100 Interesting Facts We Learned in 2021 | Mental Floss

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Did you know that Egyptologists recently discovered a 3400-year-old lost golden city near modern-day
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Luxor? Archaeologists actually made the discovery in September 2020, but announced their findings
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this spring. The royal city is remarkably well-preserved. Selima Ikram from the American
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University in Cairo called it an Egyptian version of Pompeii. The area was located within the capital
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city of Thebes and dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh during a time of prosperity and
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power in ancient Egypt. With features including a cemetery, homes, and buildings apparently
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devoted to artistic and industrial production, the area should provide valuable insights
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about life in Egypt at the time. Today we're celebrating the end of the year by sharing 100 things we learned in 2021
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We've got a lot of ground to cover, from bees that grow teeth to the first observation
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of a new state of matter. And at least one Skeet Ulrich fact, because it's good to
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be well-rounded. Let's get started. Paleontologists discovered a new type of sauropod this year, what may be the largest
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dinosaur species ever identified in Australia. Nicknamed Cooper, the massive dino could have
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been as long as a regulation basketball court and weighed anywhere from 25 to 80 tons. At the upper
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end of that estimate, that's roughly 10 times the weight of an average T-Rex
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Archaeologists working in Morocco discovered what may be the world's oldest jewelry. 33 perforated shells dating back around 150,000 years may have been worn in bracelets or necklaces
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It was apparently a good year for ancient Moroccan fashion. A different team of researchers
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discovered bone tools in a Moroccan cave that they say were likely used in the production
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of clothing around 100,000 years ago. If they're right, the tools would represent the earliest
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evidence yet found of Homo sapiens producing clothes from the pelts of animals
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A mere 78,000 years ago, a toddler was buried in an area of Africa corresponding to present-day
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Kenya. When scientists published their findings this year, they identified the grave as the
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oldest known human burial in Africa, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The body was found
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curled into the fetal position. Evidence suggests it may have been wrapped in a shroud
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and rested on some kind of pillow, representing a type of care which may shed some light on
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how death was viewed at the time. Much less care was demonstrated in the mass burial of crusading Christian soldiers at
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a site in modern-day Lebanon whose discovery was announced this year. Researchers determined
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that at least 25 individuals were buried in two large graves in the port city of Sidon
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Much of the remains indicated that heavy-bladed weapons such as swords and axes may have cut
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short the lives of the buried men. Other evidence, like the identification of a coin near the bones dating to the mid-13th
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century, as well as historical knowledge of two major attacks on the city during that time period, helped to draw a fuller picture of how the mass graves came to be
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Given how long the various crusades lasted and how many people must have lost their lives during the military engagements, you might think that we're constantly finding the bodies
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of lost crusaders, but that isn't true. As Piers Mitchell, the co-author of the paper discussing the findings, said
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An ancient clay tablet known as SI-427 has been sitting in an Istanbul museum for over
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a century. It was discovered in central Iraq and is estimated to be from between 1900 and 1600 BCE
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And this year, an Australian mathematician announced it's actually the world's oldest known example of applied geometry. Dr. Daniel Mansfield called the tablet a cadastral document
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that would have been used to define land boundaries. The surveyor who created it apparently used
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Pythagorean triples to make accurate right angles over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born
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We learned another reason to pick up a metal detector this year. You might find Viking jewelry
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That's what happened to retired police officer Kath Giles when she was enjoying her hobby on the
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Isle of Man. Giles actually made the discovery at the end of 2020, but her findings, including
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a gold arm ring and a silver brooch weren't made public until early in 2021
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The island seems to be fertile ground for treasure hunters. The Horde was Cath's third
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significant discovery there since taking up metal detecting only three years earlier
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This year, the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport designated a mosaic
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found in Rutland, England, a scheduled monument, along with the area surrounding the mosaic
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That means the roughly 11 by 7 meter artwork, which depicts the mythological battle between
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Achilles and Hector, and is the only one of its type found in the UK, is legally protected
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Excavations at the site will resume in 2022. Here's hoping that next year's video will
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include the discovery of a centaur skeleton. A paper published this year shed new light on
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an old stone slab. It turns out that the Bronze Age artifact, sometimes called the Sambilac slab
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may be Europe's oldest known map at around 4,000 years old. Researchers created 3D surveys of the
