Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 31
Will make you shake your head back and forth slightly...
This is the first picture of a human. By Louis Daguerre, taken in Paris in 1838:
https://thehustle.co/news/why-toilet-paper-keeps-getting-smaller-and-smaller
The ? is the start of what's called "CGI data" (Common Gateway Interface), and it's a series of tokens that only apply to what you were doing on the web page, not what anyone else you're sharing the link with will want the page to do when they first visit it. This applies to any sites including the paywall removal websites that have popped up.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge stands as an engineering marvel and a testament to human ingenuity, seamlessly linking three major cities across the Pearl River Delta with an impressive 55-kilometer stretch of infrastructure. This huge bridge-tunnel system not only reduces travel time between Hong Kong, Zhuhai, and Macau from over three hours to just 30 minutes, but it also showcases groundbreaking advancements in design and construction. Its intricate blend of bridges, tunnels, and artificial islands demonstrates a profound mastery of engineering challenges, allowing for smooth and safe passage across deep waters and busy shipping lanes. By enhancing connectivity and fostering economic integration, the bridge epitomizes the spirit of progress and innovation, solidifying its status as one of the world's most remarkable transportation feats.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge took approximately 9 years to complete, with construction beginning in 2009 and the bridge opening to traffic in October 2018. The project involved around 12,000 workers at its peak. The construction process was highly complex and required extensive planning and coordination, including the creation of artificial islands and the use of advanced technology to address the challenges of building in a busy maritime environment.
Now you can play Squid Games in real life. Netflix is bringing an in-person Squid Game experience to New York City - Squid Game: The Experience opens this October. Netflix is also launching them in Asia and Europe in the fall.
James Dougherty was 21 years old when he married a teenage girl named Norma Jeane Baker, who would later become one of the most famous women in history, Marilyn Monroe. At the time, Norma Jeane was only 16 and was about to be sent back to an orphanage unless she got married quickly. Her foster mother arranged for her to marry Dougherty, and although their marriage started as a practical solution, they soon fell deeply in love.
Two years after they got married on June 19, 1942, Dougherty was sent to fight in World War II. While he was away, a photographer found Norma Jeane working in a factory, and that led to her transformation into Marilyn Monroe.
While Dougherty was on a ship near Shanghai, he received divorce papers. Marilyn Monroe wanted to sign a contract with a movie studio, 20th Century Fox, , and it stipulated that she couldn't be married, because the executives didn't want her to get pregnant. Their divorce was finalized in 1946, and Dougherty soon married another woman who didn't allow him to watch Marilyn's movies. Even though Marilyn married other famous men like Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, Dougherty was still very sad when she died in 1962. He later said, "She was too gentle to be an actress. She wasn't tough enough for Hollywood.”
Marshmallows are a 4,000-year-old treat that started in ancient Egypt. They were originally made from the sap of a mallow plant, which grows in marshes.
Former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain were good friends. After Grant's presidency, Twain knew he was struggling with health and money, so Twain offered him and his heirs 70% of all profits generated by subscriptions and sales of the memoir, plus a $25,000 advance (equivalent to $850,000 in 2023) paid from Twain's own pocket. Two years after publication this percentage would generate more than $450,000 (equivalent to $15,300,000 today) in royalties for Grant’s wife, Julia.
On the night of September 16, 1979, eight people from two families escaped from East Germany to West Germany using a homemade hot air balloon. They spent over a year and a half getting ready, building three different balloons and making changes along the way. Their first attempt to escape didn’t work, which made the East German police aware of what they were trying to do. However, the police couldn’t figure out who they were before the families tried again two months later and succeeded.
Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana’s partner who also tragically died in the car crash with her, was a cousin of the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Both Dodi and Jamal were nephews of the Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, both members of the Allman Brothers Band, died in separate motorcycle crashes just one year apart. They were both 24 years old, both crashes happened in Macon, Georgia, and each incident occurred only three blocks from the other.
