Nineteen (or so) things I learned in 2023

Posted: December 30, 2023 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: America Since 1945 |Leave a comment

I admire Tom Whitwell’s annual list of 52 things he learned in the year. Maybe most of what I learned this year were more emotional truths? I could only come up with twenty. You might know all these things, many of them have been known for some time, they’re just items that came across my transom and stuck with me this year.

• one of many factors that hurt the Confederacy was their railroads had different gauges. It was President Abraham Lincoln who set the standard US railroad gauge (4 ft 8 1/2 in) when he made that standard for the Transcontinental Railroad. (do we buy the just-so story about Roman chariots?)

• during the decade ending in 2021 the US Treasury took in $32.3 trillion in taxes and spent $43.9 trillion

• the so-called Russian-Urkanian hypothesis argues that fossil fuels like oil and natural gas aren’t generated from decaying organic matter, but from non-biological geology events

• the USA detonated 35 nuclear weapons on itself between 1957 and 1977 to see if that would be a good way to drill for oil, construct canals, and do other peacetime projects

• Louis B. Mayer used to don diving equipment to collect scrap metal in Boston Harbor

• in 1000 AD, sugar was unknown in the UK. By 1900 it was supplying one fifth of the calories in the English diet.

• you’re probably eating wood pulp.

• the average Australian spends US $871 on horse racing a year. (Can this be true? My source is Harness Racing Update. It’s possible ADW computer teams are churning in ways that skew the figures. )

(that’s not a fact, just a memorable kind of statement I found on Brian Wilson’s Wikipedia page.)

• Between 1640 and 1652, Ireland lost between 15% and 20% of her population due to war and war-related starvation. (Source.)

• Los Angeles is home to more Native Americans and Alaskan Natives than any other county in the USA. (Source.)

• Kenneth Adams 1934 murals for the University of New Mexico library are now covered because some find them offensive.

• the price paid to a winkte among the Sioux for naming a child was a horse.

source.

• Dopaminergic medications for Parkinson’s disease have been associated with extreme risk taking, and pathological gambling.

• This is what Dick Cheney and his team thought they’d be working on when they went into work on 9/11/2001:

• In 2022 the murder rate in New Orleans was about 7x what it was in Los Angeles. (Source. The murder rate in New Orleans is off the charts. There were 280 murders in New Orleans in 2022, that’s more than in all of Germany.)

• after hearing Fleetwood Mac at the Democratic convention, James Baker warned George H. W. Bush, “they’re playing music we don’t know.“

• Abraham Lincoln frequently compared his situation as president to the tightrope walker Blondin crossing Niagara Falls.

• Actor James Marsden’s dad used to be head of food safety at Chipotle.

• JFK’s high school math teacher invented the point spread.

see you next year!

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