10 Things We Learnt In April, 2026

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Here at Gowing Life, we are keeping our fun record of everything we learn in 2026, be it longevity-related or something else entirely. Here is a selection of our newly acquired neural connections for the month of April!

1: A clear view of Mars’s Northern ice cap, which is mostly composed of water with a surface layer of dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) around 2 metres thick. During each Martian summer, this dry ice sublimes (changes from a solid directly into a gas).

2: A video from NASA showing the trajectory of the Artemis II mission with in-scale distances.

3: You’ve heard of a euphemism, but have you hear of its opposite, the dysphemism? While euphemisms are about using words with more positive connotations in order to say something less palatable or acceptable, then dysphemisms do the opposite, using words to add derogatory meaning. For example, instead of calling someone untrustworthy, you might call them a snake. Many commonly used dysphemisms are actually former euphemisms. For example, the word ‘retard’ was originally introduced as a more polite term for those with intellectual disability, as previously used terms like ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’ had developed negative connotations. Of course, the word ‘retard’ has since become far more dysphemic that than any of the words that preceded it. A term was coined to describe this trend: the euphemism treadmill.

4: Jevon’s paradox: Technological advancements that lead to more efficient consumption of a resource often don’t lead to a reduced consumption of said resource – in fact, resource use often increases. This paradox gets its name from English economist William Stanley Jevons, who observed that as the steam engine became more efficient, coal consumption did not decrease. Rather, steam engines became cheaper to run and spread to more industries, so many more steam engines were built and total coal consumption increased. This concept can be applied to many resources, including water (the ‘reservoir effect’, where construction of reservoirs increases development and potentially increases the risk of water shortages) and more recently to computing power and AI (as algorithms become more efficient, companies simply build more powerful algorithms that use the same amount of computing power).

5: Why Friday the 13th? It is not particularly clear why the number 13 is considered unlucky in the West, and even less clear why it became associated with Friday. In fact, Friday the 13th as an especially unlucky day appears to be a relatively recent superstition, but there is little solid evidence for where it actually originated. While various theories exists as to why 13 is considered unlucky (such as there being 13 attendees at the last supper), the only theory for the link between Friday and the number 13 appears to be the arrest of the Knights Templar by King Philip IV of France, which occurred on Friday, October 13, 1307. Even so, the first known suggestion of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th is at most a little under 200 years old. In the 1834 play Les Finesses des Gribouilles, a character says, “I was born on a Friday, December 13th, 1813 from which come all of my misfortunes”.

6: The Egyptian pyramids were not built by slaves, but by paid civilian workers. Why then is the imagery of slaves working on the pyramids so prominent? As usual, it’s partly Herodotus’s fault. The Greek historian specifically states that 100,000 slaves were used to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and the association of Ancient Egypt with slavery was further reinforced by Hollywood, such as in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments. However, while slaves were present throughout Ancient Egypt, more recent archaeological evidence from burial sites suggests that those working on the pyramids were free civilians paid for their labour. The idea of the vain Pharaoh working thousands of slaves to death to raise their pyramid, while compelling, appears to be complete fiction. It is possible that Herodotus, visiting Egypt around 2000 years after the pyramids were built, simply misunderstood or was misinformed… or he just thought it would make for a better story.

7: Ye Olde English: The archaic cliché ye was never actually pronounced ‘ye’ – in fact, it was never really written ‘ye’ either. In old and middle English, the sound ‘th’ had its own character, þ (thorn). However, when the early printing press started to be used in England, most were imported from mainland Europe, which predominantly used the Latin alphabet without the þ. Thus, the þ was substituted with either th or y, with th eventually prevailing as the predominant way to denote the sound. Thus, many old texts read ye instead of the, but it was never supposed to be pronounced as ‘ye’. Further exacerbating this misinterpretation is the fact that poorly written or smudged þ in handwritten texts often look like ‘y’. In fact, even the scholars of the time appeared to struggle to tell the difference, often placing a dot above the y in an attempt to further differentiate it from the þ.

8: The Hunley submarine: A submarine built in 1863 that was used in the American civil war by the confederate side. It is known for being the first combat submarine to sink a warship, and also for the fact that it sank 3 times within a year of launching (and no, not the kind of sinking a submarine is supposed to do). It was launched in July 1863. In August, the Hunley sank when its captain accidentally stepped on the lever that would make the sub dive while a hatch was still open, resulting in 5 deaths. It was raised back up, but it sank again in October during a mock attack, resulting in the deaths of all 8 of the crew, including its namesake and inventor Horace Lawson Hunley. After being raised a 2rd time, the Hunley made its successful attack on the Union warship USS Housatonic in February 1884, sinking it with a spar torpedo (basically a bomb on the end of a stick that was attached to the front of submarine). However, the Hunley also sank along with the entire crew, quite possibly because it was too close to the Housatonic when the torpedo exploded. The wreck of the Hunley was only located in 1995.

9: The Battle of Cherbourg (1864): A 1 vs 1 ship battle between a United States Navy warship (USS Kearsarge) and a Confederate States Navy warship (CSS Alabama) that occurred off the North coast of France. The Kearsarge had been pursuing the Alabama for 2 years when the confederate ship was forced to stop at the port at Cherbourg for repairs. Kearsarge caught up with her and, unable to attack while the Alabama was in a French port, decided to ‘blockade’ the ship. The Alabama decided it would ‘duel’ the Kearsarge and, after being escorted out of French waters by the French navy, engaged the Kearsarge and was sunk. Because of this, many spectators were able to travel to the coast in advance in order to spectate the battle. While he was not there himself, French painter Édouard Manet painted the battle based on witness descriptions.

10: A Rose.com By Any Other Name: A study published in 2001, near the peak of the dot-com bubble, that documents the massive stock price boost that could be gained simply by adding ‘.com’ to the name of one’s company. This gain in stock value occurred irrespective of whether the company was actually involved with the internet, as traders would simply buy anything with ‘.com’ in the name without asking questions.

This “dotcom” effect produces cumulative abnormal returns on the order of 74 percent for the 10 days surrounding the announcement day. The announcement day effect is also similar across all firms, regardless of the firm’s level of involvement with the Internet.