The goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important, not trivia, and that are known to be true yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many.
Superfact 11: United States, Europe and the Pacific Ocean Are Bigger Than You Might Think
The area of the United States is around 9,8 million square kilometers
The area of continental United States is around 8.1 million square kilometers
The area of Europe is around 10.2 million square kilometers
Earth’s total land area is 148.9 million square kilometers
The area of the Pacific Ocean is 165.3 million square kilometers
The area of the whole earth is 510 million square kilometers
The United States
The United States is much bigger than many Europeans think. Europe is much bigger than many Americans think. Many of us don’t realize that one of the five oceans, the Pacific Ocean, is one third of earth’s entire surface and cover a larger area than all landmass on earth. Since so many of us are surprised to hear these facts and they are not under dispute among experts, they constitute a super-fact, or a few super-facts in my opinion.
Map of the United States. Alaska and Hawaii are not to scale. Alaska is double as big as Texas. Stock Vector ID: 2247501877 by HazimAlfi.
Some time ago I was talking to a Swedish friend of mine who told me something along the lines of “the United States isn’t so big as they say. We drove through half a dozen states in an afternoon.” I asked her, “which states?” It turns out that was the New England states, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and finally New Jersey and New York (New York city). You can do that drive in an afternoon, but you cannot drive through Texas in an afternoon, not even in a day.
The distance from Texarkana to El Paso is 1,300 kilometers and takes more than 12 hours to drive on the highway without stopping. I’ve come across many Europeans who underestimate the size of the United States. The mistake they make is that they don’t realize that while some US states are small, other states are much bigger. Just look at the map.
Political map of Europe (including European Russia) Stock Vector ID: 319593110 by okili77.
Europe
Interestingly Americans often make the same mistake about Europe. I quite often hear Americans claim that distances are so small in Europe. You can drive through a country in a couple of hours and the language changes. It’s a trope that seems to be repeated every time Europe is discussed on social networks.
Today, as I was talking to a friend of mine about our recent trip to Sweden and Norway, my friend told me that it was good that distances in Europe were so short so we could easily travel between the places I was telling him about. He was more than surprised to hear that was not the case. The distance between where we were Sweden and Norway was too large for anything other than planes considering we only had 10 days.
The distance from Malmö in southern Sweden to Karesuando in northern Sweden is more than 1,900 kilometers and takes more than 21 hours to drive without stopping. In fact, by area, Sweden is bigger and longer than California.
The Pacific Ocean
Last but not least. Earth has seven continents (Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia), and five oceans (the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern (Antarctic) Oceans). But just one ocean, the Pacific Ocean cover a third of earth’s entire surface. This may come as a surprise to many. See the globe photorealistic 3d illustration below.
Earth Pacific Ocean view Stock Illustration ID: 1617553012 by Matis75.
Superfact 9 : We are living in relatively peaceful times
Despite all the wars going on, the world was filled with a lot more war and violence in the past. Despite the grim news reports we are living in relatively peaceful times.
If I asked you, what are the two biggest wars going on the world today (as of September 2024), you would probably say that it is the Russia / Ukraine war and the Israel / Gaza war. Well, unless you are really well informed, it would come as a surprise that there are more devastating wars going on in the world. For example, there is currently a big civil war going on in Sudan that began in April 2023.
According to the latest issue of the Economist perhaps 150,000 people have been slaughtered in this civil war, and 10 million people have fled their homes, and a famine is emerging that could kill 2.5 million people by the end of the year. This war is likely to destabilize neighboring countries and is sponsored by Russia and Middle Eastern states. It’s likely the biggest crisis in the world but most likely you’ve never heard of it.
In the recent Tigray war in Ethiopia between 162,000 and 600,000 people were killed according to Wikipedia. The Tigray war is mostly over, but the point I am trying to make is that you probably have never heard of it. You cannot use the impressions given by the amount of media attention a conflict gets to decide on how severe it is. You’ve got to check the statistics and compare, and the statistics might be quite unintuitive if you have relied on media attention as a metric.
What was the most devastating war in the 19th century?
