fun facts for the next time someone asks

There is no formula, scoring system or checklist. One thing to remember is that it is not our intent to honor the dead; we leave the tributes to the eulogists. We seek only to report deaths and to sum up lives, illuminating why, in our judgment, those lives were significant. The justification for the obituary is in the story it tells.

Compassion Fade : People have more compassion for small groups of victims than larger groups, because the smaller the group the easier it is to identify individual victims.

Anscombe’s Quartet : Four sets of numbers that look identical on paper (mean average, variance, correlation, etc.) but look completely different when graphed. Describes a situation where exact calculations don’t offer a good representation of how the world works.

India had fewer than 10 billionaires two decades ago, when Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother first appeared on the Forbes billionaire list after their father, company founder Dhirubhai Ambani, died. Now, the country is the world’s third-biggest source of billionaires after China and the U.S.

India’s 200 billionaires have a combined net worth of... See more

One could also be “crushed” — broken down or destroyed — by sadness or stress, for example. Kory Stamper, a senior editor of lexicography at Dictionary.com, said this figurative sense of “crush” developed alongside the literal meaning. “The historical record is full of the crush of melancholy, the crush of despondency, the crush of death,” Ms. Stam... See more

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Perhaps because names are so crucial and personal, naming things can feel uniquely human. And until a little over a decade ago, scientists predominantly thought that was true. Then, in 2013, a study suggested that bottlenose dolphins use namelike calls. Scientists have since found evidence that parrots, and perhaps whales and bats, use calls that i... See more

A bibliophagist is a devourer of books.

50 years ago today, Cleveland hosted 'Ten-Cent Beer Night' against the Texas Rangers. About 60,000 beers were consumed by 25,134 fans, seven people were sent to the hospital, and the game was stopped due to drunken rioting. The Rangers were declared winners via forfeit. https://t.co/2nMnhYB7N9