It’s time for a summer edition of fun facts!
The highest paid athlete of all time was a Roman charioteer; if he had lived today he would have been worth $15 billion.
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/18/the-highest-paid-athlete-of-all-time-was-a-roman-charioteer-if-he-had-lived-today-he-would-have-been-worth-15-billion/
Air pollution is responsible for shortening people’s lives worldwide on a scale far greater than wars and other forms of violence, parasitic and vector-born diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and smoking.
https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/The-world-faces-an-air-pollution-pandemic
California loses up to $1 billion in crops each year because of air pollution.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21181725/air-pollution-california-crops-agriculture-1-billion
By 2010, 43,600 jobs had been lost or displaced in Michigan – and about 700,000 in the United States – due to the rise in the trade deficit with Mexico alone since NAFTA was enacted in 1994.
https://www.citizen.org/article/michigan-job-loss-during-the-nafta-wto-period/
Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989 (Federal Reserve)
As of December 2016, more than 129 million Americans have only one option for broadband internet service in their area – equating to about 40 percent of the country.
https://sites.psu.edu/netneutrality/2018/02/28/the-internet-monopoly/
The average consumer throws away 60 percent of clothing within a year of purchase.
https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-fashion/we-throw-away-far-too-much-clothing.html
TIL there are more payday loan stores in the US than there are Starbucks or McDonald’s.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2019/04/10/fast-cash-and-payday-loans
‘Idiot’ once specifically referred to somebody with the mental age of a 2 year old. ‘Imbecile’ referred to somebody with the mental age of a 3 to 7 year old, and ‘Moron’ referred to somebody with the mental age of a 7 to10 year old.
https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/53480acd132156674b0002c3
If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.
Three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic.
There are fewer American farmers today than there were during the Civil War, despite America’s population being nearly 11 times greater.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html
5 Companies own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageImperialism/comments/cbftd4/monopoly_the_deathknell_of_capitalism/
France’s longest border is with Brazil.
https://www.indexmundi.com/france/land_boundaries.html
Rudolph Hass, the man who grew and patented the original Hass avocado tree, didn’t make very much money despite its success as most people bought one single tree and then grew vast orchards from cuttings. He only made $5000 from his patent, and remained a postman his entire life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History
The largest ancient pyramid in the world is buried inside a mountain in modern-day Mexico underneath a church.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160812-the-giant-pyramid-hidden-inside-a-mountain
There is an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on a wedding, and how long the marriage lasts. The more people spend on the ceremony, the more likely the couple will get divorced.
https://www.insider.com/study-couples-who-spend-more-on-weddings-more-likely-to-get-divorced-2018-7
As of 2018, there are 6 PR people for every journalist. Much of the change is attributed the 45% loss of newspaper employees from 2008 to 2017. Additionally the current median income of PR professions is $61,150 in comparison to journalists $46,270.
https://muckrack.com/blog/2018/09/06/there-are-now-more-than-6-pr-pros-for-every-journalist
Brazil has nearly 60,000 murders a year, more than the US, Canada, Australia, all of Europe, China, and many Asian countries combined.
metrocosm.com/homicides-brazil-vs-world/
