She got a friend request and it was her long-lost identical twin

In 2013, Samantha Futerman was a 25-year-old actress in LA, with a YouTube channel, and a major release on her IMDb bio. On February 21, she made her way to a friend’s apartment to have her nails done for the premiere of her new film. As her friend painted her nails, Futerman fiddled with her phone and saw a request on Facebook from a young woman named Anaïs Bordier. She studied the woman’s photo and found they shared a birthdate. “Hey,” she wrote. “My name is Anaïs, I am French and live in London.” A friend had stumbled upon one of Futerman’s YouTube videos and thought the two looked really similar. Bordier invited Futerman to check out her photos and videos, where the resemblance was more obvious, and offered other key details: she was born in Busan, South Korea, on November 19, 1987. And she was adopted. (via Boston University)

She invented and patented the windshield wiper but never made any money from it

While touring New York City in a trolley car on a snowy day in the early 1900s, Mary Anderson conceived her idea of a windshield wiper blade that could be operated from the inside by the trolley driver. Anderson observed that streetcar drivers often had to open their windows in order to see during inclement weather, sometimes even stopping the streetcar to go outside to clear the window. Her idea consisted of a lever inside the vehicle that controlled a spring-loaded arm with a rubber blade. With her 1903 patent, Anderson's invention proved to be the first windshield-clearing device to be effective. the windshield wiper was eventually adapted for automotive use but by then her patent had expired. In 1922, Cadillac began installing the wiper as a piece of standard equipment on its cars. In addition to managing an apartment building in Birmingham, Alabama, she operated a cattle ranch and vineyard in Fresno. (via invent.org)

In Oxford you can stay in a hotel room that used to be a public washroom

The Netty, a cozy boutique hotel located down a flight of stairs, in the middle of St. Giles Road, in Oxford, was a public toilet for over 100 years. Originally built in 1895, during the reign of Queen Victoria, The Netty served as a gentlemen’s toilet until 2008, when it was closed for safety reasons. It remained unused for 11 years before its owner finally decided to give it a new lease on life as an unusual boutique hotel. It is now regarded as one of the most unusual places to stay in all of Oxford, and even though it’s “not for everyone,” according to hotel manager Ana Pinheiro, it definitely has its own distinct charm. The Netty, an old Geordie term for an outhouse, offers just two sweets which start from £170 ($227) per night. There is no reception, restaurant, or room service, but guests do get access to a help line and a complimentary cocktail. (via Oddity Central)

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.

Cleveland had a five-story hyperbaric sphere that its inventor said could cure cancer

In 1928, the residents of Cleveland, Ohio watched in wonder as a unique structure was erected along the shores of Lake Erie. Over months a huge steel ball took shape, some 64 feet in diameter containing five stories. When it was completed it held 38 rooms, 350 portholes to provide natural light, an elevator, and an ornate recreation room replete with crystal chandeliers. This strange spherical building was the first - and only - of its kind in the world: a hospital pressurized to 60 PSI that promised a panacea for its patients, able to cure a broad range of ailments ranging from diabetes to pernicious anemia to cancer. This was Dr. Orval Cunningham's Sanatorium, or “Timken's Tank,” after the “Baron of Bearings” tycoon Henry H. Timken who bankrolled the $1,000,000 to build it. This unusual sphere was both an early hyperbaric hospital and a 900 ton monument to the dangers of unscientific medicine. (via One Pager ICU)

Turkey Pete was the only Montana prison inmate to have a funeral behind bars

Paul Eitner was a German immigrant who worked as a porter at a Miles City saloon and lived in a local boarding house. One evening in January 1918, Eitner shot a fellow lodger with his .38 revolver and was given a life sentence. Eitner was assigned to look after the prison’s flock of turkeys, which earned him the nickname “Turkey Pete.” Eitner believed he had diamond mines and an imaginary fortune, so fellow inmates printed fake checks in the prison shop, and he gave away millions of pretend dollars. He was mascot to the prison band and acted as manager of the boxing team, shadow boxing his way through every match. The prison board denied him parole a number of times believing Eitner could not adjust to the outside. He died in 1967 at the age of 89 after serving 49 years in prison. His was the only funeral ever held within the prison walls and his empty cell, #1 in the 1912 cell house, was never reassigned. (via Great Falls Tribune)

Jesse Martin's digital "infinite art" allows you to zoom in continuously

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