I link to to posts on kottke quite a bit. He has a list of a things he learned this year. Some of the ones I found fascinating:

  1. There are satellites that were launched in the early to mid 60s that are still operational.
  2. Multicellular life developed on Earth more than 25 separate times.

Of course, I have to include the one about the Parker Solar Probe:

  1. The Parker Solar Probe is the fastest object ever built by humans — at its closest approach to the Sun, it will reach speeds of 430,000 mph (690,000 km/h), or 0.064% the speed of light.

And:

  1. Human ancestors almost went extinct 900,000 years ago. “A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.”
  2. “People who enroll in genetic studies are genetically predisposed to do so.”