His obsession with jewelled eggs destroyed his family

When I was growing up, my mother used to refer to the egg as “your father’s ego”, while to the rest of the world it was known as the Argyle Library Egg by Kutchinsky. I felt a mix of pride and bafflement towards my father’s creation. I was thrilled to take its Guinness World Records certificate to school to show my friends, but I didn’t understand why anyone would want an egg that big which wasn’t made out of chocolate. But after the egg, life was never the same. It came to bear responsibility for the loss of our century-old business, the implosion of my parents’ marriage and Dad’s untimely death. After the family firm was sold, the egg was seized by creditors and locked away. It vanished but its shadow lingered. Mum raged against it as if it were human. A villain that stole her livelihood and husband, and robbed her children of a father. I was meant to hate it, too. But I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t hate Dad when he left. (via The Guardian)

Buster Keaton's films were all destroyed and then James Mason bought his house

During Buster Keaton’s golden era, he helped to design his house behind the Beverly Hills Hotel. The house contained a movie theatre, complete with a projector, perfect for showing guests unfinished films. Although Keaton loved the villa, when he divorced Natalie, she took his fortune and property. According to filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, when Keaton’s career was disintegrating, “the studio said, ‘look, all of your films… we are reclaiming the silver out of the copies of these films.’ […] So all of these masterpieces that Buster Keaton created were gone. And they were gone. And he lived his life until the 1950s, just accepting that all of this work that he had done will never ever be seen.” However, in 1948, Pamela Mason, the wife of British actor James Mason, became enamoured by his former house. While refurbishing it, the Masons took down a wall in part of a screening room and found pristine prints of Keaton’s films. (via Far Out magazine)

She grew up in Pennsylvania and became a martial arts legend and Chinese movie star

Cynthia Rothrock grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and started taking martial arts lessons at the age of 13. Rothrock took first place in forms 32 times and first place in weapons 12 times in her first 38 tournaments, including competing in Men's Forms three out of four times, as there was no Women's Division. She was Grand Master of five tournaments and came in first place in 4 out of 5 fighting events. Rothrock holds seven black belts and sashes in multiple Far Eastern  martial disciplines, including Tang Soo Do, Taekwondo, Eagle Claw, Wush, Northern Shaolin, Ng Ying Kungfu and Pai Lum White Dragon Kung Fu. She was the first woman to appear on the cover of a martial arts magazine. Rothrock became one of the few Western performers to achieve genuine stardom in the local Hong Kong film industry before achieving success in their own country. She was credited as Foo Lok Law" in many movies. (via Wikipedia)

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.

In this mausoleum the sunlight makes the shape of a heart on one day every year

Many believe that true love transcends even death—an idea beautifully embodied in the mausoleum of Léonce Evrard and his wife, Louise Flignot. Designed by architect George de Larabrie and situated at the entrance of Laeken Cemetery in Brussels, the neoclassical chapel constructed in 1920 features a poignant sculpture of a mourner reaching out in grief. Once a year, around the summer solstice, sunlight streams into the chapel, forming the shape of a heart right where the mourner’s hand reaches. Originally from France, Evrard and Flignot made Laeken their home in 1891. After Flignot passed away in 1916, Evrard, a skilled marble worker, was so heartbroken that he poured his grief into creating the one-of-a-kind mausoleum in her memory. He asked architect George de Larabrie to design the hexagonal chapel, and worked with sculptor Pierre Theunis to create the striking figure of a grieving woman. (via My Modern Met)

We get the term trivia from a Roman practice of leaving messages where three roads meet

The word trivia was originally the plural of the Latin trivium, which breaks neatly in half: the tri- indicates “three” (as in triple and trinity), and -vium comes from the Latin word for “road.” A trivium was a place where three roads converged. These intersections naturally became places where travelers, strangers and friends alike, commonly met, so the adjective form of the word, trivialis, came to mean “public” and then more broadly “commonplace.” But, like the roads at a trivium, the word trivia took another course as well. In Roman mythology, the goddess Diana is a triple deity, meaning — depending on your interpretation — that she is three deities worshiped as one or one deity worshiped in three aspects. In her triple aspect, she was referred to as Diana Trivia, a three-way Diana, representing the convergence of Diana, goddess of the hunt (Artemis in Greek mythology); Luna (Selene), goddess of the moon; and Hecate, an ancient underworld deity and the goddess of witchcraft. (via the Saturday Evening Post)

In the 1930s state fairs featured head-on collisions between trains

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places 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 and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com