Most of the time, people believe sentences that rhyme.
Bristol, Tennessee is closer to Canada (352 miles) than it is to Memphis (601 miles), as the crow flies.
Why are there no baby crows? Have you seen one? Of course there are, but they are close to the same size as adult crows. So we can’t really tell the difference. And their nests are usually high up a tree, so we wouldn’t see the brand new ones.
The perfect segues throughout these fact snippets are totally intentional.
In 2009 U.S. inventor Dean Kamen sold his two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter device company - the Segway - to one of Britain’s leading philanthropists, Jim Heselden. Less than a year later the new owner died after riding one of the scooters off a cliff and into a river near his Yorkshire estate. Dean Kamen holds over 1,000 patents, and is still alive and well at 73 years old. Ninebot Inc., a Beijing-based transportation robotics startup bought the company in 2015 from Heselden’s estate. In 2020 production of the Segway ended.
Hotdogs were originally called dachshund sausages because they resembled weiner dogs.
About half of Americans expect an inheritance one day. Of those Americans who expected to receive an inheritance in the future, 51% projected it to be less than $100,000. However, 33% reported anticipating between $100,000 and $499,999. This is generally referred to as the Great Wealth Transfer.
With a market value of $570 billion, the Ozempic maker, Novo Nordisk has surpassed its home country, Denmark’s, annual GDP.
Some people believe that the white streaks airplanes leave in the sky, called contrails, are actually something more sinister. Contrails happen when water vapor in the air condenses around particles from the plane’s exhaust, forming ice particles. This has been happening since jet engines were first used, and it’s a normal part of aviation.
However, some conspiracy theories suggest these streaks are “chemtrails,” chemicals sprayed by the government to change the weather or even as part of a secret biological attack. A poll showed that about 17% of Americans believed this theory might be true. Even celebrities like Joe Rogan, Roseanne Barr, Kylie Jenner, Hayden Panettiere, Billy Corgan, and Prince have talked about it.
Well, a group of scientists from the University of California, Irvine, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Near Zero organization decided to ask 77 experts who study the atmosphere about chemtrails. They wanted to know if these scientists had found any evidence of a large-scale program to spray chemicals into the sky. Out of the 77 experts, 76 of them (98.7 percent) said they had found no evidence of such spraying. This shows that scientists agree that chemtrails are not real.
Update: The premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith talks about this, and seems to believe in chemtrails:
The term “B.O.” (body odor) was invented by an Advertising Agency to sell Lifebuoy deodorant.
71% of images shared on social media were AI-generated. In Canada, it's 77%
Old photos of basketball games and boxing matches often have a pleasing hazy blue background that modern photos lack. “The blue haze that adds such a wonderful ambience to the arena is caused by cigarette smoke.”
Jesse Dodge, a senior researcher at the Allen Institute for A.I., a Seattle nonprofit, has worked extensively on the subject of “How much electricity does AI use?” He and his colleagues estimated the kilowatt-hours consumed by advanced Nvidia hardware on a simple search, and he summarized it this way: “We estimate that one query to ChatGPT could use as much electricity as could light one lightbulb for about 20 minutes.”
The first underwater cemetery.
The Neptune Cremation Society first established the site about 3.25 miles off Miami Beach in 2007. Expanding the artificial reef has been an ongoing process, and once construction is complete, it will be large enough to hold the remains of 250,000 people across 16 acres.
Twitter suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk's private jet, in Dec/22, despite a pledge by the social media platform's owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles. Jack Sweeney started the account in 2020, when he was just a teen.
Elon said “it’s not really doxxing if you just googled it.” Well I just googled Elon’s jet, and we can still see where he is on Facebag:
https://www.facebook.com/ElonJet/ (Tracking Elon Musk's Private Jet - (N628TS) with a bot using public ADS-B data)
Chuck Norris can win Wordle using just one letter.
Thanks for reading!
…humans trying to play squid game sums up our state of the world pretty well…
Interesting information