Recommended Sunday Reading—May 28

The girl who moved mountains

“I had never heard of Mount Everest. I came to know about it in 2015 from my seniors during our first mountaineering course at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI), Darjeeling.” Puja Mehra was part of the first-ever NCC Girls Expedition to the peak. She represented Uttarakhand in the national team of 10 girl cadets who summited the peak last May. In The Hindu.

The secret life of secrets

Slowly but surely, secrets are spilling their secrets. But the jury’s still out on exactly how harmful they are. Andreas Wismeijer, a psychologist at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, has argued that the murkiness derives in part from the fact that researchers are predisposed to explore the downsides of secrets. “The layman’s view that secrets are detrimental for our health,” Wismeijer wrote in a 2011 paper, “may have been so powerful that is has directly shined us in the eyes for decades.” In The New Yorker.

Jharkhand’s missing children: Rampant trafficking, helpless parents and growing anger

Then, the calls stopped. “In August, they said my girl had gone missing from Delhi. I asked them to find her, they did not respond and instead asked me to keep shut,” claims Budhi. “We informed other villagers, we planned a meeting. I received phone calls from persons who claimed to be police officers who threatened me,” says Baldeo Sandil, the girl’s uncle. In The Indian Express.

Australian convict pirates in Japan: evidence of 1830 voyage unearthed

“I immediately knew and as soon as I started checking, everything just fitted so perfectly.” The ship anchored on January 16, 1830 off the town of Mugi, on Shikoku island, where Makita Hamaguchi, a samurai sent disguised as a fisherman to check the ship for weapons, noted an “unbearable stench in the vicinity of the ship”. In The Guardian.

50 dashes of pepper

Such was the instant impact of what has since been universally considered to be the Beatles’ greatest achievement and acknowledged as one of 21st century’s most influential works. Sgt Pepper is an album that is well known to even the most casual followers of popular music... And it turns 50 this week. In The Telegraph.