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stone and made measurements based on the images. By comparing the representations of the slab to
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various geographic areas, they determined that it was showing an area in the valley created by the
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river O'Day in modern-day France. Lines carved into the stone seemed to represent rivers, and
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the slab's three-dimensional shape may represent the topography of the region. Though it's difficult
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to know why this early map would have been made, researchers hypothesized that the Sambilac slab
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was used for managing the territory and controlling the land. An international team of scientists
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announced the discovery of the oldest and most complete modern-looking crab. The crab was found
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encased in amber and is approximately 100 million years old. I've got an idea, and don't tell me
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it'll end badly. We learned that mummified parrots, hundreds of years old, were found in Chile's
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Atacama Desert. This is significant, according to a paper published this year, because the animals
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aren't indigenous to the region. That means people brought the birds from the Amazon, across sometimes
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difficult conditions, over the Andes Mountains, likely in caravans driven by llamas. Conventional
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wisdom once said that human beings first came to the Americas around 13,000 years ago. Traveling
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across the Bering Land Bridge near present-day Alaska. Two discoveries published in 2021 helped lend further credence to the emerging belief that
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humans have actually been on this side of the world for much longer. A team led by Andrew Somerville of Iowa State University was looking at animal bones found
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inside a cave in Mexico. Collections of bones in a single location can be evidence of human activity
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They dated the specimens, which included deer and rabbit bones, to around 30,000 years ago
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If further research shows that there is a human connection to the animal bones, it would demonstrate that early humans were in the Americas and hunting local animals tens of
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thousands of years before we once thought possible. And a team with the U.S. Geological Survey used radiocarbon dating in an attempt to identify
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the age of human footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico
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By dating seed layers above and below the trace fossils, the researchers were able to
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peg the footprints to roughly 23,000 years ago, which would make them the oldest footprints
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ever found in the Americas. Those early Americans may not have been drinking wine, but the people of the Byzantine era
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certainly were. This year, in central Israel, archaeologists discovered a 1,500-year-old winery that may
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have produced some of the most celebrated wines of the era. Known as Gaza wine, after the port
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city from which it was exported, this white wine was celebrated in the literature of its time
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If there's a 3,000-year-old version of Peter Benchley's Jaws written in Japanese, it's never been discovered. But thanks to an ysis made public this year
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we may have identified the earliest known human victim of a shark attack. The remains of a man found at an ancient burial ground in Japan showed trauma that could have
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ostensibly been delivered by metal weapons. But experts believe the man lived during the
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Joman period, when metal weapons wouldn't have been available. Using a number of tools
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including CT scans of the man's wounds, researchers determined the unlucky man was
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the victim of a shark attack. We learned in 2021 that you can't make an archaeological omelet
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without breaking a thousand-year-old egg, or something like that. A remarkably well-preserved
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chicken egg was found with just a small crack in it during the excavation of the town of Yavne Israel this year It was kept in relatively pristine condition by the human waste it was found in Lucky Unfortunately the egg was further cracked once it was brought back to the lab by researchers Dr Lee Perrigal who Forward called a
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leading expert on poultry in the ancient world, incredible flex, said about the cracked specimen
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there was barely some yolk left inside, but it's more or less empty. We'll get back to some cool
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archaeological finds in a bit, but let's zoom into space for a minute. In August of this year
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NASA's Perseverance rover attempted to collect the first-ever rock sample from the Mars surface
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The rock fell to pieces and risked taking the mission with it. In September, however
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Perseverance successfully extracted a cylindrical core from a rock that is slightly thicker than a
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pencil. The rover will hold on to it and further rock extractions until the aptly named Mars Sample
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Return Program helps our rover friend deliver the goods back to Earth. Not to be outdone
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Hines finally answered the astronomical question at the forefront of everyone's minds
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If I lived on Mars, would I have access to ketchup? The answer is probably. This year
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the company unveiled a batch of ketchup made under agricultural conditions meant to mimic
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those humans might find on Mars. This involved using LED lights instead of sunlight to grow
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tomatoes in og Martian regolith, which is dirt from the Mojave Desert that approximates Mars
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surface. The research took place at the Red House, a greenhouse at the Florida Institute of Technology
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Mars ketchup—the actual name Heinz used—was a success. But sadly, it's not currently for sale
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The red house a greenhouse? The cowards at the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center were unwilling to
