Tom Whitwell treats us to another catalogue of facts, lessons and observations—see previously below—gleaned from the past twelve months. It’s well worth your while to peruse the retrospective list in its entirety and some of things new to us included (5) the use of meteor bursts in point-to-point terrestrial communications, harnessing the ion trails of microscopic debris burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere to transport compressed data-packets with fidelity over thousands of kilometres, used to keep in touch with off-shore rigs and with other applications, 
(29) to encourage tax compliance and accurate reporting, every printed receipt in Taiwan bears a lottery number with a quarter-million pound jackpot and (45) the government of Denmark pays an honorarium to amateur metal detectorists for archaeological artefacts in accordance with a law on the books since 1241 called the Danefรฆ. A few others we had come across in our own meanderings—like how a gram of silica gel has the surface area equivalent of two basket ball courts but there is not much cross-over—and yet very much appreciated learning how another arrived at these fascinating and unexpected facts.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the Ludlow Typograph (with synchronopticรฆ), assorted links to revisit plus more obscure words
twelve years ago: China’s lunar missions plus poverty thoughts
thirteen years ago: seasonal hot drinks
fourteen years ago: EU sovereign debt crisis
sixteen years ago: the iconoclasm of climate change
