10 Things We Learnt In July, 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 July!

1: Strandbeest: Kinetic sculptures by Dutch artist Theo Jansen that appear to walk by themselves. They are made mostly from PVC piping. Jansen started making strandbeest in 1990 and comes to the beach with a new one every spring. Each year he observes how well the design survives the beach, then the ‘species’ is declared extinct and a new one is made. According to Jansen, he was inspired by the book ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ by Richard Dawkins. The strandbeest are now able to store air pressure to move in the absence of wind, and some can even change direction by themselves when they step in water.

2: The term ‘rare-earth mineral’ is somewhat of a misnomer. Rare earth elements themselves aren’t actually rare, but the capacity to refine them is. In terms of abundance in the Earth’s crust, most rare earths are not particularly remarkable, with cerium (the most common rare earth) being the 25th most abundant element – more abundant than copper. However, because rare earths are generally spread thinly and are found in compounds rather than pure deposits, they must be purified from enormous amounts of raw ore.

3: Rubber ducking: A debugging technique in which a programmer explains their code to a rubber duck. This can be a surprisingly effective strategy, as the act of explaining step by step what the code is supposed to do often causes the problem to become obvious. While originally referring to programming, rubber ducking can be an effective technique for general problem solving and also for learning, as attempting to explain something to yourself can reveal critical knowledge gaps you were previously unaware of.

4: Roman dodecahedron: Over 100 of these mysterious Ancient Roman objects have been discovered, but no one knows what they were for. These objects have 12 pentagonal sides with holes of varying diameter and balls positioned at each corner, and were usually cast from a copper alloy. They have been found all throughout the former territories of the Roman Empire including Roman Britain, but curiously have not been found in Italy. Suggested purposes range from measuring instruments and knitting tools to children’s toys and fortune-telling devices. Another theory is that they were simply made as a show of smithing ability – a testament of skill for potential customers.

5: The jus trium liberorum (‘the right of three children’): a system introduced in Ancient Rome around the turn of the millennium to encourage Romans citizens to have more children, due to concern over declining birth rates. It is one of the first known examples of a legal incentive for larger families, and seems to have been about as successful as modern efforts (that is to say, not very). Incentives included tax breaks, exemption from compulsory military service, and even allowed a woman to inherit her husband’s estate, provided they had at least 3 children (or 4 if they were a freed slave). Unfortunately, having 3 children still wasn’t appealing to most citizens, who instead began to find legal loopholes that would allow them to receive the jus trium liberorum without having 3 children. To combat this, anyone who caught a citizen cheating the system was entitled to a proportion of their inheritance. However, this reward was so lucrative that it created a huge professional spy industry, and so the reward had to be reduced. The jus trium liberorum still lasted around 500 years before it was repealed. By this time, its benefits were being handed out by consuls as personal favours.

6: A reconstruction of the world map of Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus. It shows the extent of European knowledge of the world around 500 BC. The Ancient Greeks ascribed particular importance to the coastlines and waterways, while inland features were comparatively undetailed.

7: Colourised footage of San Fransisco from 1906, recorded just four days before a devastating earthquake and subsequent fires would destroy most of what was captured. The footage was later found and dated based on the licence plates seen in the footage, as well as the presence of puddles near the end of the street.

8: The Mannerheim recording: The only known recording of Adolf Hitler speaking in his ‘normal’ voice, during a private conversation with Finnish military commander (and later president) Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim in 1942. Hitler would not allow his voice to be recorded in an unofficial capacity, but Finnish sound engineer Thor Damen decided to continue recording in secret after capturing Hitler’s public birthday message to Mannerheim. Hitler’s SS guards eventually noticed and made him stop, but he was allowed to keep the tape on condition that it was never released. The conversation mainly involves the Eastern front and the Soviet threat as Hitler tries to keep Finland on Germany’s side. When the recording was finally released in the late 1950s, many genuinely doubted its authenticity because they had only ever heard Hitler shouting, so it ‘didn’t sound like Hitler’.

9: One town in the Netherlands contains all 7 bridges depicted on Euro banknotes. Why were these bridges selected to be on the banknotes? They weren’t: the bridges depicted on Euro banknotes were designed first as fictional bridges that evoke general architectural styles found across the continent rather than specific landmarks, so as to avoid any potential disagreements. The town of Spijkenisse then decided to build every banknote bridge with coloured concrete.

10: Chekhov’s gun: A narrative principal named after Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who advised young playwrights that every element in a story should have a purpose. For example, if a story includes a gun, that gun should be fired or used in some way later on in the story, or else it should be removed. The use of this term has evolved over time, however, and it is now usually used to refer to something that is introduced into to a story, but will only become important later on, such as a gadget introduced at the start of a James Bond movie. Sometimes, a Chekov’s gun may be set up only to not ‘fire’ as a plot twist. Other variations have also been coined including ‘Chekov’s boomerang’, in which the Chekov’s gun appears to have fulfilled its role in the plot, only to become relevant again in an unexpected way much later on (a common theme in the Harry Potter series).