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make Mercury mustard. But they did discover a new planet with some very interesting characteristics
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For starters, it's one of the lightest planets discovered among the nearly 5,000 exoplanets
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known today. Its mass is about half that of Earth's. And the planet, which is about 31 light
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years from Earth revolves around its sun so quickly, researchers determined its year lasts
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about eight hours. In June, scientists discovered the comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, otherwise known as BB, possibly
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the largest comet ever observed. It's approximately 100 kilometers across, which, to give some
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context, is 10 times larger than Halley's comet. Comet BB is farther from the sun than Uranus, making it the second-farthest comet ever recorded
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On a slightly smaller scale, a meteorite crashed through a home in British Columbia this year
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The space rock, which was estimated to be about the size of a small cabbage, broke through
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Ruth Hamilton's ceiling and landed on her bed while she was sleeping. On the bed
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After being woken up by the sound of a crash, Hamilton called the police and then discovered the meteorite between her pillows
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Professor Peter Brown noted that the chances of a meteorite big enough to penetrate a roof
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and hit a bed are about 1 in 100 billion per year
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This year, NASA launched its DART mission, which is meant to prevent asteroids from hitting Earth
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DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. The mission essentially involves launching a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt
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to alter its course. It's no Bruce Willis with drills and nukes, but if we can nudge a giant rock slightly to
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the left, say, it could help Earth avoid a direct impact. The mission is testing this theory out on a harmless asteroid that's about 6.5 million
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miles away, but which is supposed to be a perfect testing ground for DART
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Sometime next year, we'll see if it works. NASA announced this year that astronaut Jessica Watkins will be heading to the International
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Space Station next year, making her the first Black woman to join the station's crew
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Watkins will be launching in April 2022, alongside three other astronauts. A different kind of history was made this year by Captain Kirk himself. In October
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William Shatner, along with three other passengers, flew aboard the New Shepard into the edge
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of space. Shatner, who is now the oldest person ever in space at the age of 90, marked the
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occasion by tweeting a poetic quotation from Isaac Newton, "...I do not know what I may appear to the world. But to myself I seem to have been only
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like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
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or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
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before me." And while we're on the subject of rich people flying into space, let's remember that both
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Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson flew to space this year. Depending on your definition of
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space, that is. Branson, aboard a Virgin Galactic space plane known as VSS Unity, entered what the FAA and
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NASA consider space on July 11. At an elevation a little more than 50 miles above sea level
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though, Branson didn't reach the so-called Karman Line, which many international organizations
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consider the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space. For what it's worth, Bezos did make it past the Karman Line on July 20 aboard Blue Origin's
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New Shepard rocket. NASA launched the adorably named Lucy probe into space this year. Its mission? To study
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the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter. It's basically going to function as a space archaeologist
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studying the composition of these objects in an attempt to track their history. The probe got its name from the famous early hominid fossil from Africa
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That Lucy taught us about the origins of our species, and this Lucy will teach us about
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the origins of the universe. Let's come back down to Earth. We learned the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood home this year, and it took a lot
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of work to do so. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought 2,600 acres of land in Maryland, including
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the land owned by Tubman's father, Ben Ross. Experts knew that Ross built a cabin on that land and started digging for artifacts
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And digging. And digging. Shablitski, the chief archaeologist of Maryland's State Highway Administration, said that after
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about a thousand holes, I was getting pretty frustrated. Shablitski caught a break after deciding to use a metal detector. A 50-cent coin from 1808 helped
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direct future efforts. Eventually, the historical sleuths came upon pieces of brick, nails, glass
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and other artifacts that made them confident they'd found the site of the cabin. Shablitski was even able to share photos of the artifacts with Tubman's great-great-great-grandniece
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Tina Wyatt. Scientists yzed organic residue on pottery found in and around Palermo dating
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to roughly a millennium ago. They found a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and animal
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products—perhaps an indication of the city's role as an economic and cultural center of
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the region. They even noted regional differences in cuisine, like the fact that city dwellers
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were less frequent consumers of grapes and dairy products than their rural counterparts
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We know that Jews have eaten, according to kashrut, or Jewish food laws, for thousands
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of years. But this year, we got the first scientific evidence of artifacts demonstrating
