TYIL – This Year I Learnt
2020 AD – certainly one of the weirdest years in history since the World Wars with restrictions in place almost across the globe. But that also meant more time locked up trawling the interwebs. Which in turn provided an opportunity to capture and store the occasional bit of trivia which came up in covid-filled minefield that the web had become. So here goes, my sampling of the interesting (at least for me) learnings from 2020
- Swami Vivekananda had a 7-wicket haul in Eden Gardens (New Indian Express)
- Gini Index - is a measure of inequality of wealth distribution in a country (Wikipedia)
- 8,549,176,320 – the only number with all ten digits arranged in alphabetical order (Braingle)
- Kuuki o yomu – Japanese for the art of “reading the air” – knowing the unspoken societal rules with comprehensive understanding of the environment including non-verbal communication. Should be more interesting in these masked times. (BBC)
- Larry Tessler – the inventor of cut, copy, paste commands. The key reason why the volume of material on the internet keeps growing! (BBC)
- Pitt-Hanks Continuum – describing the likelihood of an actor winning the Academy Award based on how much their performance is like Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks in the roles they play. The more like Pitt an actor’s style and roles are, the less likely he is to win. Although now that Brad Pitt has won an Acting Oscar, maybe something to be relooked at! (Vanity Fair)
- Pheme (or Ossa) – Greek Goddess of Gossip – they have one for everything! (Theoi)
- Nintendo started as manufacturer of playing cards in 1889 in Kyoto. They still are in business of creating fun for people. (BBC)
- Shireen Kiash represented India in Cricket, Hockey and Basketball – a triple international. (Parsi Khabar). Learnt this from the Book "The Fire Burns Blue"
- Leavism – Trend of working on holidays. Need a new adaptation for 2020, where the very concept of a leave has gone for a toss. (The Guardian)
- Herfindahl Index - measure of market concentration (calculated by squaring the market share of each of the companies in the industry and then summing the resulting numbers) (Wikipedia)
- Exter’s Pyramid – for visualizing organization of asset classes in terms of risk and size. (Miles Franklin)
- Fernweh – German word for an “ache for travel” – especially relevant for all those afflicted by #wanderlust in the times of coronavirus. (BBC)
- Hunter’s Moon – A phenomenon creating another object bright as the Sun in the sky (Universe Today)
- Letteral Words – A word which can be pronounced using a few letters (e.g. Queue has same pronunciation as Q) (Link)
- In the 1970s there was a bus service between London & Sydney and London & Calcutta! (Indiatimes)
- Margherita pizza is named in honour of Queen Margherita’s visit to Naples in 1889. Also, pizza is a corruption of the word pita (the bread) (BBC)
- India Syndrome - described as the delusional behaviour which “hits people from developed Western countries who are looking for a cultural space that is pure and exotic, where real values have been preserved” (Firstpost)
- Veblean Good – Luxury goods whose demand increases as its price increases. (Investopedia)
- Hybris – Greek for outrageous arrogance that makes for abuse of power, which leads to the imposition of your will at all costs. (Wikipedia)
- Pointillism – creating an image from dots (Britannica)
- Hing – India is the largest consumer & yet is not grown in India at all (till now) (BBC)
- Aan (1952)- first Indian movie to get a global release. Thanks to Ruskin Bond’s “Journey Down the Years” (MovieMahal)
- King of Hearts is the only King in a standard suit of cards without a mustache (Technology)
- Daddles is the name of the cricketing duck created by Channel 9. All these years of seeing it didn't realise it had a name (Wikipedia
P.S. Here is the list for 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment