Here children are killed at public expense.
January 4, 2016 11:03 AM   Subscribe

The Best Facts I Learned from Reading books in 2015. "Last year, I learned a piece of information so startling that I spent months repeating it to anyone who would listen."
posted by blue_beetle (48 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
So long, 2015, and thanks for all the trivia.
posted by maryr at 11:14 AM on January 4, 2016


Oh yes, you should definitely read Hrdy's Mother Nature (referenced in the OP headline) that is some good stuff.
posted by emjaybee at 11:16 AM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Man, I know it's just presented as ~~wacky trivia~~, but this left me feeling really sad about all those moms who didn't have the option to end their pregnancy if they didn't want a baby, and didn't have the viable option to keep their baby if they did want one-- as well as the infants left to die.
posted by threeants at 11:17 AM on January 4, 2016 [13 favorites]


oops, just realized I mis-spoke in calling pregnant women "moms"-- although I bet many if not most of them also did happen to be mothers already, given the time and place.
posted by threeants at 11:23 AM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Facts from my recent reading on Official Mistresses- Frederick the 3rd, Elector of Brandenburg kept a royal mistress (cause everyone did) but was utterly faithful to his wife the Queen so he just hired a woman to set the tone of fashion and entertainment at Court with the title Official Mistress.

When August Of Saxony annexed parts of Poland he was advised to keep an official mistress in Saxony and Poland to prevent resentment

The mistress of king Henri II signed bills into law with him, using a mashed up signature: HenriDiane. You know, like fandom ship name.

ALso, Good royal mistress side income: selling royal pardons to wealthy criminals.

From reading that huge Cary Grant bio

-The missing years off his early career where probobly spent as a paid escort in NYC

-He was totally spying on his first wife, who may or may not have been a Nazi spy. (Her ex husband was trapped in Nazi occupied lands, so she might have been forced into it)
posted by The Whelk at 11:29 AM on January 4, 2016 [17 favorites]


I was pretty amazed when I learned Burr's grandfather was Jonathon Edwards. I bet Edwards could have powered turbines spinning in his grave over Burr's exploits.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:41 AM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Bill Bryson's sequel to Notes from a Small Island, The Road to Little Dribbling, has all kinds of neat historical British esoterica. I'd give you one but the book is at home and I am at work. I was quite disappointed to see some transphobia in that book, though, I tell you what.
posted by Kitteh at 11:45 AM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Kitteh, I would also be careful with Bryson, because I've read things later that contradicted some of the facts in his earlier works. A Short History of Nearly Everything in particular had some inaccurate science history bits.

And yeah, he's kind of old-school Straight White Guy when it comes to his humor. It can get cringe-y.
posted by emjaybee at 11:52 AM on January 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


I am always on a quest to find Newark-to-LAX-without-ever-looking-up levels of entertainment. --so thanks very much for this!
posted by pjsky at 12:00 PM on January 4, 2016


To add to a couple of these:

1: Its disputed but its has been suggested that the name of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang apparently comes from soldiers needing a chitty so they could go to the local brothel for 'bang bang'.

8: One of London's pea soupers (a particulate smog) was responsible for the premature deaths of over 4000 people in one week alone in December 1952.
posted by biffa at 12:14 PM on January 4, 2016


From reading that huge Cary Grant bio

There's a huge Cary Grant bio? Thank you Whelk!
posted by JanetLand at 12:15 PM on January 4, 2016


I wanted a little more info on why those dinos died in two minutes, so here's what I found:

According to a version of the extinction event published in Elizabeth Kolbert’s eye-opening new book, “The Sixth Extinction,” Chicxulub hit Earth from the southeast, which means North American theropods were among the first to be wiped out. “A vast cloud of searing vapor and debris raced over the continent,” Kolbert writes, “expanding as it moved and incinerating anything in its path. ‘Basically, if you were a triceratops in Alberta, you had about two minutes before you got vaporized’ is how one geologist put it to me.”

via a pretty interesting article from Collector's Weekly
posted by Huck500 at 12:19 PM on January 4, 2016 [5 favorites]


After shooting Lincoln, Booth ran from a theatre to a warehouse; after shooting Kennedy, Oswald ran from a warehouse to a theatre.
posted by NedKoppel at 12:34 PM on January 4, 2016


I love that not only was the word “poltergeist” coined by Martin Luther, but that it was a word describing (as he saw it) a scam to get mourners to buy more masses for their dead. So, not just ghosts, but fake ghosts.
posted by straight at 1:38 PM on January 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


