One of these facts is fake.
• Thousands of people are Accidental Americans, children or grandchildren of American citizens, or born in the U.S. but raised abroad. The United States and Eritrea are the only countries that require taxes of citizens regardless of residency. London mayor Boris Johnson, born in Manhattan, was unable to board a flight transiting the U.S. because he did not have an American passport, and he later had to pay U.S. capital gains taxes before finally renouncing his U.S. citizenship. U.S. Citizens Who Don’t Know It (PDF) explains some of the legal details and consequences.
• Concorde once flew to Maiquetía Airport in Caracas. Demonstration flight
• In the 1900's there was a series of races to determine if a man could outrun a horse over long distances. Ultrarunning History: Man vs. Horse
• TV pickup is the British term for a sudden spike in electrical demand, which threatens the stability of the power grid. The National Grid Energy Balancing Team prepares for anticipated breaks in football matches, when viewers use the loo (synchronized flushing causes a surge at pumping stations). The largest pickup, of 3000 MW, occurred when people returned from watching the 1999 total solar eclipse.
• Micrometeorites vary in size from microscopic to 2 mm, and fall constantly from the sky. The gold and platinum content in the micrometeorites that fall on a typical house roof in one year is worth about $70.
• Instant coffee is the most energy efficient. Drip filter coffee is the worst, with capsule preparation in the middle.
• Aluminium has a bad reputation for household wiring, mainly due to risks from improper installation, such as that which led to the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. "Utility companies have used aluminum wire for electrical transmission in power grids since around the late 1800s to the early 1900s. It has cost and weight advantages over copper wires. Aluminum wire in power transmission and distribution applications is still the preferred material today."
• Storskog is the only legal land border crossing between Norway and Russia. Norway prohibits passage by automobile drivers without proper papers. Russia prohibits walking across without documents. So in 2015, about five thousand Syrian refugees rode bicycles through, taking advantage of the legal loophole.
• The Dōjima Rice Exchange, first established in 1697, is considered the first futures exchange. Private Ordering at the World's First Futures Exchange (PDF)
Christopher McDougall's Born to Run claims that modern ultramarathon running came about from a horse orienteering race in California in the late '60s or early '70s that already had a fair amount of leading the horse. At some point someone decided they could do better without the horse. Within ten years no one was riding horses anymore. Wish I could remember the name of the race.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevis_Cup also called the Western States Trail Ride. That article doesn't mention it, but the history section of this article does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_States_Endurance_Run
Pretty sure it's the Western States Endurance Run.
Is the micrometeorites fact about the value of gold and platinum fake? I think it is and don't find that value in the link. Regarding power line conductors, we previously had lines with copper conductor and a hemp rope core. I think it dated from the war when there was a copper shortage. There was also a line with a bronze core and copper (I think) wound around it. I believe all of it has been replaced with aluminum conductor, steel reinforced cables. I'm not 100% certain there isn't still some out there, though. I'm certain there are still copper lower voltage lines. There's one near home.
Rope?! That's crazy. What about fire, rodents, rotting? I am always amazed when the state of the art in engineering is the least worst thing that works. When it's not a split washer. I made up the bit about gold and platinum. Then I had to fact-check it because you never know.
hmm. neal stephenson referenced what might be described as futures on tulips in the 1630s, but some amount of artistic license is assumed. i wasn't certain if clicking all the links contained spoilers, so i didn't. i guess i'll quibble with the tv pickup thing. america has its own system for handling uneven demand, i think, and maybe the super bowl...? i dunno.
The shitty thing about European History is most of what we know was written by the British, who , much like Heroditus, pulled entire wars out of his ass for the explicit purpose of making foreigners look bad. The Tulip bubble didn't really happen. Neither did The Spanish Inquisition (at least as something more noteworthy in Spain than in Italy, France, England or most of the rest of Europe).
Yes, spoilers in the links are intended to save me the trouble of arbitrating. I forgot about the tulips. The PDF is titled "Private Ordering at the World's First Futures Exchange" but maybe it should be qualified as the first semi-legally-recognized one. Regulatory developments at Dojima, especially before 1730, bear striking resemblance to those in early European and American markets. In the famous seventeenth-century Dutch tulip forwards market, trading persisted despite six government attempts to ban such trading. In England, the passage in 1734 of Sir John Barnard's Act, "[a]n act to prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobbing," effectively banned the trading of options. Yet despite fines for selling stock that one does not own, option transactions apparently continued. In New York, a 1792 law, the "watered-down equivalent of Barnard's Act," did not explicitly prohibit options transactions, but made options contracts void and thus unenforceable in court. In New York as in England, "time bargains went on as before, but were enforced privately, without the assistance of the legal system."Despite the shogunate's relative laxity, Dojima participants nevertheless acted in the long shadow of latent governmental regulation. Licensing requirements determined the players of the game. The monopoly on futures contracts granted to Dojima likely increased the force of internal sanctions. The threat of license confiscation may have created additional incentives for proper behavior. The Dojima experience thus leaves open the possibility that the development of efficient rules in self-organized markets may require something less than complete governmental withdrawal.