does look like she staged a murder scene from her books intending to f…
> It does look like she staged a murder scene from her books intending to frame her husband then came to her senses, doesn’t it?
That was never going to work. The husband had an alibi, and the daughter was present. Christie would have known that.
She used the mistress' name when checking into a hotel, which implicated her in the incident. If Christie intended to frame anybody for anything, it'd be her.
It looks to me like she intended to leave, considered suicide, aborted the attempt, then tried to improvise a vague story for wrecking the car. I don't believe the fugue-state part.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#87I was interested to learn that Agatha Christie is the best-selling author in history (ahead of JK Rowling by well over 1 billion copies sold). Only Shakespeare rivals her.
Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) is another rival, with Quotations from Chariman Mao Tse-tung having from 800 million to 6.5 billion printed copies, though a fair argument could be made that these were not market-based sales. The list of best-selling / most-published books includes the Bible (~5 billion copies), The Qur'an (~800 million), and the Book of Mormon (~190 million). Along with Mao's book, all of these share the chara…
Look at the Wikipedia page for best-selling authors, not best-selling books.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction...
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have read similar recommendations about the book and read it because of those. The problem is that if you recommend the book for it's "unique plot twist", the reader will keep looking for clues on how the resution may not be the most obvious and figure it out pretty fast. Then it is actually no surprise at all anymore. At least this happenend to me. It would serve the book better if it was recommended as a great (b…
TBH, most of her books have the common theme of the murderer is the last person you'd expect. Although admittedly Ackroyd is the most extreme example.
Hahaha you spoiled every Agatha Christie book for some people.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#89> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a keen spiritualist, even consulted a medium to attempt to solve the mystery of her disappearance. This bit was the most surprising part of the article for me, given the themes of science and materialism in Sherlock Holmes books. Looking a bit into it, Doyle really seems to have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason [0]. [0] https://arthurconandoyle.co.uk/spiritualist
Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
Hahaha this is a good article. I love the part where the father didn’t believe them but the mother did and kind of published the photographs. And they did it only because of an argument with their mother.
Could something like flat earth theory have started like this? A bad joke that people believed and it got hyped not because it is true but because idiots believing it is kind of fun.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
chemistry is harder than physics
Chemistry is physics.
Partly yes. But in reality it is much try and error. It hasn’t mostly the hard math that physics has. It’s more “what happens most times has to be true because it is replicable”
Physics would be more “because this happens regularly it fits nearly this formula” and more science based on mathematics then try and error like chemistry.
Electrical engineering is more physics than chemistry for example