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an early kosher diet. Scientists in the UK yzed the available evidence from two homes
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inside a medieval Jewish community in Oxford, including a latrine and traces left on cooking
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vessels. To verify that residents ate meat from geese, cattle, sheeps, and goats, but not pigs
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though pork was available in the region based on ysis of a nearby site outside the Jewish
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Quarter. Even the fish bones found in the homes corresponded to species that are permissible in a
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kosher diet, like herring. It may not be the most surprising finding on the list, but it demonstrates
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the possibilities unlocked when experts combine the written historical record with archaeological
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science. Technology also provided a new tool for researchers looking into an interesting
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ecological phenomenon on Easter Island. For hundreds of years, we've known that some
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people on the island—and more recently, some horses—occasionally drink directly from the ocean. That's not generally a great idea if you want to, you know, live, since
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saltwater isn't potable. But there's something special going on in the area. Because of the
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way rainwater drains through the island's porous bedrock, freshwater is able to come
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out in ample quantities at locations known as coastal seeps. The water there may be mixed
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with salty ocean water, but it's basically fresh, according to Binghamton University's
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Robert DiNapoli. And now, scientists discovered they can use thermal imaging drones to identify
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those coastal seeps around Easter Island. Because satellite images can't provide the
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necessary evidence, the pre-drone method of identifying the seeps involved walking around
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and taking a measurement every 10 meters or so. Those drones don't have to be very big
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but they positively massive compared to a tiny flyer built this year Engineers at Northwestern University built a micro flyer out of an electronic microchip that is the size of a grain of sand The device doesn have an engine or motor so maybe it would be more accurate to call it the world smallest glider It was designed to fall slowly
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and disperse over a large area, catching the wind like a maple tree's propeller seed
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The tiny flyer could be used in the future to make observations on air pollution and airborne
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disease, among other applications. If you've ever waited for a video to buffer, I might have some good news for you. A team
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The team at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo set
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a new record this year for the fastest Internet speed ever recorded—319 terabits per second
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That's more than 2 million times faster than the United States' average fixed broadband
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speed of a puny 131 megabits per second. That number actually represents an improvement for the U.S
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After ranking 25th out of 39 nations tested for mean broadband speed back in 2013, the
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U.S. is up to 13th, according to a Speedtest Global Index. The top performer in mean speed is Monaco, incidentally, and when it comes to the median
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speed, which probably gives a better idea of what to expect in a given country, the
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reigning champion is Singapore. Super fast internet may be groundbreaking, but this next 2021 discovery is another type
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of matter altogether. Pun definitely intended, because physicists at Harvard documented a never-before-seen
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state of matter known as quantum spin liquid. Physicist Philip W. Anderson theorized about its existence almost 50 years ago, but it
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was never actually observed until this year. Fully explaining it would definitely exceed my grasp of physics, which starts and ends
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with a TV show Lost, but I'll note that it's not a liquid in the way we usually think of liquids
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It's considered a liquid because, as Harvard's press release noted, the electrons in it don't
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stabilize when cooled, don't form into a solid, and are constantly changing and fluctuating
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in one of the most entangled quantum states ever conceived. Scientists hope that the discovery will eventually lead to the realization of reliable quantum
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computers, in the words of postdoctoral fellow Julia Semeghini. As long as we're discussing
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things that I will never fully understand, let's talk black holes. Specifically, the light from
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behind a supermassive black hole, which was directly detected for the first time this year
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Light can't escape a black hole, but because black holes can warp space, the light can effectively
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bend around the black hole and be observed. This is the first time we've managed to do so
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even though Einstein predicted this behavior back in the 1910s. And in April of this year
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astronomers working on the European Space Agency's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA
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asked the internet what we should call a group of black holes. Thousands of people eventually
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weighed in, and we learned the LISA team's top 10 choices for this new collective noun
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Cacophony, graveyard, horde, perforation, swarm, colloquium, disaster, sieve, brood, and doom. Some patients only need a pacemaker for a short period of time—people recovering from heart
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surgery, for example. But removing a temporary pacemaker entails its own surgery, in which a
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wire is inserted into the patient, which can lead to infection or other complications
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This year we learned about a new way to potentially avoid that trauma, when scientists
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developed a wireless pacemaker that eventually dissolves inside the patient. The biocompatible
