She was forced to become a pirate and then lived in a cave

From Wikipedia: "Sarah Bishop was born around 1759 on Long Island, New York. She led a life of privilege as a member of an affluent and well-educated family. During the American Revolutionary War, her family's house was burnt by a raiding party from a British privateer. She was captured by the raiding party and eventually became the wife of the captain. After the captain was killed, she went overboard and swam towards the shore at Stamford, Connecticut. She then travelled to Westchester County, New York, where she took up residence in a rocky cleft or cave. Described as mentally sound and deeply devoted to her faith, her few possessions included an old pewter basin and a gourd shell for cooking. She slept on a solid rock with scattered old rags, and when a reporter visited her in 1804, her cave had no signs of food or an active fire."

He wrote a cryptic note to the judge and then jumped out the window and escaped

From Now I Know: "In the spring of 1976, Albert Spaggiari robbed the Société Générale bank in Nice. Bank employees returned to work from a long weekend, having just celebrated Bastille Day, but they couldn’t get into the vault. The door had been welded shut. Once inside, the bankers saw the damage: all the lockboxes had been opened and almost all the cash was gone. In total, the thieves got away with the equivalent of as much as $10 million — $55 million in today's dollars. Spaggiari was ultimately arrested and he confessed to being the mastermind. In a private meeting with the judge, he said he was going to implicate others, including local political figures. The judge couldn’t make sense of Spaggiari’s handwriting, so he got up to explain to the judge what he had written, and then leaped out the window, landed on a parked car, then jumped onto a waiting motorcycle and fled. He was never caught, and lived out his life on the lam, surviving another decade before dying of cancer at the age of 56."

Two hikers picked up an aluminum can and found a secret stash of 600 gold coins

From Popular Mechanics: "A field in an overgrown Czech Republic forest has, for nearly 100 years, served as the hiding place for a secret stash of nearly 600 gold coins and other precious metal goods tucked into a stone wall. But the cache of treasure is hiding no more. Two hikers traversing the Krkonoše Mountains came across the small aluminum can, which had been hidden in a crevice in the wall, and opened it up to find the collection of gold coins. Just a few feet away, they found another hidden cache—this one an iron box holding jewelry, cigarette cases, and other personal items all made from gold. The lucky hikers wound up finishing their trip with an extra 15 pounds of precious cargo. Whoever stashed the treasure may have done so to conceal valuables while fleeing the Nazis, or it could have been Germans hiding money under fear of expulsion."

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 Hobo Code: 15 rules for living a self-reliant, honest and compassionate life

From Open Culture: "The Hobo Ethical Code was established at the Hobo National Convention of 1889. Hoboes prided themselves on their self-reliance and honesty, as well as their compassion for their fellow humans. The rules included "decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you"; "don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos"; "try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible"; "when traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member"; "when in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times"; "lways try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again"; and "help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home."

Movie scenes where the archers all fire at once are historically inaccurate

From Unmitigated Pedantry: "You know the scene: the general readies his archers, he orders them to ‘draw!’ and then holds up his hand with that ‘wait for it’ gesture and then shouts ‘loose!’ and all of the archers release at once, producing a giant cloud of arrows. And then those arrows hit the enemy, with whole ranks collapsing and wounded soldiers falling over everywhere. Archers didn’t engage in all-at-once shooting (called ‘volley fire’), they did not shoot in volleys because there wouldn’t be any point to do so. Indeed, part of the reason there was such confusion over what a general is supposed to shout instead of ‘fire!’ is that historical tactical manuals don’t generally have commands for coordinated bow shooting because armies didn’t do coordinated bow shooting. More to the point, they could not shoot in volleys. And even if they had shot in volleys, those volleys wouldn’t produce anything like the impact we see in film or TV."

This naturally occuring stone reflects whatever is underneath it

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