36 things I've learned in my 36th year

It’s my birthday again in just a few days, which means I get to do one of my favorite things: share a bunch of fun facts.

For the third year running, I’m sharing what I’ve learned this year – but only the trivial, mostly unimportant stuff. If you want more, check out 35 and 34.

1. 34.4% of Harvard graduates enter consulting or finance. Another 17.9% do tech.
2. Massachusetts is by far the state with the most per capita lottery spending, at $867. Next closest is Rhode Island at $543 – and North Dakota is the lowest at $48.
3. When a state legalizes sports betting, average credit scores drop by 1% and debt collections increase by 8%.
4. 45% of 18 to 29 year-olds live with their parents – the highest that number has been since just after the Great Depression.
5. Tennis balls used to be white. They were made yellow in the 1970s because the color is easier to see on then-new color televisions – a move pushed by David Attenborough (the guy from all the nature documentaries).
6. Over 20,000 people have played in major league baseball. Nobody has ever hit exactly 55 home runs.
7. The phrase “straight out of central casting” is actually referencing a company, Central Casting. Founded in 1925, it’s still operational today.
8. It was named Clippit, not Clippy.
9. There’s only one town in Pennsylvania. Everything else is a city, borough, or township.
10. Only 32% of shoppers will actually bother to call an attendant if the product they want is behind a locked case.
11. Under the most optimal scenario, you’re throwing out 66% of the lead when you sharpen a pencil.
12. A piece of Apollo 12 was found unexpectedly orbiting the earth in 2002, 30 years after it launched – most of that time spending looping around the sun. It should return again in about 20 years.
13. We don’t know for sure exactly what second Neal Armstrong set foot on the moon. Best guess is 10:56:20AM.
14. Every map of China is wrong. The Chinese government uses a random obfuscation algorithm to distort geolocations by 50 to 500 meters.
15. When Germans move, they take their entire kitchen with them, including appliances, cabinets, and fixtures.
16. Speaking of moving, all leases in NYC used to expire at the same time – May 1 at 9:00AM. Quebec still (mostly) does this.
17. Senegal once considered digging a tunnel underneath Gambia.
18. But there are no bridges over the Amazon river.
19. GPS technology is prevented from working on devices moving faster than 1,000 knots and/or an an altitude above 12,000 meters. These “CoCom Limits” are there to prevent GPS being used on intercontinental ballistic missiles.
20. There’s a special pattern of dots known as the “EURion constellation” that is stealthily printed on sensitive documents like currency, checks, and other papers. This is why you can’t scan and print money.
21. The first documented graphic T-shirt is in the Wizard of Oz.
22. Denver International Airport is larger than San Francisco. Not San Francisco International Airport, the city of San Francisco. (DEN is ~53 square miles, and San Francisco is ~47 square miles).
23. Central Park is bigger than the nation of Monaco. (843 acres vs. 514 acres)
24. 60% of Coachella tickets are bought using buy-now-pay-later.
25. Every horse in this year’s Kentucky Derby was a descendent of Secretariat.
26. The actor Patrick Stewart canonically exists within the Star Trek universe, and Jean-Luc Picard (played by Stewart) is aware of him.
27. It’s called “footage” because film was measured in feet.
28. The world’s largest pool of money is Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the “Statens pensjonsfond.” It holds about $1.8 trillion of assets.
29. The SR71 Blackbird’s turn radius is bigger than the state of Ohio. Also it’s so fast that if you shoot at it from the ground, it will outrun the bullet.
30. In 1996, the average American ate 64 pounds of potatoes. Today, we’re at an all-time low of 45 pounds per person per year.
31. The Banksy Museum has no Banksys.
32. Hot Wheels and Barbie were invented by a married couple.
33. A new species of shark or shark relative is discovered roughly every other week.
34. Putting doors on refrigerators at supermarkets could save 1-2% of nationwide energy consumption.
35. Depending on how you count it, The Liong King musical is the single most commercially successful piece of art of all time. It’s earned $10 billion as of 2022 – Avatar, the highest-grossing movie, has made less than $3 billion.
36. Director John Hughes used to leave business cards for Del Griffith in planes, trains, and automobiles across his travels.