He didn't speak for 14 years and just got admitted to MIT

From Boing Boing: "For the first fourteen years of his life, Viraj Dhanda, who has autism and apraxia (a neurological condition that limits muscle movements and motor skills), was non-verbal, non-communicative, and assumed to be intellectually disabled. He was diagnosed with autism at age 2. It wasn't until his father, Sumit, experimented with various communication and keyboard devices that Viraj could work with one part of his body with which he had sufficient dexterity — his right thumb — that he discovered that his son was far from intellectually disabled. He was brilliant. In less than three years, Viraj went from learning basic math to calculus. “I hated being labeled mentally disabled. People thought I was behavioral because I flopped on the floor, used my body to communicate, but what was I supposed to do?” Viraj Dhanda said. “I was desperate for the world to know that I had a fully functional brain.”

In the early 2000s a superhero named Shadow Hare fought crime in Cincinnati

From Wikipedia: "Shadow Hare (or Shadowhare) is the pseudonym of a vigilante superhero who operated in Cincinnati, Ohio from 2005-2010. He stated that he lived in Milford, Ohio. Wearing a handmade black suit with a stylized hare on the front, along with a cape and mask, he patrolled the streets looking for crimes in progress, and gave out meals to the homeless. Although not supported or endorsed by the Cincinnati Police Department, he cooperated with police, making citizen's arrests when necessary. Shadow Hare claimed to be skilled in Shōrin-ryū and mixed martial arts, and carried mace, a taser, and handcuffs. He once received a dislocated shoulder while assisting a woman who was being robbed. He frequented Cincinnati public events, using his tagline "I see the shadows of shadows." He received a fair amount of international internet and television news coverage, ranging from supportive to mocking."

No one has ever seen how eels reproduce and even scientists aren't sure about how it works

From Frank Chimero: "For most of history, we didn’t really know where eels come from. Even now, we only have the faintest sense of where they spawn or how. Their lives remain partly hidden, and that blank space has always invited stories. Aristotle thought they slithered out of mud, giving the primordial ooze its first big break. Japanese folklore said eels began as earthworms blessed by the summer moon. At the end of the 19th century scientists believed they finally had the tools to crack the mysterious origins of eels: how they mated, where they were born, and where they eventually went to die. The scientists observed. They dissected. They experimented. And time after time, they kept hitting dead ends. All these years later, no one has ever seen an Anguilla eel spawn. But scientists think they’ve at least found the place where it happens."

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.

There's a vast network of underground caves beneath the city of Budapest

From CNN: "Every day, crowds flock to the Lukács Thermal Baths in Budapest, soaking in warm mineral-rich pools. Most never suspect that just yards away, beneath the city’s historic streets, lies a hidden world: a vast underwater cave system heated by geothermal springs. From its entrance, tucked into the base of Rózsadomb — Rose Hill — an affluent neighborhood of elegant villas and tree-lined streets, the Molnár János Cave stretches for over 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers) and plunges nearly 300 feet (90 meters) below the surface. Flooded with crystal-clear water at the temperature of a warm bath, it is one of the largest active thermal water caves in the world, and among the rare few open to certified cave divers. Over millennia, the same geothermal activity that feeds the city’s baths has carved a network of more than 200 caves."

Archaeologists have found the remains of a bear that fought gladiators in a Roman amphitheater

From La Brujula Verde: "For centuries, chronicles and accounts from Roman Antiquity have conveyed vivid, and often bloody, descriptions of the spectacles held in the amphitheaters across the Empire, where alongside gladiators and the condemned, an innumerable variety of wild beasts fought, were hunted, or executed prisoners. Among them, the brown bear (Ursus arctos) occupied a prominent place, frequently cited in written sources. However, direct physical evidence corroborating the capture and specific use of this plantigrade in such events had remained inexplicably absent from the archaeological record, reducing its participation to the literary realm. That tangible void has now been filled thanks to the meticulous examination of a fragmented bear skull found in the amphitheater of the Roman city of Viminacium, located in present-day Serbia, whose revelations have just been made public."

A brand new million-dollar yacht sank 15 minutes after its maiden launch

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy's Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova's The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com