- Site: kottke.org - By: posted by Jason Kottke Dec 26, 2023 - Date published: - Date read: [[2024-01-15]] - [Read Original](https://kottke.org/23/12/52-interesting-things-i-learned-2023) - [Read on Omnivore](https://omnivore.app/me/52-interesting-things-i-learned-in-2023-18cef2e504c) - Tags: - Notes: **Note:** Below is the text from the article, with any ==highlights== done by me. None of the writing below is by me. # Article text Inspired by [Tom Whitwell’s annual list](https://medium.com/magnetic/52-things-i-learned-in-2023-a3bbb9f9323d), I kept track of some things I learned this year, one for each week. Here we go: 1. Ciabatta [was invented in 1982](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciabatta). 2. “If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, [we would not be able to venture into space](https://web.archive.org/web/20190429025624/https://www.nasa.gov/mission%5Fpages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html), at least using rockets for transport.” 3. [Purple Heart medals that were made for the planned (and then cancelled) invasion of Japan in 1945](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176762) are still being given out to wounded US military personnel. 4. More than 100,000 public school students in NYC [were homeless during the 2021-22 school year](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/nyregion/nyc-homeless-students.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.IE0.Fs85.3wrfxyp07QOd). 5. The San Francisco subway system [still runs on 5 1/4-inch floppies](https://sfstandard.com/transportation/sfs-market-street-subway-runs-on-reagan-era-floppy-disks/). 6. NYPL librarians have discovered that [“up to 75 percent of books published before 1964 may now be in the public domain”](https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzyde/librarians-are-finding-thousands-of-books-no-longer-protected-by-copyright-law). 7. Gangkhar Puensum, a mountain in Bhutan with an elevation of 24,836 feet (7,570 m), [is the tallest unclimbed mountain in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangkhar%5FPuensum). ==(Mountaineering has been banned in Bhutan since 2003.)== 8. The founder of Lululemon picked that name for the company [because he thought it would be funny to hear Japanese speakers try to say it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip%5FWilson). What an asshole. 9. [Eigengrau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau) is the name of the dark grey color people see in the absence of light. 10. Bees can make [green honey](https://www.neatorama.com/2023/02/28/The-Many-Ways-Bees-Can-Make-Green-Honey/). 11. ==Baby scorpions are called== ==[scorplings](https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/meet-scorplings-theyre-modern-sting-age-family)====.== 12. Alaskan finishers of the Iditarod [can get a custom license plate](https://iditarod.com/where-did-the-official-iditarod-finishers-license-plate-originate/). 13. Any Rubik’s Cube can be solved [in 20 moves](https://www.cube20.org/). 14. Hurricanes don’t [cross the equator](https://www.iflscience.com/theres-a-weird-reason-why-hurricanes-never-cross-the-equator-68082). 15. Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela [sees almost 300 thunderstorms a year](https://www.openculture.com/2023/03/behold-an-astonishing-near-nightly-spectacle-in-the-lightning-capital-of-the-world.html#google%5Fvignette). 16. Premier League referees [are forbidden to work games played by their favorite teams](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/21/inside-world-premier-league-football-referees-pgmol-howard-webb-andre-marriner-darren-england) (or their close rivals). 17. The climate crisis has cost [$16 million per hour in extreme weather damage over the past 20 years](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/09/climate-crisis-cost-extreme-weather-damage-study). 18. The word for computer in Iceland translates to [“prophetess of numbers”](https://gizmodo.com/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology-1702697272). 19. All but two of the moons of Uranus [are named after Shakespeare characters](https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/shakespearean-moons-uranus/) — the remaining two are from a poem by Alexander Pope. 20. Bottled water has an expiration date — [it’s the bottle not the water that expires](https://www.sciencealert.com/drinking-a-bottle-of-water-past-its-expiration-date-heres-what-to-know). 21. There are satellites that were launched in the early to mid 60s [that are still operational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%5FCalibration%5FSphere%5F1). 22. Multicellular life developed on Earth [more than 25 separate times](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201200143). 23. US citizens or permanent residents with permanent disabilities [can get a free lifetime pass to US National Parks](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/accessibility/interagency-access-pass.htm) (and other federal lands). 24. If you try to pack information on a hard drive more densely than 10^69 bits/m^2, [the hard drive will collapse into a black hole](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/is-information-fundamental/). 25. Queen Victoria had [a dog named “Looty”](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/a-high-tech-heist-at-the-british-museum) that was stolen from China by a British soldier while looting a palace in Peking in 1860. 26. Colorado is not a rectangle — [it actually has 697 sides](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-colorado-a-rectangle). 27. Horseshoe crabs are older [than Saturn’s rings](https://phys.org/news/2023-05-definitive-age-saturn-theyre-young.html). 28. [Inmate](https://flowingdata.com/2023/05/23/all-the-household-types-in-the-u-s/) is the ninth most common household type in America. 