🔍 11 things I learned last week (Issue 002)
Hey, folks! Every week, I share a handful of curious facts—no theme, no order, just random things worth knowing.
Here’s today’s selection:
Denmark’s state-run postal service will end all letter deliveries by the end of 2025.
The British public rates UK universities higher than the legal system or the BBC, ranking them just behind the NHS, armed forces, and royal family among the country’s top institutions.
People who don’t drink coffee and sit for six hours or more daily have a 1.6 times higher risk of dying than coffee drinkers who sit less.
Woolly mammoths were stranded on Wrangel Island 10,000 years ago and survived for over 200 generations before going extinct 4,000 years ago.
Married men are 3.2 times more likely to be obese than unmarried men, while marriage does not affect women’s obesity risk. It also increases the chances of being overweight by 62 per cent in men and 39 per cent in women.
By 1944, 25,000 women in the UK worked in construction, filling wartime labour gaps. Thames riverboat pilots still call Waterloo Bridge “the Ladies’ Bridge,” as up to 65 per cent of its builders were women. Yet, wartime censorship and lost records erased their role from history. Only in 2005 did researchers find rare photos of women working on the bridge, proving their contribution.
Bees bite flowers to vibrate them and release more pollen.
Drones will be tested on Mount Everest next month to carry 16 kg loads, retrieve ladders, and remove waste left by climbers.
A 2024 study found that Carrie Bradshaw likely couldn’t afford her Upper East Side apartment, now renting for $5,700 or selling for $2.77 million. The same goes for Monica Geller, whose West Village flat would cost $7,500 in rent or $2.65 million to buy.
DVLA, the UK agency managing driving licences and vehicle records, shuts down online services overnight due to outdated systems from the 1980s. An unfinished upgrade copied old limitations, and a full overhaul is still dragging on a decade later.
Attempts to develop chocolate made from seaweed have been scrapped because it tasted awful.
What I’ve been reading
Learning a new language? Your mindset matters more than ‘having a knack’: “If you are having a hard time learning a certain aspect of the language, try using a different learning strategy, finding resources that can help you, or simply giving yourself more time to practice.”
The YouTube videos that changed the way we think about ourselves: “YouTube videos have occupied a massive share of our collective consciousness, dictating what brings us together, what drives us apart, what makes us laugh, cry and cringe.”
We live like royalty and don’t know it: “No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.”
That’s it for today! Thanks for reading, and if you like my newsletter, please share it with a friend or ten.
Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere)
Illustration: Elia Kabanov feat. MidJourney.