She executed thousands and her nickname was Demon

From Engelsberg Ideas: "The first winter was the bloodiest. Some estimates suggest that Rosa Zemlyachka’s crew shot as many as 96,000 people in the space of four months (a tenth of the total population). Though Bela Kun’s attempt at revolution in Hungary had collapsed, he remained true to Lenin’s cause; in Soviet Sevastopol, he was credited with shooting 8,000 people in one week. Gender, it seems, was no bar to common sadism, but Rosalia was housewife enough to be concerned about the wanton use of bullets. Her solution disgusted even some Bolsheviks. Instead of shooting unarmed Whites, she tied them up on makeshift barges (or even just a few thin planks) and drowned them wholesale in the Black Sea. Lenin was delighted – hence her coveted Order of the Red Banner – and her return to civilian life was smoothed by national acclaim."

Denzel Washington paid for Chadwick Boseman to attend theater school at Oxford

From Entertainment.ie: "Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman revealed in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine that Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington paid for a then unknown Boseman to study at the University of Oxford. It came about when Boseman was in college and Phylicia Rashad, star of The Cosby Show, was his mentor. The actor applied to a summer program to study theatre at Oxford and while he was accepted, he couldn't afford to go so Rashad called upon some friends in the entertainment business to help out. Boseman later realised that Washington was the one who financed his trip, although he kept it secret because he wanted to talk to Denzel about it first. He got the opportunity at the New York premiere of Black Panther and Denzel's reaction was priceless, telling Boseman, "Oh so that's why I'm here, you owe me money!"

The inventors of bubble wrap were trying to create fashionable wallpaper

From Scientific American: "When a very young Howard Fielding carefully cradled his father’s unusual invention, he had no idea that his next action would make him a trendsetter. In his hands was a plastic sheet with air-filled bumps across it. As he fingered the funny-feeling film, he couldn’t resist the temptation: he started popping the bubbles — just like much of the rest of the world has been doing ever since. The invention revolutionized the shipping industry and made the e-commerce era possible, protecting billions of products shipped worldwide each year. Fielding’s father Alfred was co-inventor of Bubble Wrap with Marc Chavannes, a Swiss chemist. They were trying to create a textured wallpaper in 1957 that would appeal to the burgeoning Beat generation. They put two pieces of plastic shower curtain through a heat-sealing machine but were disappointed — at first — by the results: a sheet of film with trapped air bubbles."

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.

The first emperor of the Han dynasty in China was a local sheriff who became an outlaw

From Wikipedia: "Emperor Gaozu of Han was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 to 195 BC. He was among the few dynastic founders to have been born in a peasant family. According to records, as a young man he was outspoken, charismatic, generous and forbearing, but showed little interest in education or work and frequently ran into trouble with the law; he was dependent on his brother for subsistence and his father called him a "little rascal". His close friends at the county office often covered up his delinquent behaviour and helped him get an appointment as the local sheriff. He was responsible for escorting a group of prisoners, and during the journey some of them escaped. Rather than face punishment for this, he freed the remaining prisoners, some of whom joined him on the run from the law."

A sunfish weighing over four thousand pounds washed up on a California beach

From SFGate: "On a sun-soaked Labor Day weekend, beachgoers strolling on a long sandy spit in Sonoma County witnessed something otherworldly. What initially appeared to be a massive gray boulder near the fishing jetty at Doran Regional Park turned out to be something truly startling when people noticed it had a large, unblinking eye staring back at them. The mysterious creature catching hundreds of stares was no ordinary fish. It was a Mola tecta, also known as hoodwinker sunfish, a species so rare that it was only recognized by the scientific community in 2017. Weighing as much as 4,400 pounds and reaching up to 9 feet in length, this oceanic giant had somehow made its way from the open sea to this busy beach, drawing crowds of stunned onlookers. Despite rescue efforts, the fish succumbed to its illness shortly after beaching.”

To cook an egg in Dubai just hold the frying pan out the window

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