Things We Learned in 2016
The Today I Learned subreddit — a forum within the website Reddit — is a quirky destination that highlights random and sometimes surprising facts. In that spirit, reporters and editors from The New York Times compiled a list of some of the most interesting things they learned from Times stories this year.
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1. The world’s most-used natural resource (apart from water and air) is sand — and it’s disappearing.
2. Farc rebels in Colombia were not allowed to marry because they were married to the revolution.
3. One minute of all-out exercise may provide the benefits of 45 minutes of moderate exertion.
4. A new building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side pipes a fragrance called Ocean Mist through its ductwork to make the lobby smell like a beach.
5. $8,600. That’s how much more annually travel rewards credit cardholders would have to spend on travel to earn more than they could with a cash-back card.
6. The inmate known as “Prison Houdini” was originally sentenced to four years behind bars. He has earned more than 30 additional years of incarceration because of seven successful escapes (and six failed ones).
7. It’s possible to live in a 40-square-foot crawl space in Williamsburg. The monthly rent is $450.
8. In 1838, Georgetown University sold 272 slaves — for a sum of about $3.3 million, adjusted for inflation — to help fund the struggling college.
9. Deep in our solar system’s outer reaches, there could be a hidden planet. If it’s there, it could explain why our solar system is tilted.
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10. Thirteen of the 14 contestants in Season 8 of “The Biggest Loser” have regained weight in the six years since the competition, and four are heavier now than before the contest. The results show why the body fights back hard against major weight loss.
11. About 70 percent of Americans think granola bars are healthy. Less than 30 percent of nutritionists agree.
12. People in small counties are 50 percent more likely to go to prison than people in populous counties. (That’s new in the last 10 years.)
13. Forty percent of Manhattan’s buildings could not be built today.
14. Urban environments can speed up the process of evolution.
15. Plants can “learn” long-lasting behaviors, sort of like memories.
16. A team’s success (at work) isn’t driven by the IQ or talent of its individuals, but its culture and interpersonal relationships.
17. For decades, New York’s public libraries marked books with three stars (***) to indicate they were erotica and to be kept away from readers.
18. There are health benefits to knitting.
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19. Dr. Rhea Seddon, an astronaut who flew on three space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s, said, “I’m not totally sure who had the first period in space, but they came back and said, ‘Period in space, just like period on the ground. Don’t worry about it.’”
20. Our belief in the power of breakfast is based on misinterpreted research and poor studies.
21. It’s a myth that closing unused apps on your smartphone will prolong battery life. And turning off Wi-Fi doesn’t always help, either.
22. Sixth graders in the richest school districts are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest districts.
23. Birth control without visiting a doctor? There are more and more apps for that.
24. Death from gun homicide in the United States is as common as dying a car accident. In Japan, it’s as rare as a fatal lightning strike.
25. Long-distance running may be the best exercise for your brain.
26. American men in the top 1 percent in income live 15 years longer than the poorest 1 percent; for women, the gap is 10 years.
27. A North Carolina man owns the only known recording of Super Bowl I, but the N.F.L. doesn’t want to buy the tapes or let him sell them to outside parties.
28. Deaths from overdoses are reaching levels similar to the H.I.V. epidemic at its peak.
29. Thousands of dogs are slaughtered and served in restaurants in Yulin, China, for the annual dog meat festival.
30. Women have moved into historically male jobs much more in white-collar fields than in blue-collar ones. Yet the gender pay gap is largest in higher-paying white-collar jobs.
31. Meditation can change your brain.
32. You can weigh 119 pounds and have Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and fatty liver — all the problems of a very obese person.
33. Giraffes have been keeping a secret from us for a long time: They’re really four different species, not one.
34. The Greenland shark lives at least 272 years and it could live as long as 512 years. That makes it the oldest living thing with a backbone on Earth.
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35. Freezing your coffee beans can actually make your cup of coffee tastier.
36. Earth is old. The sun is old. But do you know what may be even older than both? The water we drink.
37. Private equity firms are taking over services usually reserved for the government — from water to public transportation to 911 call centers.
38. What does it sounds like when two black holes collide a billion light years away? Scientists learned this year, and you’ve never heard a more beautiful chirp.
39. In 1940, a child born into the average American household had a 92 percent chance of making more money than his or her parents. For Americans born in 1980 – today’s 36-year-olds – that figure dropped to 50 percent.
40. There were more than 700,000 Google searches looking into self-induced abortions in 2015.
41. The Bramble Cay melomys were long-tailed, whiskered creatures who lived on an island in the Great Barrier Reef; today none exist. It is the first documented extinction of a mammal species as a result of human-caused climate change.
42. Cybersecurity became a national concern only after President Ronald Reagan saw the Matthew Broderick movie “WarGames.”
43. All of the drinking water coming from the Catskills to New York City is delivered by gravity.
44. Belgium has opened a two-mile beer pipeline.
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45. No one really knows what’s buried under the streets of New York until it’s time to dig. Workers in the field sometimes call it “peek and shriek.”
46. Wealthy black families live in areas far less well off than whites of even moderate income.
47. Terrorism deaths have increased in the West. But, worldwide, they’re declining.
48. There are more than 100 words for added sugar. Sixty-eight percent of grocery store foods contain at least one.
49. Angela Mao was as famous as Bruce Lee when she was a martial arts film star during the 1970s. Then she seemed to vanish. It turns out she’s been in Queens this whole time.
50. If nothing is done about climate change, by 2100 the Dallas area is projected to be above 95 degrees for more than four months a year.
51. Nearly 40 percent of millennials say they don’t eat cereal for breakfast because “they have to clean up after eating it.”
52. Rooming houses for “career-minded professional women” still exist in New York City, and men aren’t allowed above the first floor.
53. After steady declines over the last four decades, highway deaths last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. Blame Snapchat and other apps.
54. Archaeologists have found more than 40 shipwrecks in the Black Sea, some more than a millennium old. The vessels are surprisingly well preserved because the Black Sea has no oxygen at its bottom.
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55. It’s not a problem most are likely to encounter, but for those who do, shuffling fortunes through trusts and accounts across borders can help hide outrageous amounts of money.
56. The TV and movie action star Lorenzo Lamas (“Renegade”) will fly you in a helicopter to the Grand Canyon.
57. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s father, the political consultant Luis Miranda, stands to earn more than $300,000 a year from “Hamilton,” as the royalty deal (unusually) includes him in the share of profits.
58. Rising sea levels are changing the way people think about waterfront real estate. People across the nation are growing wary of buying property in areas most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
59. More convicted terrorists live in prisons throughout the United States — 443 of them — than the number who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
60. In the Rio Olympics, women won more total medals than men in 29 countries.
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Looking for more stories? Read on in the best of The New York Times.
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