Okay, it is 5655 km from Yucatan to the Canadian border. For the reaction from the meteor to get to canada in two minutes that would be approximately 180,000 km per hour. And how would it kill the dinosaurs instantaneously?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:47 PM on January 4, 2016


Janetland here Marc Eliot's big ol' book.
posted by The Whelk at 1:52 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Simon Schama had a good turn of phrase when talking about Captain Coram, the man who finally got a foundling hospital set up in London. From memory:

"Sooner or later someone was going to get tired of having to step over dying babies in the gutter every time they got out of their carriage..."
posted by Segundus at 2:25 PM on January 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


I learned the substance of the Tennessee/Alabama thing reading Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy (actually volume 1 of the trilogy since I was unable to complete it with the complexity of the battlefield placements giving me headaches). I did not know it had an actual name, though.
posted by hwestiii at 2:38 PM on January 4, 2016


dances_with_sneetches: First of all, the distance between the Yucatan and Canada was smaller (the Gulf of Mexico wasn't nearly as large as it is now, and land masses extruding into the Gulf weren't as large either - some of the required erosional events to deposit massive sediments that form the coastlines of the Gulf states hadn't occurred yet). So it's difficult to come up with an accurate km per hour estimate.

Second of all, it doesn't really matter. A huge cloud of dust, debris from the bolide and the earth's crust, and steam was ejected into not just the atmosphere but space, much of it returning and re-entering the atmosphere globally Re-entry into the earth's atmosphere of the ejecta fragments would have caused an brief pulse of radiation as well as essentially roasting the surface due to the heat involved. The earth's atmosphere was much richer in oxygen - 30-35% IIRC - making combustion much easier; the impact, with much evidence, is theorized to have caused instantaneous global firestorms. So, what could have vaporized a dino in Alberta wouldn't necessarily had to travel directly over land. What did travel over land were shock waves powerful enough they're thought to have caused earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, massive landslides, and collapses of continental shelves (which you can find evidence of in your locality).

If you doubt the speed of which this happened, the impact laid down a layer of clay rich with an element called iridium from the bolide all over the world, the thickest parts of it near the impact but spread outward - including Alberta, where you can put your finger on it.

Though a tad outdated, the book Catastrophic Events and Mass Extinctions has a few papers in it directly related to the evidence at the K-Pg boundary if you'd like to read more.
posted by barchan at 2:41 PM on January 4, 2016 [9 favorites]


Still don't buy the two minutes. Reentry from space? That takes time. Instantaneous fire storms? They have to be ignited somewhere and spread. Shock waves either were communicated through earth, water or air. None of these suggest instantaneousness. Finally looking at a map for 65 million bc Yucatan doesn't look much closer to canada.

I don't doubt the things you say happened, just make the timeline more realistic.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:47 PM on January 4, 2016


The thermal radiation from a nuclear blast travels at the speed of light. Given that the impact of a massive extinction-event asteroid is many times that force, there'd logically be a hell of a lot more shock wave and thermal blast--the latter of which, I think, causes significant physical damage on its own (vaporizing bodies of water, e.g.) which adds to the damage.

Frankly, I like the sound of two minutes. If we get slapped by another big chunk, there likely won't even be time to worry about it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:05 PM on January 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


To add on to FFM's comment, the mass ejected from the Yucatan is projected to have gone into the atmosphere in less than a few seconds, which was done using the calculated weight and speed of the bolide itself, and there's plenty of physical evidence for that, including the gravity anomalies it left behind. Those calcs and the other projected speeds are in the book I provided for you, as well as peer-reviewed, scientific papers like this and this, which you are welcome to read and judge for yourself.
posted by barchan at 4:33 PM on January 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


as well as peer-reviewed, scientific papers like this and this,

Both papers discuss ejecta traveling at speeds of <11 km/s, since (as they note) material traveling faster than that would become unbound from the Earth and would not return. ~Ten minutes to get to Canada.

(Maybe that doesn't sound like a big difference, but these are quantities we can calculate pretty straightforwardly so might as well be accurate. Just cause it's a big explosion doesn't mean it goes arbitrarily fast.)
posted by kiltedtaco at 4:47 PM on January 4, 2016


Well, hell, I didn't realize I was related to Aaron Burr -- Jonathan Edwards is my many times great-uncle.
posted by tavella at 4:57 PM on January 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's calculated that at least 12% did go fast enough to reach escape velocity. There's some disagreement about the thermal pulse model in that paper, but it provides some good data for ejecta amounts reaching where when. Including Canada, though I can't remember if it's paleodistance or not.

