Victorians believed that train rides could cause insanity

From Atlas Obscura: “As the railway grew more popular in the 1850s and 1860s, trains allowed travelers to move about with unprecedented speed and efficiency, cutting the length of travel time drastically. But according to the more fearful Victorians, these technological achievements came at the considerable cost of mental health. As Edwin Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller wrote in The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present, trains were believed to “injure the brain.” In particular, the jarring motion of the train was alleged to unhinge the mind and either drive sane people mad or trigger violent outbursts from a latent “lunatic.” Mixed with the noise of the train car, it could, it was believed, shatter nerves. In the 1860s and ‘70s, reports began emerging of bizarre passenger behavior on the railways. When seemingly sedate people boarded trains, they suddenly began behaving in socially unacceptable ways.”

How did a billionaire inventor’s supposedly unsinkable mega-yacht capsize?

From New Lines: “In Aug. 19, 2024, a storm swept into Sicily’s Gulf of Porticciolo and, within minutes, sank the megayacht Bayesian, drowning 58-year-old British tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and five other passengers. For many, the incident conjured up the hubris of those who compete with the gods. Months of investigations by the Italian judiciary and by journalists have failed to provide a clear explanation for what caused the shipwreck. Footage shot by Italian Navy divers, who entered the hull at a depth of nearly 165 feet, shows it waterlogged but its structures and equipment perfectly intact. The Bayesian looks like a ghost vessel: It gives the impression that it could resurface and resume sailing. The affair remains surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery, much like the owner of the vessel and its 235-foot mast that defied the sky.”

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He has spent decades trying to prove he has an authentic portrait of Shakespeare

From the BBC: “Window cleaner Steven Wadlow has spent more than a decade trying to prove he is in possession of a priceless, authentic Shakespeare portrait. Steven, who lives in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said his father, Peter, had bought the painting in the 1960s for £900. It hung above his television for 40 years, but Steven did not always like the portrait. “It used to scare me. Wherever you are in the house, it’s looking at you. It always used to remind me of those portraits on Scooby Doo,” he remembered. He never thought much of it until his father had a visitor – an English and art lecturer – who suspected there was more to the picture. Peter said the woman originally thought it was a reproduction print. The portrait appears to depict a youthful Shakespeare at the age of 31 with hair and no beard – an image not seen in historical depictions of the bard. A mysterious coat of arms was hidden beneath layers of overpainting, suggesting that the sitter’s identity had been deliberately concealed.”

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.

She was one of the first women to graduate from university in 18th century Italy

From the Smithsonian: “By the age of 15, Cristina Roccati had surpassed her tutor’s knowledge in classical literature, mathematics and natural philosophy. She yearned for more, and her father allowed her to pursue a university degree. Despite historical accounts of women teaching and attending university lectures behind screens from the late Middle Ages, such depictions were more myth than truth. The idea of sending a daughter away from home to study was almost unimaginable until the late 19th century. In 1747, Roccati, accompanied by her aunt and tutor for decorum, journeyed by carriage to the University of Bologna. There, she became the first woman to officially attend university courses as a non-resident, sitting alongside male students in public lectures. Her attendance was a radical departure from the norm. At a time when women’s education was confined to private libraries and salons, Roccati’s presence in the public intellectual sphere was both unprecedented and revolutionary.”

Hamlet was based on this legendary medieval Scandinavian character

From Wikipedia: “Amleth is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. In the story, Gervendill, governor of Jutland, was succeeded by his sons Horvendill and Feng. Horvendill, on his return from a Viking expedition in which he had slain Koll, king of Norway, married Gerutha, daughter of the king of Denmark; they had a son, Amleth. However, Feng murdered Horvendill out of jealousy and persuaded Gerutha to become his wife. Amleth, afraid of sharing his father’s fate, pretended to be insane. Feng dispatched him to Britain in company with two attendants, who bore a letter urging the country’s king to put him to death.”

A view of the Northern Lights from a cabin in Alaska

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