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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jordan Moore
The math used by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians was practical but not abstract. Their math didn’t have mathematical proofs, which were first developed by the Greeks.
“Forty” is the only number that’s spelt in alphabetical order in English. Four is also the only number that has the same number of letters as the number itself.
Noodling is catfish fishing with your bare hands. Due to dangers, such as drowning, noodling is illegal in most US states.
Hikaru dorodango is a Japanese art form in which earth and water are molded, and then carefully polished to create a delicate shiny sphere, resembling a billiard ball
“Randonautica” is an app that supposedly randomly generates local coordinates for users to check out their area.
suet,
sorghum,
sarsaparilla
Black Death
The Mongols catapulted infected corpses into the city, spreading the disease.
Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is a treaty signed in 1972
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which was signed in 1993
Greek Fire was an incendiary, napalm-like weapon used by the Byzantine Empire from 672 to 1453. The ingredients and process to make Greek Fire remain a mystery.
Israel is not a signatory of the BWC. The nation is suspected of having a biological weapons program but has never publicly acknowledged it.
the British possibly gave smallpox infected blankets to the Delaware Indians during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763,
The Vietcong traps known as “punji sticks” were deadly enough, but they were often made deadlier when the VC guerillas tipped the sharpened sticks with plant poison, feces,
defoliate
Napalm is simply the mixture of a flammable liquid and a gelling agent. The napalm used in most modern militaries is “napalm B.”
Egypt, South Sudan, and North Korea have not signed the CWC. Israel has signed but not ratified it, leading many to believe it has a chemical weapons program.
It is interesting to see the author remain silent on North Korea but express his suspicion on Israel.
The Hittites may have driven plague victims into enemy territory in the Levant in 1,324 BCE. Hittite King Suppiluliuma died from the same plague when infected Hittite soldiers returned.
Synesthesia
The actual condition is a lot more than this very narrow description.
Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI),
Dolphins can hear sounds 15 miles away.
A whip needs to travel faster than the speed of sound to make the cracking noise. That means a whip goes 767 miles per hour when it’s cracked.
The Alpheus or pistol shrimp is only about two inches long when fully grown, but it’s snapping claws can create 218 decibels of sound. That’s right up there with whales!
Hertz (Hz) is the measure of vibrations or sound waves per second. The range for humans to hear something is between 20 and 20,000 Hz.
The eruption of Mount Krakatoa on August 26, 1883 is the loudest recorded sound in history. The eruption was measured at 310 decibels and could be heard more than 3,000 miles away!
An “antipope” is a claimant to the papacy who was not properly elected by the College of Cardinals. Antipopes were frequent in the Middle Ages.
A royal imposter is different from a pretender. Pretenders are usually of the nobility or royal family, while an imposter is usually a con-artist with no royal background.
Valium, was named for the Latin word vale, which means “goodnight.” Valium is known to put people out for the night.
At the end of 2020, the global pharmaceutical industry was valued at $1.27 trillion. That’s a big jump from 2001 when it was valued at only $390 billion!
Cockroaches are a common prescription for burns, ulcers, and tuberculosis in China and South Korea. Roaches are also a common ingredient in cosmetics in those countries.
In the 1980s, ethnobotanist Wade Davis claimed that Haitian Voodoo zombies were created by a combination of tetrodotoxin from a pufferfish and bufotoxin from a toad. They were then “reanimated” with a natural drug, datura.
The US FDA declared cigarettes as “drug delivery devices” in 1995. But in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the FDA couldn’t regulate tobacco as a drug.
Rimonabant is a prescription drug used to treat severe obesity that hit the European market in 2006 but was pulled in 2008. It caused depression in 10% and suicidal thoughts in 1% of patients.
MKUltra Project
Halcion gets its name from the Greek word halcyon, which refers to calmness and quiet.
Chewing gum is only available by prescription in Singapore and only gum that’s “therapeutic,” such as nicotine gum, is allowed.
“Brackish water” refers to a body of water that has more salinity (salt) than freshwater, but less salt than seawater.
water with a salt content of greater than 30% is considered to be salt water.
it was once believed that all water on Earth arrived via comets and asteroids more than four billion years ago,
the release of hydrogen inside the planet also played a role.
Water exists in three properties - solid, gas, and liquid - but within each property, it has multiple forms. For example, ice, frost, and snow are all different forms of solid water.
Lake Baikal in Siberia is the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, comprising 23% of the world’s freshwater.
The hydrologic or water cycle has four primary stages: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and runoff. There are several sub-stages within each of these.
“Mpemba effect”
On January 12, 2007, a woman named Jennifer Strange died of water intoxication after drinking nearly two gallons of water
chagrin
Triple point is the state at which a substance is solid, liquid and gas. Water’s triple point is when its temperature is 32.018 °F and its pressure is 611.657 pascals.
North Atlantic icebergs, like the one the Titanic hit, are very hard compared to regular ice, but they are still only 10% as hard as concrete.
