<aside> 💡 Last month I started a new monthly blog post that includes things I learned over the prior month that I found interesting. This is July’s edition. I’m always sourcing new things to learn, so please send them my way.

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  1. All female grandmasters in the history of chess are currently alive (cite)
  2. 64% of the drinks sold at Starbucks last year were cold beverages. This is up from 47% in 2018 (cite).
  3. The airport code for O’Hare is ORD because it used to be called OrchaRD Field Airport (until 1949, when it was renamed O’Hare to commemorate a WWII flying ace). Newark is EWR, because “N” is reserved for US Navy ships, so its IATA code used remaining letters.
  4. Cheerios are the best selling cereal in America (cite)
  5. Americans spent $679 per household on lottery tickets in 2019. Americans spend more on lottery tickets than they do on cigarettes, and more than they do on music, sports tickets, movie tickets, books, and video games combined. (cite)
  6. Norway, Japan, Iceland, and South Korea are the only countries where whale hunting is permitted. (cite)
  7. Barry Bonds has more career intentional walks than the entire Tampa Bay Rays franchise in history. (cite)
  8. The word “gobbledygook”, meaning gibberish, was coined by US congressman Maury Maverick in a memo to his staff. Maury Maverick was grandson of the rancher Samuel Maverick who, in opting not to brand his cattle, gave rise to the word “maverick” meaning a nonconformist. (cite)
  9. In 1900, 75% of men in the US aged 75 or older were still in the labor force. By 1960, it was 30%. Today it is below 10%. (cite)
  10. There are no land mammals native to New Zealand (cite).
  11. Professional hockey players are the only athletes in North America still required to wear suits before games (cite)
  12. Half of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock holdings are in a single stock, Apple (roughly $179 billion). (cite)
  13. Roger Federer played 97 ATP singles matches in 2006. In that year, he lost a total of one match to players not named Rafael Nadal (cite)
  14. The prophetic perfect tense is a literary technique used in the Bible that describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened (cite)
  15. Singapore is the only country in Asia with an AAA sovereign credit rating from all major rating agencies. (cite)
  16. The largest landowner in the world currently is King Charles III of England (and the British Royal Family), whose 6.6 billion acreage includes 90% of the land in Canada. (cite)
  17. “Jumping the shark” — the phrase used to describe a creative work that takes an outrageous or absurd turn, often signaling a decline in quality — dates back to 1985, when the show Happy Days featured its main character jumping over a live shark on water skis in an attempt to revive viewership. (cite)
  18. " 🍕" is the most used "word" in Venmo transaction descriptions. (cite)
  19. Cumulatively, Americans have wagered $245bn on sports since 2018. (cite).