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materials comprising the device get absorbed into the body in around five to seven weeks
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If you think of robots as blocky metal oafs, the future may surprise you. This year we learned that
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scientists at the University of Maryland were able to 3D print a soft robot hand that could
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respond to gradations of intensity on a single pressure input. The team tested its robo hand by
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having it play—and beat—the first level of Super Mario Bros. Future development in soft
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robotics could lead to better prosthetics and other biomedical devices. And if 3D printable
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robot hands don't do it for you, how about robots that can reproduce? A team at the University of
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Vermont and other institutions made computer-designed Xenobots out of frog cells, what they call living
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robots. Now researchers have learned that with the right design, those xenobots can be made to
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gather many individual cells together to create copies of themselves, again and again. As Dr
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Michael Levin said, we're giving them a chance to reimagine their multicellularity
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Okay, I know this is not how science works, but I can't help but get strong first act of a sci-fi
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disaster movie vibes. Let's transition to something that scares me a lot less. The movie Scream
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Though the slasher flick has some genuinely frightening moments, it's also, at times
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laugh-out-loud funny. But this year we learn that Skeet Ulrich, who plays Billy Loomis in
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the first movie, didn't originally see the laughs. As Ulrich told Entertainment Weekly
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when he saw some of his co-stars giving a comedic twist to the material during filming, he thought, what are they doing? This isn't funny. This isn't supposed to be funny. To
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Ulrich's credit, with hindsight, he was able to say, man, was I wrong
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Speaking of actors not in on the joke, a great New Yorker profile of Jeremy Strong, Succession's
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Kendall Roy, includes an intriguing anecdote from Kieran Culkin. After the first season
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Strong said something to me like, I'm worried that people might think that the show is a comedy. And I said, I think the show is a comedy. He thought I was kidding. The show does cross
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genres and tones, and Strong's performance is fantastic, however he arrives at it. Still
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the idea that the real-life Kendall doesn't see the hilarious satire as a comedy is pretty perfect
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Succession may dominate a certain corner of Twitter, but Netflix's Squid Game was almost
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certainly a bigger hit this year. And we learned that the show actually caused an international
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spike in Korean language learning, or at least in people registering to learn Korean on the
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language learning app Duolingo. It's not like South Korea came out of nowhere to make its mark
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on international culture. For a relatively small country geographically, it produces a plethora of
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great filmmakers, from Lee Chang-dong to Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho. At this year's Cannes Film Festival
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we learned the unexpected reason the Parasite director wasn't always able to go to the movies
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as a kid. As Bong said, my mom was a bit freakish about cleanliness. And you can't talk about South
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Korea's global cultural impact without talking about K-pop. Towards the end of this year, we
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learned that BTS will be taking a break from performing at the beginning of 2022. Incidentally
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we also learned this year that BTS may not be the world's biggest K-pop act anymore. It's a bit
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tricky to quantify popularity, but the girl group BLACKPINK has surpassed BTS in YouTube views on
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recent videos. We learned this year that John Krasinski once refused to shoot a scene written
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for the American version of The Office. That's not to say the Quiet Place director is a diva
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In Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, the Ultimate Oral History of The Office, Krasinski admitted that he
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refused to portray Jim cheating on Pam because he was concerned about how the show's passionate
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fanbase would react. As he said, there's a moment where if you push them too far
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they'll never come back. And going a little further back into our pop culture past
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we rediscovered one of the iconic gingham dresses Judy Garland wore while playing Dorothy in The
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Wizard of Oz. The dress was found inside a shoebox, stuffed in a bag in a room at the
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Catholic University of America. It's like a wardrobe turducken. If it wasn't obvious by now
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we love to go highbrow and lowbrow in one video. But for those getting sick of pop culture
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I'll throw out some discoveries from the world of literature in 2021. We learned about the
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existence of a lost library of British literature, which included original poems written by Emily
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Bronte in her own handwriting. We also learned that if the public outcry is great enough
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and the potential financial reward enough, auction house Sotheby's is willing to postpone
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the sale of cultural treasures. A group of British institutions have teamed together to try and raise
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enough money to buy the so-called Honersfeld Library, with an end goal of placing the artifacts
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at museums and other institutions. Another literary treasure was found this year within
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the binding of another book. During the 16th century, paper was so valuable that it wasn't
