12 Trivia Tidbits for Monday, June 17, 2024
Space elevators, sunken ships and an ominous portent in a national park.
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Metallica, Consummate Artists, Are Going to Perform in ‘Fortnite’
Following in the footsteps of venerated artists Travis Scott, Eminem and Marshmello, Metallica will be playing six concerts inside of Fortnite at the end of June.
Jesus Was a Kid, Once
A 1,600-year-old manuscript was recently translated, and is thought to be the most comprehensive account of Jesus’ childhood before he became the world’s most famous carpenter. One story tells of young Jesus bringing clay birds to life. That’s my Jesus!
Ernest Shackleton’s Century-Old Shipwreck
Ernest Shackleton was a renowned explorer who was the first person to reach the South Pole, and led a few more absolutely disastrous expeditions to the poles before and after that. Shackleton died of a heart attack aboard the Quest while failing to map out Antarctica in 1922, and the mission was called off, marking the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The Quest was lost for over a century, but was just found in Canada’s Labrador Sea.
A Long-Lost Airplane Was Also Just Found
The remains of what’s believed to be a corporate jet that disappeared on a snowy night in 1971, while headed from Vermont to Rhode Island, was just discovered in Lake Champlain.
The Guy in the NBA Logo Died
Jerry West, Hall of Famer, 14-time All-Star and the model for the silhouette in the NBA logo, recently passed away at age 86.
A High School Bio Teacher Made It to the U.S. Open
Twenty-nine-year-old Colorado teacher Colin Prater became one of 73 qualifiers (out of 9,522 hopefuls) to make it to this year’s golf competition in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
The Mayans Loved to Sacrifice Twins
A new DNA study of children found at a sacrificial altar in Chichén Itzá concluded that the bodies were all males, and they were very often twins or other close relatives.
An Adorable Albino Buffalo in Yellowstone Is an Ominous Sign for the Lakota Tribe
An old Lakota prophecy tells of a woman who appeared to a tribal member during a famine 2,000 years ago, and promised, “When the times are hard again, I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves.”
Guess what someone just spotted in Yellowstone National Park.
We’re Beginning to Loosen Oil’s Stranglehold on Global Energy
The International Energy Agency believes that global oil demand will be lower than supply, for the first time, by 2030. And breakthroughs in renewable energy tech could shorten that timespan even further.
Staring at Water Might Save Your Life
University of California, Davis researchers found that just looking at a body of water can lower your blood pressure and heart rate.
Erwin Schrödinger Got an Assist From a Sci-Fi Writer
Schrödinger’s Cat may be the most well-known scientific thought experiment of all-time, but it didn’t just naturally make the leap to the non-physics world. Sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a short story called “Schrödinger’s Cat” that rocketed the concept into the zeitgeist.
Space Tower 2050
Japan’s Obayashi Corporation has plans to build a space elevator and an attached tower-like structure by 2050, at a cost of $100 billion. They’ve already built the world’s largest tower, the Tokyo Skytree, so they’re like... almost there.
