A list of curious facts
One: In parts of Africa, they have found a novel way to avert human-elephant conflict: living bee hives deployed as fences to protect crops. Why it works: Elephants are terrified of bees! Scientific American has more on this innovative preservation tool.
Two: Paper Clip has a short but illuminating Twitter thread on the story behind this amazing image of two Marathi women playing table tennis in the colonial era. They were among widows and single mothers being trained by Poona Seva Sadan—which taught them employable skills and, yes, sports.
Three: Did you know that Ian Fleming named his most famous secret agent after an American ornithologist named James Bond? He once said in an interview: “I’d read a book of his, and when I was casting about for a natural-sounding name for my hero, I recalled the book and lifted the author’s name outright.” Smithsonian magazine has more on this cool bit of trivia.
Four: If mummies had faces, they would look something like this. Scientists extracted DNA from three Egyptians who lived between 2,023 and 2,797 years ago—and reconstructed their faces in 3D. Cnet has the story. You can see them below.
Five: Another cool use of cutting edge tech: teaching a machine to complete an unfinished symphony by Beethoven. The 10th Symphony was little more than some musical notes and a handful of ideas jotted down by the composer—who died soon after. Now, 196 years later, AI has created the rest of the score, and it will be unveiled later this month. One of the leads on the project describes how they did it on The Conversation.
Six: Everyone farts all the time. That's the finding of an international survey which found 81% of the respondents had experienced flatulence in the past 24 hours, while 60% said they had a rumbling stomach, and 58% had belched. Just saying… you’re in good company :) (Gizmodo)
