Some information, when you are exposed to it, can be quite surprising. Is there a fact that blows your mind?
Share why if you wish.
Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
Some information, when you are exposed to it, can be quite surprising. Is there a fact that blows your mind?
Share why if you wish.
While I had intended on writing something more light-hearted here, I am consumed by the recent events in Minnesota regarding the violent ICE presence. This is taken from a Facebook entry I posted yesterday:
“I’m hopeful because more and more elected leaders and members of the general public think that ICE tactics have gone too far. But I am also struck by the polling that shows that 26% of the general public thinks the tactics are about right, and 11% thinks they have not gone far enough. Thirty-seven percent are alright with the current state of ICE violence or think it needs to be ratcheted up. Who are these people?!”
There are several. The one that I’m thinking of at the moment is that Harvard University, the learned institution, had astronomy classes that taught that the sun orbited around the Earth.
The reason? At the time of Harvard’s founding, that was the consensus scientific understanding. The helio-centric model of the solar system came later.
So the real oddity here, I suppose, is that the idea that the sun is the center of the solar system has so recently been introduced and then generally accepted. The idea is younger than Harvard.
Here’s another: Between the time that Herman Melville wrote and published his novel Moby Dick and the time Melville died (a span of 40 years), the book sold only 5000 copies and he considered it a failure. It was only after his death that it became well known, and is now considered a classic. It sells more than 5000 copies every year, nearly two centuries later.