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unusual to repurpose a manuscript or printed material And one book published in 1528 used in its binding a 12th poem called The Siege d Though scholars had known about that poem existence it was considered completely lost to time The 47 lines found by Dr Tamara Aiken represent just a small part of the complete work but that still 47 lines more
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than we've had for many years. A slightly more recent lost text is Jack Kirby's novel The Horde
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which was never published. This year, we learned that might change. Kirby is known for his work
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with Marvel and DC Comics, but he also wrote what he called a visionary novel in the mid-1970s
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Mile High Comics CEO Chuck Rozanski found a manuscript for the novel amongst the personal
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archives of a highly respected comics executive, which Rozanski says he paid a small fortune for
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Ultimately, it will be up to the Jack Kirby estate to decide whether to seek publication for the novel. I don't know what a small fortune is exactly, but I suspect it's less than $13
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million. That's the sum paid this November for a manuscript written by Albert Einstein and Swiss
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scientist Michaela Besso. The papers, which we wouldn't have today had Besso not held on to them
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are one of the very few documents showing some of the early work that went into formulating
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Einstein's theory of general relativity. $13 million marks the highest price yet paid for
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an autographed scientific document, according to Christie's Auction House. That same month
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Ken Griffin, CEO and founder of the hedge fund Citadel, paid an even steeper price for a copy
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of the U.S. Constitution—$43 million. The document was one of only 13 known surviving
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copies of the 500 that were printed in September 1787 for internal government use
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We also learned that a crypto consortium might have driven up that purchase price
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A group called Constitution DAO raised $47 million in cryptocurrency in an attempt to
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buy the historic document. The group had to drop out of the bidding when it became clear they
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wouldn't have enough money to insure, store, and transport the Constitution at a purchase price
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north of $40 million. And we learned that a different cryptocurrency crowdfunding scheme
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was successful in purchasing a copy of Alejandro Hodorowsky's manuscript for his never-completed
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film version of Dune. Sort of. Dune DAO raised over $700,000, but an investor who bid on the group's behalf actually laid
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out $3 million to win the auction. If the group manages to raise the other $2.3 million
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they'll pay back that bidder, Sabin Saqib, and the group will collectively own, not the
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manuscript exactly, but a say in what the group does with the money, as Yahoo Finance said
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It was a wild year for cryptocurrency and finance in general. We learned that meme stocks could
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fluctuate astronomically. GameStop's stock price rose some 1,500 percent in two weeks
24:48
driven by retail investors — many of whom are members of Reddit's Wall Street Bets — doing
24:53
something called a short squeeze, effectively going up against short sellers who had bet
24:56
against the video game retailer. The stock has since gone down from an all-time high of $483 per share to less than half of
25:02
that price, with plenty of winners and losers along the way. The world of crypto has seen even more outlandish highs and lows. As of December 4, a coin called
25:10
Shiba Inu had gained 65,684,832% year to date. Many of these skyrocketing meme coins have
25:18
eventually come down to earth in a big way, but also nothing makes sense anymore, so definitely
25:23
don't take any financial advice from me. And on the subject of nothing making sense
25:27
we learned that someone was willing to pay over $7 million for CryptoPunk 3100. An 8-bit image of
25:33
a guy? An alien? The ownership of a non-fungible entity rendered in an artistically arbitrary
25:39
fashion? Someone, please. But JPEGs aren't the only thing selling for millions. Someone bought a sealed copy of
25:45
Super Mario 64 for a whopping $1.56 million. The copy is in near-pristine condition, receiving
25:52
a 9.8 A++ WATA score. I don't know much about rating video game conditions, but 9.8
25:57
A++ sounds pretty good. That price nearly doubled the previous highest amount for a single video game from just a
26:04
few days earlier, when a 1987 copy of The Legend of Zelda sold for $870,000. And according
26:09
to the New York Times, a month later, a copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for $2 million
26:14
Don't let anyone ever tell you that hoarding, video games, or Italian plumbers are bad for
26:18
your health. We learned that the world's largest single LEGO model, in terms of total number of bricks
26:24
is now a LEGO Titanic. The piece is made up of 9,090 bricks, and I bet it would feel really
26:29
good to build it and then smash it into a LEGO iceberg. And this year, the city of Munich, Germany began collecting 22,000 LEGO blocks for a
26:36
very good cause. That's right, they're building 2.4 LEGO Titanics. No? In anticipation of the 2022 European Championships, an international multi-sport tournament, the
26:46
city will be building a series of wheelchair ramps out of the colorful bricks. They're not meant to be a replacement for ramps made of more traditional materials
26:53
but are intended to draw attention to disability access. The CutterBear sank in 1963 after an illustrious career
27:00
It performed Arctic rescues, was used in World War I and II, and was the first U.S. government
27:04
ship to be commanded by a black man, hell-roaring Mike Healy, the son of a plantation owner and
27:09
an enslaved woman. Though the wreck was spotted in 2019, it took a couple of years for experts to be reasonably
27:13
certain that they had identified the bear, as they announced this year
27:17
We learned this summer that the legendary performer Josephine Baker would receive a unique, posthumous honor
27:22
Possibly instigated by a Change.org petition, France decided to induct Baker into Paris
27:28
pantheon, alongside luminaries like Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Voltaire. And a different kind
27:33
of honor was bestowed upon the microstate of San Marino, which is surrounded by its neighbor Italy
27:37
When Alessandra Perilli won a bronze medal in trap shooting at this year's Tokyo Olympics
27:42
which, because of COVID, were, strangely, the 2020 Olympic Games, San Marino became the smallest country by population to have won an Olympic medal
27:50
Rosary beads once belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots, were stolen from Arendelle Castle this
27:55
