OFF-TOPIC: Things I learned

A while ago, my wife and I started a project to record things that we had learned. It started with the thought that it is a sad day when you fail to learn anything new. But it is easy to forget this new knowledge. I would like to share a few recent examples:

• Police call a vehicle’s registration its “index”
• An astronaut has to learn survival skills as an emergency landing could put them down anywhere and they might need to wait 3 days for rescue
• For >150 years, up to 1751, dates were different in Britain and other European countries
• Buckingham Palace is 15X the size of the White House
• Joe Biden’s wife is Jill. His previous wife was killed in a road accident
• A pattern-maker’s measure is not standard units; everything is a bit bigger to allow for shrinkage of a cast item
• Eels have no gender
• Hinton-in-the-Hedges is an actual place
• You are 12X more likely to die in a car journey than by rail
• On iPhone/iPad, 3-finger left swipe is undo

There may be more …