But it's not just ejecta. There are also the speed and heat of the thermal radiation to consider. There's a lot of models out there for dispersal of injecta including ballistic ones, as well as thermal calculations. This Geology article provides a great summation with links to many of the important papers of the last 20 years regarding this issue better than I can (and the firestorm controversy is indeed controversial; that 2009 summary is quite out of date.)

I fully admit I'm in the fast kill camp for certain regions because of the data my own work has produced. I would be happy to discuss that over MeMail and not derail the thread further from any other fun facts.
posted by barchan at 5:37 PM on January 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


NOT a derail! Fascinating stuff!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 5:56 PM on January 4, 2016 [9 favorites]


Every fact you've added to the thread has been a fun fact!
posted by straight at 5:58 PM on January 4, 2016


It was a comet, dances with sneeches. They travel about 70km/s through space, or 252,000 kph. The atmosphere might slow it down some. But not much.
posted by Diablevert at 5:59 PM on January 4, 2016


I'm curious about one thing about the world-wide firestorm/entire surface baked theory... if that happened, why were the birds the dinosaurs that survived? The strength of birds is being smalll and mobile, which is good for survival in a environment where food is scarce, but feathers are not the friend of fire. You'd expect burrowing dinosaurs to be the survivors if anything. Same for the various mammals, there isn't the exclusively burrowers (or water livers) that you would expect. Small survived, omnivorous survived, detritus and carrion-eaters survived, exactly what you would expect from a period of photosynthesis shutdown... but if there was truly a worldwide, unsurvivable at the surface firestorm/microwave baking, it doesn't seem well readable from the pattern of who survived.

Obviously there were firestorms across most of the Americas, just from the immediate effects, but the current claim seems to be that even the other side of the planet was raised to hundreds or thousands of degrees from heat radiation alone.
posted by tavella at 6:03 PM on January 4, 2016


I'm about 75% thru Mary Beard's SPQR, and have been reminded many times that the standard Roman practice for unwanted Roman infants was to leave them on the neighborhood rubbish heap. Children that suffered from birth defects were the most likely candidates for this procedure, which was termed 'exposure' by more-recent chroniclers of the Roman scene. Those infants that survived often did so because they were harvested as a free slave.

Humanity! The sacred eternal bonds of motherhood, surely not a social construction!
posted by mwhybark at 6:28 PM on January 4, 2016 [9 favorites]


Just to say thank you for indulging my doubts. Not trolling, just skepticism in all things.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:31 PM on January 4, 2016


Okay but no one has mentioned the wrinkles here yet

that is the best one on the list by far
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:32 AM on January 5, 2016


I'm disappointed to learn that Ester Nordström's books haven't been translated into English. Here's her first book (in Swedish) on Project Gutenberg, if anyone's interested.
posted by orrnyereg at 12:43 AM on January 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


As an addendum to the fact that Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for the film (which features a sweet factory) so I assume that is where he got the idea for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
posted by Major Tom at 1:50 AM on January 5, 2016


The smog in London trivia is really something. Smog indoors?

From all I hear, smog in Beijing and elsewhere in China is really bad, but probably not that bad.
It also puts the situation in China a bit in perspective.
That is, environmental pollution is not necessarily a one-way street and air pollution can get better if the proper measures are implemented.

So basically, all the Chinese have to do is dismantle all manufacturing industries and just go into finance, like London.
posted by sour cream at 2:15 AM on January 5, 2016


Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 64, and did the screenplay for Chitty in 68, so probably not.

My favourite Roald Dahl tidbit is that he also wrote the screenplay for the Bond film You Only Live Twice. The news (to me) that he wrote Chitty explains a bit; both being, as they were, Ian Fleming stories.
posted by trif at 2:16 AM on January 5, 2016


Some birds live in burrows - it doesn’t seem wildly implausible that the birds that survived the extinction boundary were from burrowing species.
posted by pharm at 2:43 AM on January 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


The smog in London trivia is really something. Smog indoors?

From all I hear, smog in Beijing and elsewhere in China is really bad, but probably not that bad.