Mary's Catholicism was kind of a big part of her bio. She was even said to be clutching
27:59
the rosary shortly before her beheading. So the artifact has historical as well as economic significance
28:05
Let's go from the sacred to the profane. Or…whatever this is. For all of us non-Gen Zers out there
28:12
we have another new word to learn. Yesify. It's essentially the act of taking an image
28:17
and applying an ungodly amount of beauty filters to it. The result is…really something
28:22
The likes of Twitter and Instagram were flooded with Yassified images, many coming from a
28:26
popular Twitter account called Yassifybot, which posts daily images such as Yassified
28:31
Girl with a Pearl Earring and Yassified Moon from A Trip to the Moon
28:34
The internet never ceases to amaze slash frighten me. Don't call it a comeback
28:39
Microsoft's Clippy, the beloved slash hated digital assistant, has returned. But seriously, don't call it a comeback
28:46
If you're expecting your PC to suddenly be filled with useless tips from a sentient paperclip
28:50
again, that's not the case. After a Microsoft tweet teasing Clippy's return, it was announced that he would be joining the new
28:56
line of Microsoft emojis and sticker packs. Not exactly coming back the way some people thought
29:02
So depending on your relationship with the paperclip in question, I'm sorry and or you're welcome
29:07
A team in Amsterdam revealed a new 3D-printed stainless steel bridge this year. It's currently
29:11
the largest metal object printed in 3D, and the printing company's CEO said he believes it will
29:16
remain the largest metal-printed object for years to come. And a much smaller, though also laudable
29:21
engineering project was completed this year when life was made a little bit more wonderful for
29:24
George Bailey—the tortoise. George suffers from a metabolic bone disease that's prevented him from
29:29
walking properly his entire 11-year life. That is, until a New Hampshire company fitted George
29:34
with a custom wheelchair. Walkin' Pets usually designs walking assistance devices for cats and
29:39
dogs, but they were able to hook George up with a two-wheeled, stretchable harness
29:43
Crawl on, George. Crawl on. Let's cover some other animal facts we learned this year
29:48
it was discovered that some monkeys will go fishing for their food. The snow monkey, otherwise known as the Japanese macaque
29:54
was found to literally scoop fish out of icy Japanese waters. We found these monkeys opportunistically eating fish in the
29:59
like when they washed up on shore. But this is the first instance of seeing them intentionally
30:04
catching fish. Truffle spores are spread when animals find them underground, consume them
30:09
and spread their seeds through fecal matter. Pigs, famously, are one of a handful of mammals
30:13
who are skilled truffle hunters. But research from the University of Florida this year shows
30:17
that there are at least two species of birds that are part of the truffle hunting gang. Two types of ground-dwelling birds in Patagonia had truffle DNA and viable truffle spores in
30:25
their feces. Watch out, pigs, the birds are coming for your jobs
30:29
Bees have teeth now. Okay, not exactly, but we learned something about a little-known species
30:35
of tropical bee that evolved to grow a tooth for biting flesh. Yeah, those are real words that just
30:40
came out of my mouth. It's thought that the bees needed to turn to new sources of nourishment
30:44
because of intense competition for nectar. The bees were found to have a gut that more closely
30:48
resembles that of vultures than other bees. Goodbye, murder hornets. Hello, flesh-eating
30:54
vulture bees. And speaking of murder hornets, researchers discovered that bees warned their
30:58
friends of impending hornet attacks by letting out horrific screams. In response to Vespasor
31:03
a sister species of murder hornets, bees produce a call known as an anti-predator pipe
31:09
The process actually involves the vibration of wings, not the actual yelling of tiny bee lungs
31:13
And scientists in China have identified a specific bacteria found in the gut of certain
31:17
bees that can improve memory. Bees that were found with higher levels of Lactobacillus apis
31:22
had stronger memories and longer-lasting memories than bees with lower levels. Studies like this could eventually shed light on the relationship between human beings and our own microbiomes
31:32
In the past, researchers found that introducing a shelter cat to a family can reduce stress and anxiety for children with autism
31:38
That's great, but it raises the question, how does this arrangement affect the felines
31:42
Research this year indicated that the cats also exhibited reduced levels of cortisol after being adopted into a family, including a child with autism
31:49
showing the cats were less stressed after adoption, too. Until this year, it was believed that hummingbirds did not have the ability to smell
31:56
They're really small, which means the part of their brain dedicated to smell is really
32:00
really small. And they've never exhibited any preference for flowers containing nectar
32:04
while other bird species do. This year, though, it was discovered that hummingbirds can smell
32:08
insects, and more interestingly, use that scent to help stay out of danger. The study's co-author
32:13
Erin Wilson-Rankin, said, this is pretty exciting, as it is the first clear demonstration of
32:17
hummingbirds using their sense of smell alone to make foraging decisions and avoid
32:21
contact with potentially dangerous insects at a flower or feeder. And while birds were found to use smell to avoid predators, monkeys were shown to play
32:28
video games with their mind. A video released this year by Neuralink, one of Elon Musk's
32:33
brain children showed a monkey playing the game Pong with its brain The macaque named Pager was first taught how to play the game with a joystick Soon it moved to using its brain alone with the help of a neural device implanted in its brain While the footage is pretty cool it not necessarily a huge leap forward
32:49
Other monkeys have played games like Pong with their brain in the past. But Neuralink has apparently managed to remove wires from the equation
32:56
which could eventually have important implications for prosthetics and other situations where wires aren't practical. A new species of snake was found this year
33:03
thanks to, of all things, Instagram. A man in India named Vadinder Bhardwaj uploaded a photo
33:09
of a snake at his home. It was soon discovered that the snake had never been described in
33:13
scientific literature. With the help of a scientist at the National Center for Biological Sciences
33:18
that will soon change. The internet giveth and the internet taketh away. When a drug dealer from
33:24
Liverpool shared a photo of some appealing Stilton cheese on the secretive messaging service
33:28
EncroChat, he probably should have cropped out his hand. Police, who were monitoring the messages
33:33
were able to identify the man from his fingerprints, which were fully visible in the blue cheese beauty
33:38
shot. As Detective Inspector Lee Wilkinson said in a statement, Karl Stewart was involved in
33:43
supplying large amounts of Class A and B drugs, but was caught out by his love of Stilton cheese
33:49
And we learned about a man in Belgium who committed an illicit act with much lower
33:52
stakes. The farmer moved a stone on his property about seven feet
33:57
reportedly to make it a bit easier to maneuver his tractor. What he didn't know is that the
34:01
stone was one of many marking the boundary between France and Belgium. The man had effectively
34:06
changed the borders of two countries, though it doesn't seem authorities are interested in
34:10
creating an international incident out of the innocent transgression. Apple is a bit less yielding when it comes to what you can write on their AirTags. The little
34:17
