SatStats

On This Day:
1363
Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.
1791
HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.
1813
Creek War – Fort Mims massacre: Creek “Red Sticks” kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1862
American Civil War – Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1909
Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
1918
Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
1984
STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

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Urukagina, the leader of the Sumerian city-state of Girsu/Lagash, led a popular movement that resulted in the reform of the oppressive legal and governmental structure of Sumeria. The oppressive conditions in the city before the reforms is described in the new code preserved in cuneiform on tablets of the period. In this important code is found the first written reference to the concept of liberty (amagi or amargi, literally, “return to the mother”), used in reference to the process of reform.

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Organic food is neither healthier nor better for the environment; it also uses pesticides. [Scientific American]


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How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?

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There have been at least 33 crypto kidnappings around the world this year. The case against William Duplessie and John Woeltz, who are accused of holding Italian tourist Michael Carturan captive in a $75,000 a month Nolita townhouse and torturing him for weeks in an attempt to get the password to his cryptocurrency accounts, would be the first known occurrence in New York.

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Ten-year-old prodigy WFM Bodhana Sivanandan stunned the nation in the 2025 British Chess Championship in Liverpool, becoming the youngest woman ever to beat a grandmaster and the youngest-ever to earn the Woman International Master title.

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At least three people have been killed and five injured in a fire blamed on protesters at a regional parliament building in eastern Indonesia.

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The Dutch are quietly shifting towards a four-day work week

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SatStats

Federal spending has settled at a new nonemergency height of more than 23% of GDP, far above federal revenue.

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U.S. births are down 10% and deaths up 25% between 2010 and 2023, according to a new CDC report.

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The U.S. federal government now spends almost $1 trillion a year in interest payments to service the national debt.

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New European car registrations of Tesla vehicles totaled 8,837 in July, down 40% year-on-year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.China's BYD recorded 13,503 new registrations in July, up 225% annually.

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The Pirates are 39-30 at home, which is a 91-win pace. They're also 19-45 on the road, which is a ghastly 115-loss trend.

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U.S. median age increased from 37.2 in 2010 to 39.1 in 2023, in part because of a growing share of older adults.

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Almost 60% of the volume of options traded are those with one day left to expiry.

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Legalization of online sports betting generates an 8% increase in credit card debt among sports betters.
The poor are disproportionately affected: low-income households spend 32% more on betting than high-income households.

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American baby names trends shifted from family names a century ago to popular names a generation ago to popular endings today. A generation of people named Jason has given way to babies with -son endings: Mason, Jackson, Grayson, and Carson. Today, 48% of the top 500 baby names share only ten endings.


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Going to the moon was never popular. The only time a majority of Americans supported the Apollo program was right after the Apollo 11 landing, when 53% did.

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Negative TV coverage of gas prices starts when gas hits $3.50 per gallon. Each 50-cent increase in gas prices generates an additional 7.5 percentage points of coverage. Fox News covers gas prices most often.

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And, finally, It takes twice as long to cook a chicken today compared to 100 years ago because twenty-first-century chickens get less exercise.