Hi everyone! 

Still trying to figure out which way is north on the map in last month’s challenges? This might be a good time to put it down and take a breather. A fresh newsletter is here, and with it comes a batch of new challenges for you to tackle! 

In this edition, we’re excited to introduce you to our latest guest contributors. We’ll highlight some of the methods that you shared in blogs and write-ups over the last month. Of course, we’ll share last month’s livestream with Jake Godin, and the one and only GeoGuessr legend Rainbolt makes an appearance. 

August Challenge - Hidden Hazards

We’re about to enter dangerous territory, and a field of open source research that might be new to many of you. In this month’s Bellingcat Open Source Challenge, you will be identifying explosive ordnance. This skill can be very valuable in open source research. For example, in this investigation, a missile visible in social media footage of an attack on a Ukrainian children’s hospital was identified as a Russian weapon.

This month’s challenges were created by Andro Mathewson, who works for the Centre for Information Resilience’s Eyes on Russia Project and is a PhD Student in War Studies at King’s College London. Kate Millar, formerly of the Centre for Information Resilience now works to connect private capital with humanitarian work in conflict zones.

When Andro worked as a tech fellow for Bellingcat, he produced this guide on identifying explosive ordnance. This guide is a great place to start this month’s challenges, and will help you to get familiar with the language that’s used, and the resources that could help you. He also joined us recently on Stage Talks, you can listen to this conversation here.

Think you’re ready? Find the latest challenges here.

If you get stuck, spot something worth sharing, or just want to chat with others obsessively hunting for that one specific ballistic missile type, you’ll find us on Discord!

This month’s livestream will feature our researcher Youri van der Weide. Tune in on Wednesday, August 13 at 5PM CET, to see how he approaches Andro and Kate’s challenges. The stream will be available on our Patreon.

July’s Forgotten Files

SPOILER ALERT: From this point on, we’ll be discussing last month’s challenges. If you still plan to complete them, you may want to skip this section.

Here are the answers to the “Forgotten Files” challenges:

1. 24 Bass Rocks

2. watch making

3. 526-1190 KFC

4. 54.361, 12.396 Parow

5. 1450

Wes started “the Saltwater Secret” with a simple Google search: “Billy Barron” 1958 Massachusetts”. He quickly found a PDF recounting Billy Barron’s experience that day on the coast. While playing on Good Harbor Beach in Bass Rocks, Billy discovered a box of weapons. Using this location, Wes identified a distinctive house built directly on the rocky shore and used reverse image search to find out more about the building. He discovered the building once served as the summer residence of the Siamese (Thai) delegation. The website where he found this information also listed the building’s full address.

GeoGuessr celebrity Trevor Rainbolt also gave this challenge a try. He managed to solve it, but not before going on a massive side quest. The Street View imagery of Bass Rocks reminded him of a previous investigation involving a detailed breakdown of the types of porta potties used on beaches in Massachusetts. We unfortunately can’t sidetrack that hard in this newsletter, so make sure to check out his video. 

In “a Hitman’s Hobby”, the description immediately reminded Shiza Hidayet Khan of Peter’s recent article, which mentioned a resource for archived prison newspapers. She used it to search for “Tommy Gibbs”.  

In the ‘Texas History archive portal’, she found an interesting newspaper. But instead of continuing her search in the archives, she turned to Google. As a self-proclaimed “Google dorks fangirl,” she searched: “site:texashistory.unt.edu AND “Tommy Gibbs” “the echo". This turned up a reference to Tommy Gibbs being “busy with watches.” Adding “watches” to her archive portal search led her to a newspaper that stated: “Tommy Gibbs has a hobby of watch making.”

To solve “The Citrus Conspiracy,” 0ne-nine9 decided to try out a new tool. After finding a scanned PDF via Google, they wanted more searchable access to the content. While reading the document manually is always a solid approach, they used OCRmyPDF. This tool is available for download from this GitHub repository and can be used to search and select text within a scanned PDF. 

They were now able to search for “lemon tree” and found a mention on page 6/7 of the scan. “A source advised that STANLEY the Creeper had an interest in either the lemon tree or lemon twist, a club in Dallas.”

An additional search using keywords “Lemon Twist Dallas” “1972” turned up a news report on YouTube dated September 1 1972 about the murder of Stanley Lee “The Creeper” Cook, a known member of the “Dixie Mafia”. 

Another Google search using “the lemon twist dallas 70’s” revealed an article published in 1981, reviewing bars in the Dallas area, including an address. This could be used to find the club’s phone number in archived Dallas Yellow Pages. The address also helped surface  an article including photos of neighbouring businesses, one of which sounded familiar. Upon a final check: the KFC is still there!

Eric Bender took on “Beyond the Fence.” He identified the town of Ribnitz on the map included in the challenge. He found the same place on Google Maps in northern Germany and pointed out the surrounding features closely matched those on the challenge map.

He quickly found the name of the military base to the east. For the artillery position, he focused his search in the surroundings of Wustrow. The website Abandoned Spaces provided a series of photos and information about an anti-aircraft artillery training ground in the area. These matched what he saw on Google Maps, bunkers and other military structures confirmed the correct coordinates.

In “Slaughter and Salvation,” another old map presented itself. Shiza Hidayet Khan studied it closely,  using street names to find the general area on Google Maps. After some twisting and turning, she was able to align the road’s orientation with the modern map.

She found a church and her Google search for “Cedar Run Baptist Church cost”  returned more details about the church, including the cost.

Last month, Bellingcat’s Jake Godin tackled the challenges in our livestream: Check out how he did here: https://www.youtube.com/live/jQYKpLZFddM

And Finally…

A little trip down memory lane, Rainbolt also took on some older challenges in his recent video. He tackled one after the other in record speed, until one stumped him. Did you manage to solve “Hopping around” in the “Wild Lives” series? Or are there others still haunting you in your sleep? It’s never too late to revisit some past challenges, and discuss them in our Discord. 

That’s it for this month’s Bellingcat Challenge Newsletter. We’d love to hear your feedback on the challenges. Join us on Discord and let us know if you have ideas for future challenges.

If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to subscribe, you can do that here.

Elsewhere on Bellingcat

Before we go, here are some links to other exciting projects from Bellingcat:

• Masked, Armed and Forceful: Finding Patterns in Los Angeles Immigration Raids

• Violence in the Name of Cows: The 'Animal Welfare' Groups That Beat Up Truck Drivers in India

• Former Indian MP’s Terror Trial Was Largely Conducted in Her Absence

• The Story of a Storm Part II: Visualising Conflict and Displacement Data

  See you next month!