52 Things I Learned in 2023
As always, a partial list
Here is a smidgen of the notable things I learned in 2023 in no particular order other than being somewhat chronological to my learning them.
Prior years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
Fifty years ago in Ossineke, Michigan a funeral was held for 30,000 frozen pizzas. [Reason]
A region in the southern Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand is known as the spacecraft cemetery where spacecraft are intentionally crashed after they reach the end of their use life. [Wikipedia]
Grade inflation at Harvard is showing a remarkable, clear trend. Soon the average student there will have a 4.0. What else should we expect, though, from an institution where there are nearly as many administrators (7,024) as there are undergraduates? (NB: reminds me of an old joke)
Dr Dilip Mahalanabis died in late 2022 to little notice outside of India. This was quite unjust as his simple demonstration of using sugary, salty water (oral rehydration therapy or ORT) to relieve the fatal threat of dehydration saved perhaps 50 million lives. BONUS: the bicycle in its modern form is only a little older than the automobile. [Tim Harford]
Japan is farther east, west, north, and south than is Korea. [Epic Maps on X] This is also true of China although less surprising. BONUS: The northernmost part of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southernmost part of Brazil. [Amazing Maps on X]
The reason the U.S. doesn't have abandoned cars littering the sides of roads anymore is because of cheap shredders that made recycling them profitable. [Brian Potter on X]
Frank Abagnale, the real-life person depicted in the great film Catch Me If You Can, not only was a fraudster. His very famous and amazing life story itself seems to be a fraud—he made up all the stuff we think we know about him that made him remarkable. [Wikipedia]
California is the most urban and densest urban state. If you’ve been to California outside of flying into a city like L.A. or S.F. and especially if you’ve driven there or even if you’ve just seen a map or pictures of California, you might find this hard to fathom. Perhaps that is because it shouldn’t be true although it technically is. You see, kids, that is what unreasonable development restrictions give us and why California cannot have nice [affordable housing] things. [new geography]
The EU parliament is in Brussels only part of the year. They pack up and move to Strasburg to conduct their business for part of the year. [Andrew Heaton on his podcast The Political Orphanage]
Jupiter has 95 moons and counting—it was only 92 at the time of the source link. [Outside the Beltway]
Giant cargo airships might be an economical solution for freight transportation in the future. [Eli Dourado]
Low and no-calorie sweetened beverages appear to be a safe and effective substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages according to a systematic review and meta-analysis. [JAMA]
Samuel Dickstein was a U.S. Representative from N.Y. where played a key role in establishing the committee that became the House Committee on Un-American Activities and he was a Soviet spy. [Wikipedia]
The state of New Mexico produces more oil than the country of Mexico. [Scott Sumner]
Nike’s trademark slogan “Just Do It” draws its origin from murderer Gary Gilmore’s last words before his execution, “Let’s do it.” [Penn Jillette on Howie Mandel’s podcast Howie Mandel Does Stuff]
The original Waldorf-Astoria was two separate hotels built by feuding relatives on the site that would be later used for the Empire State Building.
It is an Easter Sunday tradition in Florence for the Archbishop to light a small rocket shaped like a dove which follows a wire through the nave of the cathedral into an awaiting wagon outside. [Father V on X]
The Constitution was NOT written by James Madison or any of the other popularly-believed answers. It was largely written by the little-known Gouverneur Morris. [Dennis Rasmussen on the podcast The Curious Task]
Turkey is bordered by seven different countries that all use different alphabets. [Simon Keustenmacher on X]
In Denmark the Danish mortgage system allows borrowers to buy back their mortgage loan including at the lower market price in the event that interest rates rise after they borrow at a fixed rate. [Alex Tabarrok]
The average life expectancy by county in the U.S. shows stark differences by region—about a 20-year gap between the poorer southeastern region et al. and the rest of the country. [Steve Chernoski on X]
The motto of the USPS dates to Cyrus the Great, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” [Connor Tabarrok]
In December 1922 the largest barbecue in history took place in Oklahoma City in honor of the inauguration of J.C. Walton as governor. Between 60,000 and 160,000 meals were served (the attendance is disputed). [Dave Cathey]
Brittany, known as Breizh, is a region in France with deep, historic Celtic roots. It is where crepes come from. [Wikipedia]
There are still privately-owned rail/train cars, and Amtrak will let an owner attach them to their trains for travel. [Amtrak]
