- **Site**: [[theatlantic.com]] - **By**: [[The Atlantic Science Desk]] - **Date Published**: 2024-12-28T14:00:00Z - **Date Read**: 2025-02-10T13:50:02+00:00 - **[Read Original](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/facts-blew-our-minds-2024/681175/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZyQFT9b2acphX8EZsZ0-m7U&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)** - **Tags**: **Note:** Below is the text from an online article – none of the writing is by me. Chewing gum, space capsules, and minivans are just a few of the things we see differently after a year of reporting.  Illustration by Matija Medved *Updated at 11:13 a.m. ET on January 2, 2025* Over the past year, the writers on *The Atlantic*’s Science, Technology, and Health desk have investigated [academic fraud](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/business-school-fraud-research/680669/), tracked [infectious-disease outbreaks](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/bird-flu-scary-awkward-phase/679770/), studied the evolution of [artificial intelligence](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/openai-o1-reasoning-models/680906/), and chronicled [extreme weather](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-climate-change/680188/) events. We’ve reported on the [quirks of animal behavior](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/10/moon-cat-behavior-science/680320/) and the latest in [psychedelics research](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/psychedelics-mdma-ptsd-fda-placebo/678588/). Along the way, we stumbled across facts that surprised, sobered, and humbled us, and we wanted to share them with you. We hope they blow your mind too. 1. Onions were used to [treat wounds](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/11/onion-problem-foodborne-illness/680569/) during the French and Indian War. 2. The [energy](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/how-much-data-ai-use/678908/) required to show a new Instagram post from Cristiano Ronaldo to each of his followers could power a house for several years. 3. A group of butterflies [flew](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/butterfly-migration-pollen-record/680911/) across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. It took them only about eight days. 4. Children with cystic fibrosis are no longer automatically eligible for the Make-A-Wish Foundation because [a new drug works so well](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/cystic-fibrosis-trikafta-breakthrough-treatment/677471/) that these kids are now expected to have an essentially normal lifespan. 5. Your body carries [literal pieces of your mom](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/fetal-maternal-cells-microchimerism/676996/)—and maybe your grandmother, siblings, aunts, and uncles. 6. The generative-AI boom is on pace to [cost](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/ai-companies-unprofitable/679278/) more than the Apollo space missions. 7. Early space capsules lacked [handholds and footholds](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/09/spacex-spacewalk-isaacman-polaris-dawn/679767/) on the outside, and some spacewalking astronauts really struggled to make it back on board. 8. Around the world, more than [10,000 barcodes are scanned every second](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/barcode-changing-stores-qr-code/677089/). 9. McDonald’s cooked its french fries in [beef tallow](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/beef-tallow-kennedy-cooking-fat-seed-oil/680848/) until 1990. 10. The fast-food giant also grills its beef patties for [exactly](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/kernel-robot-fast-food-automation/678107/) 42 seconds. 11. California grizzly bears were once mostly vegan, but over time, [humans made them more carnivorous](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/grizzly-bear-california-carnivore-meat-eating/677070/). 12. A tick bite can make you allergic to mammalian meat—so much so that some [ranchers are becoming allergic](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/ticks-meat-allergy-alpha-gal-farming/680159/) to their own cattle. 13. When some people took a drug originally approved to treat asthma, their [food allergies also started disappearing](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/fix-food-allergies-xolair/679754/). 14. Brains have a consistency not unlike [tapioca pudding](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/neuralink-bci-implant/677996/). 15. The weight of [giant pumpkins](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/giant-pumpkin-world-record/680337/) increased 20-fold in half a century. 16. [Kids don’t *really* need to eat vegetables.](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/05/toddlers-children-vegetables-hiding-nutrition/678524/) 17. You can give rice a nutty flavor by growing [cow cells inside the grains](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/lab-grown-meat-beef-rice/677689/). 18. Mushroom genes can [make petunias glow](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/03/glowing-houseplant-petunia-lightbio/677801/). 19. In the Middle Ages, people took their pet [squirrels](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/05/leprosy-medieval-squirrels-pets-fur/678283/) for walks and decked them out in flashy accessories. 20. [You can buy a fitness tracker for your pet.](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/cat-pet-fitness-tracker-quantified-anxiety/681012/) 21. Humankind has basically reached the limit of [airplane-overhead-bin space](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/airplane-carry-on-luggage-crisis-conspiracy/677452/). 