devices can be handy for locating lost keys, and the company will even engrave four-character
34:21
labels on them for free. But this year we learned that some words are strictly verboten, including
34:26
poop and boob. According to a survey of more than 1,500 remote workers conducted in June
34:31
38 percent of respondents regularly work from bed. New research from Rockefeller University
34:37
shows that the negative symptoms associated with isolation aren't unique to humans. Fruit flies
34:41
were observed to eat too much and sleep too little after being chronically isolated from other flies
34:45
Interestingly, even one other fly's company was enough to stem the tide of unhealthy behaviors
34:50
So the next time you find yourself eating pizza alone in your apartment at 3 a.m. for the third
34:54
time in a single week, remember that it's biology. And maybe call a friend
34:59
Perhaps koalas could do with a little more isolation. Chlamydia is rampant amongst the
35:04
adorable marsupials. But this year, researchers in Australia announced a promising chlamydia
35:09
vaccine for koalas. For a species whose population has been steadily declining for years now
35:14
this is very good news Sexual reproduction may come with some risks but it been the number one means of species survival for a couple billion years now Sustained asexual reproduction in animals has long been thought to be incredibly rare if not impossible But scientists from Switzerland and France released a study this year about a
35:31
certain beetle mite species that seems to do just that. Onova are a tiny species of beetle mite that
35:36
have been observed to successfully reproduce without sex over many generations. The next
35:41
step for researchers is figuring out what makes these beetle mites so special. One of the reasons
35:45
lizards are so special is that they can regrow their tails when necessary. Or so I thought
35:50
The appendage that grows in a lost tail's place is actually a cartilage tube
35:54
missing the spinal column and nerves that make up the original tail. This year, though, scientists were able to use stem cells to help a lizard regenerate a near-perfect
36:02
true tail. The research hopes to help inform efforts to improve healing in humans
36:06
We learned that delicious charcuterie can have some serious side effects. A salmonella outbreak earlier this year was traced back to antipasto meats like salami and prosciutto
36:15
The CDC's recommendation? Heat the meat. I guess steaming hot salami is technically preferable to
36:21
salmonella. Speaking of questionable things to consume, the candy company Brax announced a
36:25
Thanksgiving candy corn this year. If you were hoping for pumpkin pie flavoring, which is really
36:30
just cinnamon, nutmeg, and some other spices, you may be disappointed to find chewy pieces with
36:35
turkey and green bean flavor profiles. And this next piece of news was even more disappointing
36:39
We learned this fall that Dollar Tree is going to start selling some of its products at prices
36:43
exceeding $1. Inflation, supply chain issues, and increased manufacturing costs are reportedly to
36:48
blame. We learned about the first successful double arm and shoulder transplant this year
36:53
Felix Gratarsson of Iceland will still face considerable challenges and may never gain
36:57
much control over his arms, but doctors hope the surgery will make him more independent
37:02
Do you know how our bodies sense heat and cold or recognize different levels of pressure when
37:06
touching and being touched? We got a greater understanding of these complex sensory phenomena
37:11
thanks to the work of David Julius and Artem Patapudian. The two men were awarded the Nobel
37:15
Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year for their work in identifying specific receptors
37:19
in our nervous system that respond to these different types of stimuli. It's a couple
37:23
important pieces to the puzzle of how we interact with our surroundings. The books on the shelf behind me are stationary. They're most definitely not moving. But if we were
37:31
to look at them through a quantum lens and see their individual atoms, they would be teeming
37:36
with motion and vibrations. Scientists have spent years trying to ground objects to a near
37:41
true standstill. They do this by supercooling these objects so their atoms can reach pure
37:45
quantum states. They've been successful in the past, but have mostly worked with nanogram-scale
37:50
objects, collections of a few million atoms. But this year, for the first time, researchers at MIT
37:56
were able to cool a human object to this near state The object had an effective mass of 10 kilograms and comprises about one octillion atoms Supercooling objects to a quantum state allows us to observe the effect of gravity on a massive quantum object a big breakthrough in our understanding of physics
38:14
Stay. Good books. In the world of math, the white whales of discovery are mathematical theorems
38:21
But in order to get a theorem, you need to prove a conjecture, a mathematical conclusion or proposition. How does one make a conjecture
38:28
Step one is usually be a genius. Step two is math stuff. Researchers at the Israel Institute
38:35
of Technology have developed an algorithm that may accelerate this process. The Ramanujan machine
38:40
named for a famed human mathematician, uses AI and computer automation to generate conjectures
38:45
It does this by focusing on mathematical constants, like pi, for example. One of the professors leading
38:51
the project said, our results are impressive because the computer doesn't care if proving
38:55
formula is easy or difficult, and doesn't base the new results on any prior mathematical knowledge
39:00
but only on the numbers and mathematical constants. It's important to point out that
39:04
the algorithm itself is incapable of proving the conjectures it found. At this point
39:09
the task is left to be resolved by human mathematicians. White paint might not seem like an important technological breakthrough, but when it's the
39:15
whitest paint ever created, capable of reflecting 98% of sunlight and cooling surfaces considerably
39:21
it's worth taking note. A few things led to the high performance of the paint
39:25
including the fact that the pigment particles used in it were different sizes. Because different sized particles scatter different types and amounts of light
39:32
having a range of particle sizes maximizes the paint's ability to reflect sunlight
39:36
Reflective paints like this can hopefully be used to lower the energy consumption
39:40
associated with air conditioning by keeping buildings cool in a greener or whiter way
39:45
And in other forward-thinking news, we learned this year that California will be providing free
39:49
period products like tampons and pads and all public schools serving grades 6-12
39:54
state colleges, and community colleges. It's part of an expansion of a 2017 law
39:58
and we'll see the hygiene products installed by 2022. A runner by the name of Julia Hurricane Hawkins might have set a world record in the 100-meter
40:05
race this year. Her time? 1 minute and 2.95 seconds. If that doesn't sound like a world
40:11
record, maybe it helps to know that Hurricane Hawkins is 105 years old. She'll be meeting her
40:15
rival, Diane Flash Friedman, at the National Senior Games in Fort Lauderdale next year
40:20
In other incredible centenarian news, a woman by the name of Edith Merway-Traina turned 100 this
40:25
year, making her the oldest competitive female power lifter. Merway-Traina started lifting at
40:29
the age of 91 and has been setting records ever since, including a 149.9-pound deadlift
40:35
Edith, you have my full permission to bench press 2021 into the history books
40:39
Tell us one fun fact you learned this year in the comments below. And thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube

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