10 Things We Learnt In February, 2024

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Here at Gowing Life, we are keeping our fun record of everything we learn in 2024, be it longevity-related or something else entirely. Here is a selection of our newly acquired neural connections for the month of February!

1: Submerging eiderdown in water: Eiderdown comes from the chests of eider ducks – female ducks pluck their own feathers and place them in their nests to keep their young warm. 75% of the World’s eiderdown comes from Iceland and is prized for its lightness, softness and insulating effects. As you can see from this video, eiderdown is also very hydrophobic.

2: The largest car theft in history: In 1974, North Korea imported 1,000 Volvo 144 models from Sweden alongside other mechanical equipment. However, North Korea never paid for the cars. To this day, North Korea still owes Sweden over 230 million euros for unpaid imports. Some Swedish Volvos still roam the streets of Pyongyang.

3: A California lawmaker wants to introduce a bill to physically prevent cars from speeding. Cars made and sold in the state would be equipped with a speed limiter that would prevent cars from going more than 10mph over the speed limit (based on GPS data).

4: This map of countries claiming to be democratic. Countries in blue claim to be democratic, countries in green claim to be democratic but do not allow opposition parties, and countries in red do not claim to be democratic.

5: This is the machine infernale, a homemade 25-barrel volley gun built to assassination King Louis Philippe I of France in 1835. It was fired at the King from a window overlooking the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. It fired an estimated 400 projectiles at once, killing 18 people and wounding another 22. It also wounded its creator as several barrels exploded. The King suffered a graze to his forehead.

6: The Lost Army of Cambyses, a formation of 50,000 Persian soldiers that, according to legend, disappeared during a Saharan sandstorm while on their way to Egypt in 525 BC. Though the truthfulness of this story is unknown, this has not stopped multiple expeditions from venturing into the desert in search of traces of the army. Though some potential weapons and human remains have been found, there is no definitive evidence for the lost army’s existence.

7: Rubies and sapphires are almost entirely composed of the same material – an aluminium oxide called corundum. Their colours come from trace amounts of other elements. Chromium gives rubies their red colour, while the classic blue sapphires contain iron and titanium.

8: One of the first images of the Earth taken from space. It was taken in 1946 by a camera on board a captured V2 rocket. The camera took one photograph every 1.5 seconds during its flight, reaching a maximum altitude of 105 km – 5 times higher than any picture that had been taken before.

9: Men’s clothes tend to have buttons on the right side, while women’s clothes tend to have them on the left. It seems like a pointless convention, but there may be a historical reason for this. According to the most popular theory, clothing worn by wealthy women following the renaissance became so complicated that they needed servants to help them put it on. Having the buttons on the left would have made it easier for right-handed servants to do them up.

10: Wolves roaming the streets of Chernobyl appear to have acquired genetic mutations making them more resistant to cancer. It’s even possible these mutations might teach us how to better treat cancer in humans.