March 9,2020
In 1784, the American envoy to Paris, Benjamin Franklin, penned a satirical essay in which he calculated that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” As a result, Franklin is often erroneously credited with inventing daylight saving time. History.com, November 2, 2019
The “Spanish” flu, as the 1918 pandemic is still widely known, did not originate in Spain. Rather, because the country was neutral in World War I, its uncensored press was the first to report on the disease. as a result, many around the world blamed the Spanish for the epidemic, and the nickname persists to this day. The Wall Street Journal March 6, 2020
“The last leg of a bull market always ends in hysteria; the last leg of a bear market always ends in panic.” Jim Rogers
Almost half of the new condos that have come to market in Manhattan since 2015 are currently unsold. One of the reasons: overly ambitious pricing. In 2012, the difference in the average price between a new and a resale unit was 22%. At the end of 2019, the premium was 118%. The Morning Brew, January 13, 2020
Over the last decade, global economic growth has reduced climate mortality by a factor of five, with the greatest benefits documented in the poorest nations. In low-lying Bangladesh, 300,000 people died in Cyclone Bhola in 1970, when 80% of the population lived in extreme poverty. In 2019, with less than 20% of the population living in extreme poverty, Cyclone Fani killed just five people. The Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2020
Roughly 20% of the 347,356 insured American patients that had an elective surgery at an in-network hospital with an in-network surgeon still got hit with a bill from an out-of-network doctor, often brought in when they were unconscious and unable to consent to it. The Atlantic, February 11, 2020
About 1,000 people per day move to the state of Florida. In order to accommodate all those people developers are bulldozing rural and natural habitats at an alarming rate. The state loses 12 acres of land to development every hour. BitterSoutherner
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