Five things we learned last month

Photos: Francisco Anzola, Gurinder Osan/AP/Press Association Images, NikoLang, Colin, Ed Sweeney

Here are five of our favourite facts learned while editing the features and researching the infographics for our upcoming issue 20 – which, we’re excited to say, will mark the fifth birthday of Delayed Gratification.

1) Ulan Bator in Mongolia is the coldest capital in the world. The average daily low temperature of this city of 1.3 million people is -33C in January.

2) In Bhutan, Gross National Happiness has been the most important measure for national progress since the 1970s. According to the latest figures, unemployed people in the country are happier than corporate employees, housewives or farmers.

3) The 25-year-old student who is credited with discovering water on Mars is a former heavy metal musician. Lujendra Ojha, a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech, used to play in a band called Gorkha but gave up on the dream for financial reasons. “I was kind of in poverty with music,” he told CNET. “I wasn’t making enough money so I said screw music, let’s go to science, maybe there’s more money in it. But there isn’t money in science either.”

4) If all production, repair, washing and drying of clothes currently carried out in UK homes were outsourced to professionals, the increased economic activity would add £97.2 billion to the UK’s GDP.

5) Of the 13,331 near-Earth objects discovered so far by Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Programme, 1,638 have been classified as potentially hazardous. The asteroid most likely to hit the Earth is 2010 RF₁₂, which has a six percent chance of colliding with our planet on 5th September 2095.

 

Posted on Monday, November 9th, 2015 - Categories: Extras, Things we've learned.