29. Humans have pumped so much groundwater out of the ground that [it’s changed the tilt of the Earth’s axis 31.5 inches to the east](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/06/27/groundwater-use-planet-earth-tilt/). 30. “By 1920, the network of interurbans in the US was so dense that a determined commuter could [hop interlinked streetcars from Waterville, Maine, to Sheboygan, Wisconsin](https://urbanists.social/@straphanger/111059691532896415) — a journey of 1,000 miles — exclusively by electric trolley.” 31. [The Great British Kettle Surge](https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/blog/the-great-british-kettle-surge) is the simultaneous putting-on of the kettle in British households during commercial breaks of particularly popular TV programs, resulting in electricity surges. 32. [The Parker Solar Probe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker%5FSolar%5FProbe) is the fastest object ever built by humans — at its closest approach to the Sun, it will reach speeds of 430,000 mph (690,000 km/h), or 0.064% the speed of light. 33. [The top speed of zeppelins](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/73110/what-factors-influence-the-maximum-speed-of-an-airship) was about 80 mph (129 km/h). 34. Ernest Hemingway [only used 59 exclamation points](https://themillions.com/2023/10/how-to-exclaim.html) across his entire collection of works. 35. TIL there’s [a whole genus of South American spiders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatoroonops) whose species are named after people and things in the 1987 movie Predator, e.g. “Predatoroonops schwarzeneggeri”. 36. Robert Butler, [who died this year aged 95](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/robert-butler-dead-batman-star-trek-hill-street-blues-1235644907/), directed the initial episodes for Batman, Star Trek, Moonlighting, Hill Street Blues, Hogan’s Heroes, and Remington Steele. 37. I cannot believe this is the first I’ve heard of this: in the original Super Mario Bros., [you can continue where you left off in the last game by holding A down when you press Start](https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/random%5Fdo%5Fyou%5Fknow%5Fabout%5Fsuper%5Fmario%5Fbros%5Fsecret%5Fgame%5Fover%5Fcontinue%5Ftrick). This would have saved me _so much time_ as a kid. 38. Thomas Smallwood, an African American shoemaker, [coined the term “Underground Railroad” in 1842](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/man-who-named-underground-railroad.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.IU0.ZTUC.pmEkCS0ElzAF). 39. Swedish criminal gangs are [using fake Spotify streams to launder money](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/swedish-criminal-gangs-using-fake-spotify-streams-to-launder-money). 40. [Human ancestors almost went extinct 900,000 years ago](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02712-4). “A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.” 41. “People who enroll in genetic studies [are genetically predisposed to do so](https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/genetics-makes-some-people-more-likely-to-participate-in-genetic-studies/).” 42. MLB broadcaster Vin Scully’s career [lasted 67 seasons](https://www.espn.com/sportsnation/story/%5F/id/17604043/vin-scully-career-was-seriously-amazing-here-proof), during which he called a game managed by Connie Mack (born in 1862) and one Julio Urías (born in 1996) played in. 43. When the _Regimbartia attenuata_ beetle gets eaten by a frog, rather than accepting its fate to be digested, [it crawls through the frog’s bowels and emerges through its butt](https://www.wired.com/story/frog-eats-beetle-beetle-crawls-through-guts/). “The quickest run from mouth to anus was just six minutes.” 44. The rarest single-game event in baseball is not the perfect game but [hitting two grand slams in one inning](https://www.sportico.com/leagues/baseball/2023/mlb-perfect-games-domingo-german-1234727865/), which has only been done once in more than 235,000 games. 45. [Crab-like bodies have evolved at least five separate times](https://www.sciencealert.com/evolution-keeps-making-crabs-and-nobody-knows-why) in the past 250 million years. 46. Almost 800,000 Maryland licence plates [include a URL that now points to an online casino in the Philippines](https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3xe9/maryland-license-plates-now-inadvertently-advertising-filipino-online-casino) because someone let the domain registration lapse. 47. From 1999 to 2020, [there were 1.63 million excess deaths among Black Americans](https://abcnews.go.com/US/163-million-excess-deaths-black-americans-compared-white/story?id=99367556) (when compared to the death rates of white Americans). 48. Almost 75% of all films from the golden age of silent films (1912-1929) [have been lost](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/missing-pieces/lost-movies). 49. For years beginning in 2018, every copy of macOS has [included a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper](https://waxy.org/2023/04/the-bitcoin-whitepaper-is-hidden-in-every-modern-copy-of-macos/). 50. This San Francisco barbershop has [a “silent mode” for patrons who don’t want to chat with barbers](https://sfstandard.com/community/drink-free-beer-in-silence-at-this-new-san-francisco-barbershop/). 51. According to America’s Test Kitchen, [you can use your SodaStream to double the life of your salad greens](https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/articles/7053-how-to-keep-salad-greens-fresh-longer). 52. Deadline’s chief film critic [had never played or _even heard of_ Tetris](https://deadline.com/2023/03/tetris-review-taron-egerton-cold-war-thriller-sxsw-1235300991/) before seeing the film about the game’s genesis. Here are my lists from [2022](https://kottke.org/22/12/36-things-i-learned-in-2022) and [2021](https://kottke.org/22/01/52-things-i-learned-in-2021-1).