62 Fascinating Facts of 2024
Each day, Times Insider editors scour the newspaper for the most interesting facts to appear in articles. This year, tidbits about grudge-holding crows, the first-ever first kiss and George Washington’s dentures enlightened, informed and entertained us.
January
1. There is no federal law banning the creation of fake images of people.
2. Several studies have found that optimism is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, and people who score highly on tests of optimism live 5 to 15 percent longer than people who are more pessimistic.
3. Over the next decade, the following copyrighted works will enter the public domain: Popeye; Pluto; Donald Duck; King Kong (the original film version); Superman; Daffy Duck; James Bond; Batman; Captain Marvel; Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and others from “The Hobbit.”
4. Unlike most mammals, cetaceans — which include whales, dolphins and porpoises — must consciously choose to breathe.
February
5. In 2014, the authorities in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, at the center of tense relations between India and Pakistan, arrested a pigeon near the border on charges related to espionage.
6. One of the earliest accounts of kissing was etched into the Barton Cylinder, a clay tablet that dates to around 2400 B.C. It was unearthed in the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur in 1899.
7. Miami International Airport is the port of entry for about 90 percent of the nation’s imported cut flowers.
8. Before France abolished capital punishment in 1981, executions were still carried out by guillotine, as they had been since the French Revolution.
9. Food allergies have been increasing in prevalence over the past 20 years, though it is not clear why. Some 5.5 million children and 13.6 million U.S. adults have food allergies, and many are allergic to more than one food.
March
10. For the 2022 movie “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the actress Kate Winslet, after considerable training, held her breath underwater for seven minutes and 15 seconds (some Navy Seals never break three minutes).
11. Palm oil, an environmentally destructive ingredient in our diets, can be found in bread, instant noodles, Girl Scout cookies, lipstick, Nutella and ice cream, to name a few.
12. During the peak of a total solar eclipse, a rainbow within its path turns red as shorter wavelengths of light, like blue and green, are more easily scattered at totality.
13. America’s approximately 100 historically Black colleges and universities have produced at least 70 percent of the country’s Black doctors and dentists; half of the Black lawyers; and 40 percent of Black engineers.
April
14. Americans discard roughly 36 million tons of plastic each year, which is more than any other country. But the plastic recycling rate has languished below 10 percent for decades.
15. Rats are prodigious breeders, with one pair having the potential to produce 15,000 descendants in a year.
16. Nearly half of Australia’s birds and 90 percent of its mammals, reptiles and frogs are found nowhere else on the planet.
17. Only 15 percent of previously married women say they want to do it again, according to a Pew Center for Research study. That’s half the portion of men who want to remarry.
May
18. A study from Goldman Sachs estimates that, by 2028, up to 70 million Americans will have tried Ozempic or similar drugs for weight loss.
19. Pew Research Center has found that about one-third of 18- to 29-year-olds say they get news regularly on TikTok, far outpacing other age groups.
20. About 60 percent of young Americans with severe depression receive no treatment, according to Mental Health America, a nonprofit research group.
21. In the United States, more than 60 percent of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck. The average American is in five- to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge of how they got there.
22. George Washington’s dentures were made from, among other things, hippo tusks.
23. In southwestern England’s cheese-chasing contest, dating to at least the early 1800s, an eight-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese flies down a steep hill, followed by people tumbling after. The first person to reach the bottom wins.
24. An 1843 portrait of Britain’s Queen Victoria, depicting a lock of her hair falling lavishly over her uncovered shoulder, was considered too overtly sexual to be shown to the public until 1977.
June
25. Recipes can’t be trademarked, but some can be ruled trade secrets, like the formula for Dr Pepper or KFC’s 11 herbs and spices.
26. As many as 95 percent of the planet’s fungal species have yet to be described, according to a 2023 report from Royal Botanic Garden, Kew.
27. After 69 years in the theme park business, the Walt Disney Company opened a marquee attraction based on a Black character: princess Tiana of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, a log flume ride that replaced Splash Mountain.
28. Globally, the number of lives lost to alcohol is about three million a year. (That’s about four times more than the number of women who die of breast cancer every year.)
29. A recent Bankrate survey found that 42 percent of U.S. adults who were married or living with a partner admitted to keeping a financial secret from their significant other.
30. According to a 2023 Ipsos survey, cornhole is the most-played sport in America, ahead of bowling, swimming and golf.
July
31. According to one 2020 United Nations study, an estimated 90 percent of female migrants traveling along the Mediterranean route were raped.