22. [Study-abroad accents](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/05/regional-accent-emotion-identity-critical-period/678398/) might be real. 23. Each clan of sperm whales uses its own set of clicking sounds to communicate. Some of these sounds may be [older](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/02/talking-whales-project-ceti/677549/) than Sanskrit. 24. Subtitles from more than 53,000 movies and 85,000 TV-show episodes have been used to [train](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/opensubtitles-ai-data-set/680650/) generative AI. 25. In 1998, Aaron Sorkin insisted to ABC executives that if he were forced to add a laugh track to his first-ever TV show, *Sports Night*, he’d “feel as if I’d put on an Armani tuxedo, tied my tie, snapped on my cufflinks, and the last thing I do before I leave the house is spray Cheez Whiz all over myself.” [*Sports Night* still debuted with a laugh track](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/laugh-track-disappearing-television-streaming/678071/). 26. Comic Sans was originally designed for a program in which [an animated dog](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/comic-sans-debate/680319/) taught people how to use their first personal computer. 27. AI image generators have a penchant for rendering [hot people](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/ai-image-generation-hot-people/675750/). 28. The total employees of the government’s free tax-preparation software, Direct File, are [outnumbered by the lobbyists working for Intuit.](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/irs-direct-file/677818/) 29. Electric cars, with powerful acceleration and no fuel costs, might make the [best police vehicles](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/08/police-officers-are-falling-love-evs/679471/). 30. [Minivan](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/minivan-suv-family-car/679919/) sales in America have fallen about 80 percent from their all-time high in 2000. 31. One breadfruit tree [can feed](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/03/breadfruit-florida-america-climate-change/677906/) a family of four for at least 50 years. 32. Proteins can make pretty good [sugar substitutes](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/sugar-substitutes-brazzein-stevia-aspartame/678192/). 33. Sylvester Graham, the inventor of the graham cracker, thought his crackers would [curtail](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/rfk-wellness-history-debunking/680948/) masturbation. 34. In July, a cybersecurity company accidentally [introduced](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/crowdstrike-outage-y2k/679117/) a single software bug that canceled or delayed tens of thousands of flights and trains, halted surgeries, and blacked out television broadcasts around the world. 35. Americans [threw out](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/kitchenaid-stand-mixer-durability/677524/) four times as many small appliances in 2018 as they did in 1990. 36. Luddites actually [didn’t hate](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/new-luddites-ai-protest/677327/) technology. 37. When our writer ran his own dissertation through the plagiarism-detection software that was likely used to help bring down Harvard President Claudine Gay, it initially claimed that his work was [74 percent copied](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/plagiarism-war-claudine-gay/677020/). The correct number was zero. 38. Classical composers used [dice](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/generative-ai-music-suno-udio/679114/) to randomly compose songs. 39. [Male birth control](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/birth-control-male-contraception-revolution/677954/) could soon be as simple as rubbing a gel on the shoulders and upper arms daily. 40. Humans could find alien life by detecting [fluorescent corals](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/earth-corals-climate-change/679636/) on other planets. 41. In April, a red Tesla Model S became [the first electric car to travel 2 million kilometers](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/06/electric-car-battery-longevity-right-to-repair/678641/). The car could have traveled from the Earth to the moon and back, twice, then circled the equator 11 times. 42. Blocking the sun can lower how hot a person feels by [36 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/shade-heat-cities-trees-awnings/679335/). 43. Termites [bury](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/09/grieving-death-chimpanzees-thanatology/679750/) fellow colony members that have been dead for a while. Fresh corpses, they devour. 44. In the 20th century, each day on Earth [got longer](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/climate-change-slow-earth/679378/) by between 0.3 and 1.0 millisecond. That rate has been increasing since 2000, and could nearly double by 2100. 45. The winds of a Category 5 hurricane [are faster](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/02/category-6-hurricanes-saffir-simpson-scale/677354/) than the world’s fastest roller coaster. 46. In 1993, scientists dumped nearly [1,000 pounds of iron crystals](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/09/geoengineering-microbe-bacteria-climate/679961/) into the Pacific Ocean to draw carbon dioxide out of the air. 47. And in 2008, China used cloud seeding [to clear the skies](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/04/dubai-oman-flooding-cloud-seeding-geoengineering/678114/) over Beijing ahead of the Olympics. 48. In Goodyear, Arizona, a data center used for generative AI may guzzle as many as [56 million](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602/) gallons of drinking water each year. 49. [Forty-two percent of MIT students](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/computing-college-cs-majors/677792/) now major in computer science. 