🗓 24 facts I learned in 2024

Jan 02, 2025

Happy New Year, folks! 2024 has been a wild ride, and along the way, I’ve picked up some unexpected facts, lessons, and a fair bit of trivia I didn’t know I needed. Here’s a roundup of what stuck with me.

A 2024 study has found that bigfoot sightings correlate with the presence of black bear populations. As black bear populations increase, sasquatch sightings are expected to rise.
Flights today are less often delayed than 30 years ago but spend more time taxiing and in the air. A JFK to LAX flight now takes 18 minutes longer but is 15% more likely to arrive early. While flight durations have grown, scheduled times have grown even more.
The number of active serial killers in the US dropped from nearly 300 in the 1970s to fewer than 50 by the 2010s. This decline is mainly due to advancements in forensic science, policing, and technology.
In 1980, factory foremen held a prized American job, managing assembly lines during the twilight of US manufacturing dominance. These supervisor roles, often requiring no college degree, paid more than computer programmers of the era.
From 2025, Royal Marines recruits will get financial literacy training. The eight-module course covers budgeting, borrowing, saving, and investing.
The number of pathogens that could trigger the next pandemic has grown to more than 30, including influenza A, dengue, and monkeypox, according to the World Health Organization.
LinkedIn is the greenest social media. A 2023 study showed it uses just 13.9 mAh/min—15% less energy than others. Meanwhile, TikTok tops the list for energy use at 22.4 mAh.
The annual production of plastics has increased from about 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 460 million tonnes in 2019. Current trends indicate this could triple by 2060.
A fifth of the world’s steel is being gobbled up by just one site: Saudi Arabia’s NEOM.
As China’s big cities get bigger, they also sink. Around 16% of them are going down by more than 10 millimetres each year, and almost half are sinking by more than 3 millimetres every year.
Stronger cyclones lead to a higher chance of missed or delayed payments, while heavy rainfall, particularly in flood-prone coastal areas, increases the risk of defaults and discourages early repayment.
Carrion crows have mastered a rare skill: cawing an exact number of times on command, from one to four. Trained with treats, they learned to associate digits or sounds with the correct number of calls.
A study of nearly 400,000 scientists found that one-third left the field within five years of publishing their first paper, and almost half quit within a decade. Women were about 12% more likely than men to leave science after five or ten years.
The study of 142 of the most influential cinematic works featuring AI revealed that a third of AI scientists are presented as “geniuses” on screen—with just one being a woman.
If the lawyer and the judge went to the same law school, the lawyer is 4.6 times more likely to win the case.
In Finland, there are 5.5 million people and three million saunas.
A 2007 study found that since 1947, English football teams wearing red shirts consistently performed better at home, achieving higher league positions and more points than teams in other colours.
People who pray for hurricane victims donate less toward their recovery. With the option of donating between $0 and $5, people who prayed gave $1 less on average.
If you sort emails into folders, you waste 67 hours per year.
Foreign embassies in London have accrued more than £143 million in unpaid congestion charge fines over the last two decades.
In 2016, researchers randomly allocated temporary streetlights to public housing developments in New York City. As a result, communities with more lighting saw reductions in nighttime crime by 36%.
Research shows parents tend to overestimate their sons’ math abilities more than their daughters’, suggesting that gender stereotypes at home may hinder the progress of female students.
Swearing helps people cope with pain. People who yell the “fuck” can bear a 33% increase in pain tolerance compared to people who yell similar-sounding non-swear words, like “fouch”.
A global study of 2.4 million people found that Internet use might improve well-being, such as life satisfaction and a sense of purpose. On average, Internet users scored 8% higher on life satisfaction.

2024 in science

The year has been packed with scientific breakthroughs that blew my mind (and occasionally made me question reality). Here’s my very meta list of lists, rounding up the most exciting discoveries and innovations of 2024.

Hypertextual in a glance

Finally, here’s a brief look at what I’ve been up to at Hypertextual:

That’s it for now—thanks for sticking with me through last year’s discoveries, oddities, and breakthroughs. I’m sure there will be even more in 2025!

Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere)

Illustration: Elia Kabanov feat. MidJourney.

Hypertextual

🗓 24 facts I learned in 2024

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