Arthur Andersen got it’s start when the namesake founder analyzed Middle West Utilities finding it to be “retroactively insolvent, never having earned any money and thus but a worthless pile of paper”. AA would of course go on to become the largest auditing firm until its demise through association with Enron, another insolvent and fraudulent utility company. An ironic start & finish for sure. [Brian Potter]
Because of contractual obligations, Fox had to offer Frank Sinatra the lead role eventually played by Bruce Willis in the film Die Hard. [All The Right Movies on X]
Poland had a bear mascot in WWII who was officially a corporal, and actually fought in battle. [Wikipedia HT: Andrew Heaton]
Moving Day (aka, Rent Day) was a tradition in New York City from colonial times that became law in 1820 lasting until after WWII. By law on May 1 all leases simultaneously expired causing all renters to seek new leases and/or residences at the same time. [Wikipedia]
Titanium as a useful industrial commodity has an interesting story. “The earth contains a lot of titanium - it’s the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. By mass, there’s more titanium in the earth’s crust than carbon by a factor of nearly 30, and more titanium than copper by a factor of nearly 100.” [Brian Potter]
“Prefabricated factory-built housing costs about one-third as much as traditional “stick-built housing,” but it constitutes just 10% of new single-family home construction today. In the 1970s, it was 60%.” [FREOPP; Kevin Erdmann understands why]
It is a myth that judicial review was created by Marbury v. Madison. [Michigan Law Review]
The idea that there are four kinds of learners (visual, oral, reading/writing, and kinesthetic) is a myth. [Jason Feifer and guests on his podcast Build For Tomorrow]
In 2010 a 35-year-old woman convicted of attempted murder dug a tunnel to escape Breda prison much like in the film The Shawshank Redemption. [Tatiana Kim on the podcast 99% Invisible]
The term “China syndrome” was a mythical idea of nuclear power opponents who thought that a chain reaction would cause a meltdown that would go all the way through the Earth’s crust, into the Earth’s core, and perhaps out the other side to hit China. [Andrew Heaton on his podcast The Political Orphanage]
You may recall the following misquote: “I don’t see how Nixon could have won; nobody I know voted for him.” The actual quote is: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” (New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael in 1972) [David Friedman]
The Atomic Energy Commission proposed in 1958 to create an artificial harbor in Alaska by detonating a string of nuclear explosions. [Wikipedia]
South Korean shipbuilders account for roughly one third of global tonnage ordered. [Connor Tabarrok]
U.S. bridges are getting more “average”, and that is a good thing—while excellent bridges age and become just fair, poor bridges get repaired or replaced. BONUS: The often invoked pejorative political term “crumbling infrastructure” dates to the 1980s—it’s been crumbling for 40 years I guess. [Brian Potter]
"The fastest, the newly completed transatlantic cable called Amitié and funded by Microsoft, Meta and others, can carry 400 terabits of data per second. That's 400,000 times faster than your home broadband if you're lucky enough to have high-end gigabit service." [CNET]
"…Several decades before Christopher Columbus, a Chinese admiral named Zheng He made larger and more ambitious voyages with a fleet 300 times larger than Columbus’s." Also, he was a eunuch having been castrated around the age 10-14 upon his capture by Ming General Fu Youde. [Human Progress]
The commerce department is explicitly prohibited by statute from considering the effects of imposing tariffs including on potential consumer harm. [Reason]
In 2022, U.S. citizens were 89 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers, and at most, just 0.009 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever. [David Bier]
Pink Floyd recorded The Wall in France and the U.S. because of the extremely high tax rates of pre-Thatcher Britain. They were joining a long list of famous British rock artists including The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, and Tom Jones who became known as “Tax Exiles”. [John Phelan]
You can sail on the ocean in a straight line between India and the United States. [Zimbax on YouTube]
In the phrase “rest on ones laurels” the laurels being referenced are the leaves of sweet bay trees. [Gary Martin]
Animals truly do have astounding navigational skills and techniques that in many cases rely on sixth senses. [The New Yorker]
The average age of passenger cars in the U.S. has increased steadily from about 9 years in 2000 to about 13 years in 2022. Light trucks have seen a similar trend. [U.S. DoT HT: The Antiplanner]
The 22,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) earn an average of over $200,000 in salary and another $100,000 in benefits. The on-the-waterfront union is now bankrupt having lost a judgement in court regarding its illegal tactics. [Alex Tabarrok]
Geologists have mapped what they say is the lost eighth continent, Zealandia. [Popular Mechanics]
Pregnancy tests once required the killing of rabbits and mice. [Human Progress]
Greek Fire was a game-changing incendiary weapon used by the Eastern Roman Empire circa AD 672. [Wikipedia HT: Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History]
Keep learning!