The Null Device

2009/5/3

The Fortean Times has an article looking at the story of Russia's lost cosmonauts. The story goes that, before Yuri Gagarin was successfully launched into space, the USSR sent several earlier cosmonauts up there, without success. The men (and one woman) perished, and the USSR, more concerned with collective prestige than individual human lives, obliterated all record of them from the historical record. Or almost all record; two boys in Italy managed to record their transmissions, in which they gasped for breath, complained of heat and cursed the designers of their spacecraft. The boys apparently managed to avoid being assassinated by the KGB solely by having gotten too much publicity.

(via MeFi) conspiracy history space ussr 2

A study in Japan, correlating suicide rates with lithium levels in water supplies, has found that lithium in the water supply reduces the suicide rate:

High doses of lithium are already used to treat serious mood disorders. But the team from the universities of Oita and Hiroshima found that even relatively low levels appeared to have a positive impact of suicide rates.
Levels ranged from 0.7 to 59 micrograms per litre. The researchers speculated that while these levels were low, there may be a cumulative protective effect on the brain from years of drinking this tap water.
The researchers hace stopped short of recommending that lithium be added to the water supply, in the way that fluoride is.

drugs japan lithium psychiatry science society suicide 4