Things I Learned - February 2026

Happy March. A belated (as always) edition of February’s Things I Learned.

Things I Learned

1. Leon Trostky was assassinated in Mexico City with an ice axe. (source)

2. Germany is the third largest economy in the world. (source)

3. The Chinese use a slightly different set of 7 colors to describe the rainbow: instead of green, blue, indigo, violet, they use green, light green, blue, and purple. (source)

4. The word “copper” comes from the name “Cyprus”, which was a major source of copper in antiquity. (source)

5. In the history of World Chess Championships, only a single game has ended in actual checkmate (1929; game 8). (source)

6. The wealth gap between the 1st and 2nd wealthiest person in the world is larger than the gap between the 2nd wealthiest and the poorest person in the world (source).

7. The last U.K. Prime Minister to complete a full term was David Cameron in 2015. (source)

8. Since 1960, average global life expectancy has increased by about 1 year on average every 3 years. (source)

9. Military conscription in North Korea lasts a decade. (source).

10. There were women gladiators. (source)

11. In 1870, more than half of all American men either owned or performed labor on a farm. (source)

12. Since the release of ChatGPT, America has: 7% more software developers, 10% more radiologists and 21% more paralegals than before. (source)

13. Tug of war was an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920. (source)

14. The importation of slaves from abroad was made illegal in the US in 1808, more than 50 years before the start of the civil war. (source)

15. Since 1970, the average federal income tax rate paid by the top 1% in the US has increased; as has the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 1%, which has more than doubled from ~19% to ~45%. (source; source)

On This Day in Previous Editions:

• (February 2025): Brunei is the only country in the world that has a non-contiguous working week, consisting of Monday to Thursday plus Saturday. (source)

• (February 2024): The mailing of people weighing less than 50 pounds (i.e., children) was occasionally practiced due to a legal ambiguity when the United States first introduced domestic parcel post in 1913. The children were carried along by mail carriers, but were not put in boxes. (source)

Articles I Liked

• Dithering, Part 1

• Were Classical Statues Painted Horribly?

Last Thoughts

This edition was a bit brief; I had hoped to feature some miscellaneous data explorations I’ve been working on but they will have to wait for March 31. Stray highlights of my last month:

• spending a week in London, where I paid a visit to the British Museum (several of my facts were from there, as well as some other ones that didn’t make it¹). I very much wanted to see the Wes Anderson exhibit at the Design Museum, but couldn’t get my hands on tickets.

  

  Overseen at the British Museum: “Black-figured baby feeder in the shape of a mouse decorated with sea monsters” . Yeah, why not.

• A quick trip to Chicago to participate in a conference on AI in Asset Management.

• A talk with John Arnold.

• Learning how to play Mahjong.

• The video game lounge at Midway airport.

Lowlights

• a particularly poor showing at Odd Lots trivia (apologies to my teammates).

Until next time!

1. I don’t think I knew that Hercules died when he was accidentally poisoned by his wife?