If Groucho Marx couldn't sleep he would ask Alice Cooper over

From the Las Vegas Review Journal: "Groucho Marx called Alice Cooper ‘Coop,’ the way he used to do with actor Gary Cooper. He and the rock star met while dueting on 'Lidia the Tattooed Lady' at a Frank Sinatra birthday party. They became friends while living in Beverly Hills. Groucho had insomnia and would call Coop to hang out. “He had a chair next to his bed with a six pack of Budweiser, and we would sit and watch old movies," Cooper recalls. "And then pretty soon, after about two movies were over, I’d look over and he’d be in his beret and his cigar and he’d finally go to sleep. I’d put out his cigar, turn out the lights and go home. And the next night, one o’clock in the morning: ‘Hey Coop, can’t sleep, come on over.’” It was Groucho who dubbed Alice’s horror-comedy concerts 'vaudeville,' a classification Alice immediately knew was right."

She became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by disguising herself as a man

From La Brujula Verde: "During the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a dozen statues were inaugurated in honor of French women who stood out in different fields. The most well-known are Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Veil, and Christine de Pizan, but there is a lesser-known figure after whom a Maritime Affairs vessel had been named two years earlier, and who was also featured on a postage stamp in the Great Travelers collection. We are talking about Jeanne Baret (or Barret), a young woman from Burgundy who managed to embark on Bougainville’s famous naval expedition disguised as a man and thus became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She achieved this by posing as the assistant of Philibert Commerson, the voyage’s naturalist. Barret and Commerson had been a couple for years, but the presence of women aboard ships of the French Royal Navy was strictly forbidden, hence the need for disguise and to pretend they had not known each other before the voyage."

He lost his sight and the use of his hands so he read Braille with his tongue

From Weird Universe: "As a boy, in 1944, Evangelos Georgakakis was blinded and lost most use of his hands due to a German mine. He eventually learned to read braille using his tongue. "The teachers told me to stop, said I was wetting the books," he related. "So I practiced in bed, then in class pretended to be reading with my finger. It was wonderful memory training." Because he could not take written entrance exams, Georgakakis was barred from high school and relegated to making brooms and brushes with his teeth. Then, when he was 20, a new law allowed him to take oral exams. With the aid of a tape recorder, the gift of a New Zealander whom his father had hidden during the war, Georgakakis graduated at the top of his class. In 1966, he scored top in the Athens bar exams. Even so, no one wanted to hire a blind lawyer until his case was publicized by Time magazine in 1967, which led to a flurry of job offers."

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.

Barbara Cartland wrote over 700 books and also helped design an early glider airplane

From Wikipedia: "Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland was an English writer who published both contemporary and historical romance novels, the latter set primarily during the Victorian or Edwardian period. Cartland is one of the best-selling authors worldwide of the 20th century. Her novels have been translated from English into numerous languages, making Cartland the fifth most translated author worldwide, excluding biblical works. Her prolific output totals some 723 novels. In the mid-1990s, by which time she had sold over a billion books,  Vogue called Cartland "the true Queen of Romance". Privately, Cartland took an interest in the early gliding movement and in 1931, with two RAF officers "designed the first aircraft-towed airmail delivery glider"; she also arranged the first long-distance (200-mile [360 km]) tow. In 1984, she was awarded the Bishop Wright Air Industry Award for this contribution."

He rode a bicycle all the way from India to London to be reunited with his love

From the BBC: "Indian artist PK Mahanandia met Charlotte Von Schedvin on a winter evening in Delhi in 1975 when she asked him to draw her portrait. What eventually followed was an epic bicycle journey from India to Europe - all for love. Ms Von Schedvin was visiting India as a tourist when she spotted Mr Mahanandia in Delhi's Connaught Place district. The two fell in love and returned to Delhi after spending a few days in his village. Ms Von Schedvin had driven to Delhi with her friends from Sweden along the famous hippie trail, crossing Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan - to reach India in 22 days. She said goodbye to him to start her return journey, but made him promise that he would follow her to her home in the Swedish textile town of Boras. More than a year passed and the two kept in touch through letters. Mr Mahanandia however, did not have enough money to buy a plane ticket. So, he sold everything he owned, bought a bicycle and followed her along the same hippie trail."

She performs a modern ballet underwater while holding her breath

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