Oh yes it is. It is indeed.
Reception classes stay indoors when the air quality index (AQI) hits 180 – measured on an official scale of 500 by various sensors across the city. For primary kids the limit is 200, while the eldest students are allowed to brave the elements up to 250. Anything above 300 and school trips are called off. The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, recommends a safe exposure level of 25.
PM2.5 is the most widespread measure. Right now the AQI is 187 in Beijing. I've seen it hit 400-500 in the past couple of weeks. (Full disclosure: an old French friend of mine is one of the creators & developers of that last linked site/app. He lives in Beijing.)
posted by fraula at 5:10 AM on January 5, 2016


My favorite Roald Dahl tidbit is that he and Flemming where part of a team sent to DC to convince the upper classes of Washington to join WW2 .... By attending parties, being charming, and screwing senator's wives (Wow James Bond makes way more sense now!)

Also Dhal only turned to writing after his gig of being a kept man dried up and his patron (who basically employed him as an art buyer and butler) died and he was always bitter he never got to be a fighter pilot cause he always wanted to be a manly dashing fighter pilot but instead had to endure this horrible lap of luxury boo hoo.
posted by The Whelk at 7:15 AM on January 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Dahl absolutely did get to be a fighter pilot-- he flew numerous combat missions, crash-landed at least once, and only switched to his new role as honeytrap after blackout-inducing headaches prevented him from continuing to fly planes. Just for the record.

(someday, someone will write me the Yuletide fanfic where Dahl forms an improbably tall WWII espionage squad with Julia Child and Christopher Lee. someday.)
posted by nonasuch at 10:45 AM on January 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


My favorite Roald Dahl tidbit is that he and Flemming where part of a team sent to DC to convince the upper classes of Washington to join WW2

Mine is that he also wrote a ton of erotica [SFW], which I stumbled across (very prominently displayed in a bookstore) when studying abroad in Germany during high school. Looking back, it really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.
posted by psoas at 12:33 PM on January 5, 2016


I stand corrected and now I totally want to write your impossibly tall spies fic
posted by The Whelk at 12:47 PM on January 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


For the reaction from the meteor to get to canada in two minutes that would be approximately 180,000 km per hour. And how would it kill the dinosaurs instantaneously?

just a wild guess here, but i'd say anything that travels 180,000 km per hour, even just air, is going to kill a dinosaur instantaneously

there are asteroid impact calculators online

i plugged some similar numbers into this and i think you have a point - there would be no thermal radiation as it would be below the horizon in alberta

it would be felt as a moderate earthquake there - the ejecta would be a thin layer of dust and the air "blast" would be 18.9 an hour

this would all take longer than 2 mintues and none of it would kill a mouse, much less a dinosaur

of course, if all the oxygen in the atmosphere caught on fire, i guess that might be a different story

but play with the numbers and see what you come up with
posted by pyramid termite at 12:57 PM on January 5, 2016


i missed that they have a page on that site with numbers for the chicxulub impact - it's a bit worse, but not something that's going to kill off a dinosaur right away
posted by pyramid termite at 1:05 PM on January 5, 2016


Well, the worldwide thermal radiation pulse is supposed to have happened from debris reentering the atmosphere, so over the horizon. But as I said above, I'm not convinced that the record of what survives really coordinates well with that theory. I suspect there may be aspects we are misjudging.
posted by tavella at 1:11 PM on January 5, 2016


Flight Lt. Lee and I made a night visit to Paris that Christmas to rendezvous with "La Beurette," a tall drink of midatlantic Amazon who deftly folded intelligence work into her advanced skills as a cuisinière. The three of us stood out like a music hall act on stilts as we roamed the boulevards, charged with locating and bringing a specific fromage Français back to Blighty in time for the PM's Christmas Eve cheese course, or so we'd been given to understand.

That cigar-chomping bulldog of a man didn't interface with us directly, of course - instead we were under the supervision of an impossibly dapper fellow with evident ties to the Oxford community we were strictly directed to address as Q.

posted by mwhybark at 2:26 PM on January 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


yessssss it's happening

[note: Julia is the brains of the operation, Roald is the charm, and Christopher Lee keeps forgetting to leave one man alive to question]
posted by nonasuch at 7:58 PM on January 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


9. For seven hundred years, the lingua franca of the Silk Road was a now-defunct language called Sogdian... Its nearest surviving relative is Yaghnobi, spoken by some twelve thousand people in the Pamir Mountains, of Central Asia.

SOGDIANS: Tajiki song in Yaghnobi dialect by Yaghnobi singer
posted by homunculus at 7:55 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


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