Remember Covid?
During covid lockdown – when my engineering teammates were confined to their homes, just trying to deal with long stretches of boredom and depression – the preambulatory chitchat of agile standups took on greater importance. So I took it upon myself to always have a few well-researched items of miscellany in my back pocket – which I’d introduce as one useless fact
.
Some of these facts were more like tiny stories; others were spectacularly weird statistics or probabilities of unlikely events. But the point wasn’t to educate my teammates; it was to show them that I cared about their state of mind; that I wanted our time together to be enjoyable. It was a small gesture, but one that I carried out with at least as much good intent as all those people stupidly clapping and whistling out of New York City apartment windows at 7pm for healthcare workers.
And…?
Vaccines were developed. And then I left my job. But useless facts (like these) are pretty interesting.👇🏽
View / Subscribe To Useless Facts
Here’s the URL to use for your own rss reader:
https://www.ben-willenbring.com/one-useless-fact?format=rss
Examples of Useless Facts
Below is the first roundup of useless facts.
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic swimmer in history, also sunk the longest TELEVISED putt in history – a 159 footer at the Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, 2012.
Invented and patented in 1925 by New Yorker Charles Brannock, the design underwent a single improvement in 1927, but has otherwise remained unchanged in 94 f***ing years! If only this guy made iphone charging cords?#!! 😡
Feces is brought back to earth. The astronauts who landed on the moon left A LOT behind – including 96 bags of urine, feces, and vomit.
The next 4 most common codes are: 1111, 0000, 1212, and 7777. Read about this security dumpster fire here.
A camera, developed at MIT in 2011, can record 1 trillion exposures per second, and is capable of capturing photons is “slow motion”.
It was simply called gymnastics, and appeared in the games from 1896 all the way up to 1932, at which point, it was discontinued. The sport is experiencing a strong resurgence in France.
In 1917 (age 18), he was measured at 4 ft .25 inches. By 1932 (age 33) he was 7 ft 2 inches. At the time of his death (age 51) he was 7 ft 8 inches.
“Auditory Contagious Yawning Is Highest Between Friends and Family Members.” Boom. Case closed.
The single genetic mutation that causes blond hair in European populations occurred about eleven thousand years ago. Before this, there were no blond Europeans.
I promised my former coworkers useless facts, and by God, that is what they’ll get: extremely useless information that happens to be true – proofed by yours truly. Stay tuned. Or don’t! 🤣
Primary Sources of Useless Facts
I love reading, so once in a while, an epically useless fact crops up in a real live book (eg: economics, philosophy, psychology, history, or a topic related to computers). And when that happens, I AM ON IT! Mostly though, my facts are extracted from the sources below:
Don Voorhees’ wonderful series: The <insert adjective here> Book of Useless Information
Content from Harper’s Index, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and the New Yorker
Government sources like: US Census bureau, Social Security Actuarial tables, Police blotter reports, and CIA’s World Fact Book
Stuff my wife tells me (news from within a major New York City trauma center)