Tag Archives: weird facts

2020

2020!!!!!!

Don’t you just LOVE typing 2020?  I am hooked on it. Humans have not had that experience for 101 years–since 1919, and there is something much more satisfying in typing 2020. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide, so there may be 300,000 people worldwide who twice in their life would have been able to write twin double digits for the date, but how likely is it that they would have typed it? The first typewriter was invented in 1867 and came into wide usage in offices in the mid-1880’s, but I doubt that anyone younger than 10 would have been using a typewriter, so that means they would have to be 111 this year to have possibly typed both 1919 and 2020 as dates on a typewriter. There are 86 people in the world 111 years old or older, but no one has had the foresight to ask them all if they had access to a typewriter in 1919, let alone even once typed that date. Am I obsessing? No. Just enjoying this nicely-rounded-out year!!!!  (Don’t miss out on the thrill on Feb. 2 of typing 0202 2020.)

Does anyone else feel the same joy in typing 2020 2020 2020???
If so, please confess to it in comments.

The Weird Wild World: NaPoWriMo 2018, Apr 30

The Weird Wild World 

One hundred fifty calories is what you burn away
per hour if head-banging is how you spend your day;
but if you’re prone to thinking great thoughts you merely may
burn 50 calories per day, or so the experts say.

A raccoon group’s a nursery and bullfrogs do not sleep.
There are no bridges on the Amazon, although it’s very deep.
A human nose remembers fifty thousand scents.
No telling which ones please it or which ones it resents.

The average woman spreads her height in lipstick each five years,
and hippo sweat turns scarlet when they are immersed in fears.
If you find these facts astounding, as strange as facts can get,
please do not attack me. Just check the internet!

The last NaPoWriMo prompt for 2018 is: write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact. It could be an odd piece of history, an unusual bit of art trivia, or something just plain weird