Napoleon's briefcase, a record-breaking genome, dancing through Paris and more!
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THE BRIEF

Six Secrets is now The Brief: Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we’ll bring you one story that matters, plus a few that don’t!

Your Brief for June 6, 2024: Napoleon's briefcase, a record-breaking genome, dancing through Paris and more!

News

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The Dark Side Of The Moon

China is vying for a Moon first! The country’s Chang’e-6 probe has achieved a historic milestone by landing on the far side of the Moon in a region called the South Pole-Aitken Basin. The mission, the first of its kind, aims to drill into the lunar soil, known as regolith, to collect samples estimated to be 4 billion years old.  No easy feat! To pull it off, the team used an orbiter, lander, ascent vehicle, and re-entry module, all working towards returning samples to Earth. This mission follows the success of China’s previous lunar missions, notably Chang’e-4, the first to land on the far side.

 

Chang’e-6’s specific landing site, the Apollo Crater, is believed to contain some of the oldest regoliths on the Moon, offering valuable insights into the history of the celestial object. Controlled through the Queqiao-2 satellite, this mission showcases China’s rapid advancements in space exploration, if successful, China will be the first to return samples from the region.

Travel

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Dancing Through Paris

Put on your boogie shoes, Paris! The streets are transforming into performance spaces on Saturday for La Ville DansĂ©e, a free outdoor dance festival from Benjamin Millipied’s Paris Dance Project. The project, a first for the group, will run from 11 am to midnight and take place at famous and lesser-known sites around the city: from the Eiffel Tower and Jardin du Luxembourg to an abandoned supermarket and Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle. Millipied has hand-selected choreographers he believed may find a connection to a particular chosen site and whose work he admired. The performances, from 12 choreographers, intend to show Paris in a new light, highlighting its beauty, monuments, and history across 10 neighborhoods. La Ville DansĂ©e is part of the broader program of the Cultural Olympiad which offers a host of events in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics this summer. Another date on the calendar brought exercise classes to the halls of the Louvre Museum last month!

True Spies

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The Mighty Wurlitzer

The idealism of youth is a powerful thing, but when you’re part of a movement can you ever be sure of who’s pulling the strings?

 

In the early years of the Cold War, the US government and the country's largest student groups held a shared mission: to end global communism. The government's highest priority was in line with some of the chief motivations of activists on university campuses at the time, but things were about to change.

 

By the mid-1960s President Lyndon Baines Johnson, better known as LBJ, was ramping up the number of troops deployed to Vietnam despite widespread disapproval. Young people began communicating their distaste for the war by chanting “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”. By this point any lingering camaraderie between students and their government was dashed for good, thanks in part to one man. His name? Michael Wood, the new student fundraiser. Wood was appointed by the National Students Association (NSA), one of the largest US student groups.

 

While raising funds, Wood learned of the secret relationship between the CIA and the NSA, and for a few months, he managed to keep the secret under wraps. That is until his conscience got the better of him and he spilled the beans
 

 

What were the beans? For 15 years following the end of WW2, the CIA covertly funded the National Student Association (NSA). They hand-picked its leaders to gain and maintain control of young people and cement their allegiance to the United States at home and abroad. This was just one string in an intricate web of tactics meant to wipe out communism!

 

Join professor Hugh Wilford in this week’s podcast selection ‘The Mighty Wurlitzer’ to uncover the CIA’s controversial involvement in student activism in the 20th century.

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    Science

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    A Record-Breaking Genome

    A new world record! Researchers have discovered a record-breaking genome using advanced sequencing techniques. Dr. Jaume Pellicer, an evolutionary biologist at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona and co-author of the study, traveled with colleagues to New Caledonia to collect samples of Tmesipteris, a small genus of 15 species, commonly found in Oceania and a few Pacific Islands. Tmesipteris oblanceolata, a tiny fork fern, now boasts the largest known genome in the plant kingdom! 


    Containing a staggering 160.45 billion base pairs, the genome size is over 50 times larger than the human genome which contains about 3.1 Gbp distributed across 23 chromosomes and is 7% larger than the previous record holder, the Japanese flowering plant species Paris japonica! The team studied the giant genomes to understand how they evolve and function within the organisms that wield them, hoping to open new avenues for understanding plant genetics and evolution.

     

    Image Credit: Pol Fernandez.

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    Spy Objects

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    Napoleon's Briefcase

     

    How did Napolean keep a sprawling empire under his thumb?

     

    Every morning Napolean Bonaparte would receive intelligence reports in a red leather briefcase, the Gazettes Étrangùres, from his Postmaster-General, Count Lavelette. The case, featuring Napoleon's title in gold on its front, contained reports from the Cabinet Noir, or ‘Black Chamber’, of which Lavalette was head. It also contained clippings from foreign newspapers and articles mentioning Napoleon and his family.

     

    Don’t be too quick to dismiss this as any old briefcase, this was an object that people worldwide would have died to get, containing documents that could have turned the tide of the Napoleonic Wars! Though the secret documents have been lost to the sands of time, the case still reveals much about the man who once held it.

     

    The Cabinet Noir, a secret department in the French post office, spied on communications of anyone: from diplomats to politicians and the rich! The department also featured codebreakers, working alongside stenographers, who copied, deciphered, and resealed correspondence sent to foreign embassies. Their intelligence-gathering continued as Napoleon conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century, but he was not the first, or last, leader to rely on the prying eyes of the Black Chamber spies


     

    Join Sheehan Quirke, who runs the popular history feed The Cultural Tutor, to learn more about this magnificent historical artifact and the vast network of spies who kept Napolean clued up!

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    Film

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    The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

    What happens when a disillusioned British agent undertakes one last dangerous mission? 

     

    Directed by Martin Ritt and released in 1965, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold offers a stark and gritty portrayal of Cold War espionage, adapted from John le Carré's bestselling novel. The story takes place in Berlin, amidst the turmoil of the Berlin Wall, and follows Weary British intelligence officer, Alec Leamas, played by Richard Burton.

     

    It's the 1960s and Leamas has been out in the cold for years, spying in the shadow of the wall for his British masters. Control has said they will bring him home at last but not before one final mission! Leamas must pose as a defector,  tasked with framing an East German intelligence operative! As his story unfolds Leamas is entangled in an ever-increasing web of deceit, betrayal, and moral ambiguity. In true espionage fashion, he navigates a series of intricate and suspenseful scenarios, from undercover operations to psychological manipulations!

     

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold brilliantly captures the bleak and tense atmosphere of East Germany during the Cold War, far removed from the glamorous world of James Bond. A spy classic, the film earned Burton an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Discover what came of Leamas's mission!

    Technology

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    Nvidia's Meteoric Rise

    Lookout Apple, Nvidia is here!

     

    Founded in 1993, Nvidia initially gained recognition for its graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming. Anticipating the AI boom, the company began enhancing its chips for machine learning around 2017.

     

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang heralds the current AI boom as the dawn of the "next industrial revolution"! Nvidia's first-quarter sales for 2024 soared to $26 billion, tripling from the previous year. The company recently achieved a monumental milestone, surpassing a market value of $3 trillion, propelling it past Apple to become the second most valuable publicly listed company globally. On Wednesday, its share price surged over 5% to exceed $1,224, fueled by growing confidence in its role in the flourishing AI sector. Trailing only Microsoft, Nvidia hopes to continue its meteoric rise through a strategic stock split to make shares more accessible to smaller investors. The move is expected to boost demand and is set to take effect this Friday.

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