50. Air conditioners’ money-saver mode [is a lie](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/08/air-conditioning-eco-mode-money-saver/679413/). 51. By 2040, as few as [10 countries](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/08/summer-olympics-heat/679395/) will have enough snow to host the Winter Olympics. 52. [Dogs](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/10/service-dog-domestication-behavior/680240/) may be entering a new wave of domestication. 53. And the domestication they’ve already undergone may have led them to [bark more](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/dog-communication-ai-translation/680281/). 54. Elephants and parrots use [namelike calls](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/) that identify them as individuals. Whales and bats might too. 55. Sigmund Freud said he [put his patients on the couch](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/11/therapy-couch-lie-down-freud/680676/) because he could not deal “with being stared at by other people for eight hours a day.” 56. Our brains [release dopamine](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/vape-screen-teens-nicotine-addiction/680455/) in response to even the most rudimentary animations. 57. A model of a human embryo [made from stem cells](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/human-embryo-model-ethics/680189/) secreted hormones that turned a pregnancy test positive. 58. American men married to women are five times more likely to [fully adopt their wife’s surname](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/hyphenated-names-marriage-controversy/676976/) than to append it to their own with a hyphen. 59. Bedbugs’ mating rituals may have [supercharged](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/bed-bugs-disease/680804/) their immune system. 60. Lions on the East African savannas [struggled to hunt zebras](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/bigheaded-ant-lion-ecosystem-cascade/677241/) because of a single ant species. 61. Wanting is [different from](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/ozempic-glp1-desire-buddhism/680088/) liking. 62. A “Christian conservative” mobile-phone-service provider has been [operating in the U.S.](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/charlie-kirk-podcast-ads/678450/) for more than a decade. It pays T-Mobile for access to its cellular network. 63. Before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, his campaign team [maintained an account](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/joe-biden-truth-social-trump/679111/) on Donald Trump’s Truth Social site. They used it to try to goad the Trump campaign into selecting a more extreme vice-presidential candidate. 64. A slim majority of Republican voters now favor [legalizing recreational marijuana](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/florida-trump-recreational-marijuana/680077/). 65. The hottest new psychedelic [drugs](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/psychedelic-trip-high-hallucination-medicine/680314/) might not cause any trip at all. 66. Some scientists believe that [multicellular life](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/11/cambrian-explosion-tectonic-plates-mountains-evolution/680544/) may have arisen thanks to enormous mountain ranges. 67. BRCA [mutations](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/11/brca-breast-cancer-men-prostate-pancreas/680698/), famously linked to breast cancer, can also lead to cancer in the pancreas and prostate. 68. A dentist found a [hominin jawbone in a floor tile](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/04/hominin-jawbone-fossil-floor-tile-travertine/678153/) of his parents’ newly renovated house. 69. Chewing gum became a baseball standby in part because Philip Wrigley, the heir to the Wrigley Company, [gave it to players in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/baseball-player-chewing-mystery/680448/) after he took over ownership of the team in 1932. 70. Sociologists have conducted [several ethnographies](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/pickup-basketball-sociology/678677/) on long-running pickup-basketball games. 71. The 10,000-steps-a-day goal doesn’t originate from clinical science. Instead, it comes from a 1965 marketing [campaign](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/activity-trackers-calories-fitness/677320/) by a Japanese company that was selling pedometers. 72. As the world warms, some [dog mushers](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/01/winter-sports-extreme-climate-change-skiing-skating/677310/) are running their teams at night so the animals don’t overheat. 73. Extreme heat led schools to [move recess indoors](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/playgrounds-need-more-shade/679997/) for millions of students in August and September. 74. Higher amounts of naturally occurring lithium in tap water [are associated with](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/lithium-longevity-suicide-microdosing/680154/) lower suicide rates in some countries. 75. You can buy a [$99 quantum water bottle](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/quantum-woo-physics-wellness/680228/) “charged” with special healing frequencies. 76. Humans have [10 times](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/history-of-clothing-human-function-evolution/676990/) as many sweat glands as chimpanzees do. 77. If you want to tame all that sweat, you should put your antiperspirant on [at night](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/11/antiperspirant-deodorant-night/680710/). --- *This article has been updated to clarify that California grizzly bears are extinct.*