1. "The British Empire At Its Territorial Peak Covered Nearly The Same Area As The Moon".
2. Manhattan reached its peak population about 100 years ago.
3. The Millennial Generation exhibits preferences for consumption that are very similar to previous generations. This includes a demand for cars, work preferences, and where to live (suburbs versus the high-density urban core).
4. Army ants "commit" suicide.
5. A quantum physics experiment suggests that objective reality doesn't exist. (categorize my "learning" this as superficial at best)
6. The average state prisoner's time served in prison is surprisingly low.
7. The asteroid that about sixty-six million years ago struck the Yucatán peninsula killed over 99.9999% of all living things and unleashed the energy of about 1,000,000,000 Hiroshima bombs.
8. "The vast majority of roads in Sweden and Finland are operated by the private sector and maintained by local communities".
9. Speaking of socialist paradises, Sweden sharply rejected socialism decades ago in favor of capitalism.
10. All perching bird species, about 60% of all birds, may have come from Australia.
11. "Books don't work".
12. Pork Bellies Futures stopped being traded in 2011. Better tell The Dukes.
13. Girl's comparative advantage in reading can explain the math gender gap. I learned a lot from Alex Tabarrok this past year.
14. Adding to the number of whales in the oceans could significantly help reduce CO2.
15. Speaking of whales, the Soviet Union illegally killed over 180,000 whales simply to say they did it.
16. It is overall faster, safer, and more efficient for people to stand rather than walk up the escalator.
17. A great use case for blockchain is insurance markets.
18. Total energy use in the United States is essentially flat for the last decade. And this amazing trend is true of many other resources despite the economy bring much larger today.
19. Mathematicians actually have a system to rate how "crackpot" a theory is.
20. I knew it is false that we only use about 10% of our brain, but I did not know a lot of these neuromyths including that it is false that Individual learners show preferences for the mode in which they receive information (e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic).
21. There are perhaps "600 new academic philosophy articles and books written per week in the English-speaking world, or over 30,000 a year".
22. Breathalyzers should not be trusted.
23. Rod Stewart is into model trains.
24. Injuries should be moved (not rested), allowed inflammation (don't ice)--RICE is a myth. More here.
25. You CAN yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. This has never been a First Amendment exception in the law.
26. Converting "dog years" to "human years" is not dog age in years times seven, but there is a way to do the conversion.
27. Pasta should be made starting in cold water--not dropping it into boiling water like so many recipe boxes say.
28. The Eiffel Tower, the tallest building in the world for more than 40 years, was built in 2 years and 2 months at a 2019 cost of only about $40 million. There are more amazing speeds of things being brought to life at the link.
29. About 30,000 people each day escape poverty.
30. Turkeys (birds) are named after the country.
31. The main benefit of circumcision is a potentially significant reduction in the risk of penile cancer.
32. The magnitude of personality differences between males and females is large and significant.
33. Sydney, Australia has more foreign-born residents than all of mainland China.
34. Germany owns no nuclear weapons itself, but it does have U.S. nukes that it can use at a moment's notice.
35. The Pilgrims' first encounter with a Native American was him asking if they had any beer.
36. The cost of a standard Thanksgiving dinner was virtually unchanged from 2018 to 2019 rising just one penny.
37. Blind people can hear at an extraordinarily high speed.
38. U.S. life expectancy peaked in 2014, and the death rate of middle-aged Americans has risen for three straight years.
39. Andrew Garrido learned to play the piano without a piano and is now at one of the world’s leading conservatoires.
40. The finest chocolate should be eaten by letting it melt in your mouth never chewing.
41. The placebo effect works even when you tell people they are using a placebo.
42. The nuclear ban in Japan following Fukushima killed more people due to higher electricity prices than the nuclear accident itself.
43. It is a myth that Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.
44. "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" is about a single woman who loves baseball and is bucking societal norms. As such, it should be celebrated for its pro-feminist message.
45. It is NOT true that failing to take an entire prescribed antibiotic course risks antibiotic-resistance in bacteria.
46. Brazil has more than 60,000 murders per year--more than a good share of the rest of the world combined.
47. The average age for founding entrepreneurs at companies that go on to hire at least one employee is 41.9.
48. World War I was not the deadliest war up to that point--the Taiping Rebellion some 50-years before it was much worse.
49. In 2003 a group of young artists built a secret apartment inside a mall in Providence, RI and lived in it for days at a time for years.
50. Most modern practices and rules of dentistry have very weak to no scientific basis.
51. Hundreds of American cities are (thankfully) abandoning recycling efforts.
52. And finally:
I'm already well into learning things in 2020. I hope you are too!Canning of food began as early as 1812— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) December 26, 2019
The can opener was not invented until 1855
In between, cans were opened with hammer & chisel (!) pic.twitter.com/kteOTA3g6o
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