32. A study in Current Biology reported that Florida carpenter ants had been observed biting off and cleaning the injured limbs of afflicted nest mates, the first time amputation has been seen to be carried out by an ant species.
33. Los Angeles experienced an 81 percent increase in shoplifting in 2023, according to an analysis by Crosstown LA, a nonprofit newsroom.
34. According to Barcelona’s institute of regional and metropolitan studies, the water consumption of the average guest at a luxury hotel is five times that of a resident.
35. The sprinter Usain Bolt estimated that he ate 100 McDonald’s chicken nuggets each day at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, because they were a familiar food he knew his stomach could handle. He won three gold medals that Olympics.
August
36. For years, the C.I.A. collaborated with the Mafia to plot the assassination of Fidel Castro, who seized power in Cuba in 1959. Its various failed schemes included poison pills and a woman enlisted to seduce and murder Castro.
37. A person trying to escape an abusive relationship, on average, needs seven attempts to actually leave.
38. According to the Murder Accountability Project, which tracks homicide data nationwide, nearly 300,000 people have died in unsolved homicides since 1980.
September
39. China is the world’s largest food importer and needs to feed almost one-sixth of the world’s population with less than one-tenth of the world’s arable land, which has shrunk and degraded with heavy fertilizer use and pollution.
40. More hydrating than watermelon, tomatoes have a range of nutrients, including antioxidents like lycopene, which has been linked to lower risks of certain cancers.
41. The Dali, the container ship that slammed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, was as long as the height of the Eiffel Tower.
42. The most recent “hothouse” period in the Earth’s history was around 56 million years ago, when palm trees and alligators thrived in the Arctic Circle.
October
43. The Kremlin is using financial rewards to incentivize births. Russian women having their first child get a one-time payout of $6,700.
44. Countries have been losing roughly nine million acres of tropical forest a year over the past two decades. These forests are crucial for storing planet-warming carbon and curbing biodiversity loss.
45. As a rule of thumb, a $10 rise in the cost of a barrel of oil translates to a 24-cent rise in the cost of a gallon of gasoline.
46. Betsy Ross is no longer credited as the creator of the American flag. Historians insist the maker of the flag remains unknown.
47. In the South Korean province of Jeju, the haenyeo (“sea women”) dive and swim in the depths of the ocean without any breathing gear, harvesting seafood like conch, urchin and octopus, which they sell to support their families.
48. Americans spent $147 billion on their pets in 2023, which includes the costs of veterinary care and over-the-counter medicine, according to the American Pet Products Association, an industry group.
49. How long do crows hold a grudge? Based on his experiment, John Marzluff, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, estimates the birds remember those who have done them wrong for about 17 years.
November
50. Indonesia is home to myriad tribes and cultures, and to more than 700 native languages. It is the most linguistically diverse nation in the world after neighboring Papua New Guinea.
51. About 600 zombie movies have been released since 1920, more than half of them in the 21st century.
52. Only about a third of the countries in the United Nations have ever had a female head of the government. Just 13 of the body’s 193 member countries are currently led by women, according to the Pew Research Center.
53. Noise from fireworks can reach levels as high as 160 decibels or more. That’s louder than a jet plane taking off from 100 yards away or a jackhammer.
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54. When Lucille Ball became pregnant while filming “I Love Lucy” in the 1950s, she couldn’t actually say the word “pregnant” on television.
55. At 5,525 miles, the border separating the United States and Canada is the longest between any two countries.
56. The median Black family in the United States possesses about 15 percent of the wealth owned by the median white family.
December
57. Invented by the Parisian organ-maker Auguste Mustel in 1886, the celesta is a transposing instrument, meaning that its pitch is always an octave higher than the notes on the page.
58. Through its 149th and final show, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour sold more than $2 billion in tickets — double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history.
59. For only the second time since the start of the Major League Baseball draft in 1965, all but one of the first 10 picks in 2024 were college players.
60. About 800 million people across the world lack access to electricity, down from over 1.5 billion in 1998.
61. In 1945, Grand Rapids, Mich., became the first city in the world to begin intentionally fluoridating its water. A decade later, the rate of tooth decay among the city’s children had dropped by over 60 percent.
62. St. John, the smallest and wildest of the islands that make up the U.S. Virgin Islands, is two-thirds national park and has more mongooses than humans.
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