Hey there, you bright bookworm!

We managed to dig up 9 things that happened on this day in history, but it was hard! One theory we have is that, much like you, most of the northern hemisphere was on summer holidays in August ☀️

Anyway, whether you're kicking back or keeping on keeping on, here are some fascinating finds from across the web for your weekend reading pleasure.

Did you know Steve Jobs wrote himself an email about 1 year before he died? You can read it below, along with a very useful list of life hacks, the real reason Bob Bob Ricard sells the most champagne, and a hilarious blog about AI.

As always,
Big love,

Chris & the 42courses team

• AI Weirdness: Janelle Shane is an optics research scientist and artificial intelligence researcher with a sense of humour. Her blog is all about the strange side of machine learning, and it's as educational as it is funny.
   
• Oh Wow Oh Wow Oh Wow: These were Steve Jobs' last words and they reflect his overall amazement at human creation. This attitude of his is explored more in a beautiful email he wrote himself a year before he died.
   
• Press for champagne: A restaurant in London called Bob Bob Ricard sells more champagne than any other. Richard Shotton explores why in this interview on frictionless behaviour.
   
• Why you should read detective fiction: Believe it or not, this list of books that make you think differently comes from Rory Sutherland himself!
   
• Real life cheat codes: When a crowd-sourced list of life hacks meets Reddit's upvote system, the result is this highly addictive collection of genuinely useful pro-tips, like how to meet rock stars at concerts!

• 1620 - The Mayflower sets sail from Southampton, England, with 102 Pilgrims on board. ⛵
   
• 1858 - Queen Victoria sends a telegraph to US President James Buchanan for the first time, and he replies, "It is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle." ✉️
   
• 1904 - New York City begins the construction of Grand Central Station. 🚉
   
• 1961 - 250,000 West Berliners demonstrate against the division of East Berlin. 🪧
   
• 1962 - Ringo Starr replaces Pete Best as The Beatles' drummer, with their first official concert two days later. 🥁
   
• 1988 - IBM researchers shifted from rule-based to statistical methods for machine translation, using massive datasets, which marked the beginning of machine learning in language translation. 💻
   
• 1989 - A solar flare from the Sun creates a geomagnetic storm that affects microchips, leading to a halt of all trading on Toronto's stock market. ☀️
   
• 2003 - Cristiano Ronaldo, at the age of 18, makes his debut for Manchester United and the Premier League in a 4–0 home victory over Bolton Wanderers. ⚽
   
• 2023 - The British Museum reveals that a staff member has been sacked for stealing about 2,000 objects, including jewellery and semi-precious stones. 🏺