So, to the next question. What was the most devastating war in the 19th century? If you say the American civil war, you are not correct (estimated 650,000+ deaths). A somewhat better answer is the Napoleonic wars (and estimated 4 million deaths). But none of the answers are correct. The Taiping rebellion in China was the worst. Estimates of the conflict’s death toll range between 20 and 30 million people. Some estimates say 100 million, which would make it the most devastating war in human history.
But did you hear about it? Again, you’ve got to check the statistics, and not rely on your impressions. I am saying this because the claim that deaths from wars and violence have declined over the last few decades is a quite unintuitive claim and yet it is true. That’s why it is a super fact.
Taiping Rebels at Shanghai China in 1853-54. ‘Small Swords’ refers to daggers used by warriors or martial artists in close combat. 19th century print. Stock Illustration ID: 237232531 by Everett Collection.
As this article in the Our World In Data states “While every war is a tragedy, the data suggests that fewer people died in conflicts in recent decades than in most of the 20th century. Countries have also built more peaceful relations between and within them.”. It should be noted that even though killing has never been as efficient as it is in the present, in the past a lot of civilians died from famine and disease resulting from the wars.
For example, the Spanish flu following World War I killed between 25 to 50 million people. I should say those numbers are typically not included in the deaths from World War I. The number of deaths from World War I are estimated at 20 million. 10 million combatants and 10 million civilians.
Death rate from wars since 1946. The uptick in 2022 is largely due to the Ethiopian Tigray war with 162,000–600,000 killed and the invasion of Ukraine, which US and BBC estimates at more than 200,000 deaths (but estimates from most other sources are less).
One problem with this kind of statistics is that the estimates vary, especially with respect to civilian causalities. In addition, very big wars lasting a few years create very bumpy graphs with large spikes making it harder to identify trends.
However, by listing estimated war deaths of the biggest wars, genocides and democides since the 1800’s you can see that deaths from this type of violence have overall been reduced over the last few decades. A note, democides are mass killings of civilians but are not necessarily directed at an ethnic group (democide include genocide).
The links below are mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica, but also from Wikipedia, the Census bureau, and a couple of other sources.
As I said, the numbers are estimates and not hard data, especially with respect to civilian casualties. However, you can see a trend going from several conflicts with numbers in the tens of millions before 1950, then numbers in millions until 2000/2007 and then during the last couple of decades the numbers have been less than a million. This does not cover homicide rates but even in that case we can see a reduction even though it is less distinct.
In this graph we can see that homicide rate worldwide has been reduced somewhat since the mid 1990’s. This graph is also taken from the Our World in Data website and they in turn used various databases from UN, WHO, etc.
Also remember that in the past there were a lot less people on earth, so relatively speaking a million deaths was a lot bigger number back then. In summary, despite all the wars going on, our world is less violent than it used to be.
Superfact 8 : US Violent Crime Nearly Cut in Half Since 1990
Despite all the news reports about rampant crime, the US violent crime rate has fallen to half of what it was in the early 1990’s.
I’ve known for a while that violent crime in the US has been going down substantially since 1990. However, quite often when I mention this people refuse to believe it. When I visit NextDoor, the hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods, I see people complaining about rising crime, and especially rising violent crime. The news media and the newspapers are filled with violent crime stories, murders, mass shootings, assaults, rape, and robberies. It seems to be getting worse and worse. We are living in scary times, aren’t we?
The Better Angels of our Nature
A couple of years ago I bought a book by Steven Pinker with the title The Better Angels of our Nature, why violence has declined, which contradicted the violence is getting worse narrative. In the book he claims that violence is trending down worldwide and that includes US violent crime.
In 1987 I received a Christmas present from the parents of a fellow student whom I had been tutoring. I was an exchange student to the United States from Sweden at the time. The Christmas present in question was the World Almanac of 1987. I loved it and ever since I’ve bought the World Almanac every year. If you open the pages for crime statistics in the United States in the World Almanac you see the same thing, violent crime in the US is declining.
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2023.
Statistics
Below is what the World Almanac 2023 says about the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents in the United States (page 114). The data sources were : Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Crime in the United States 2020. I also included property crimes in the last column to show that non-violent crimes have declined as well.
Year
All violent crime
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter
Rape
Robbery
Aggravated assault
All property crime (non-violent)
1990
729.6
9.4
41.1
256.3
422.9
5,073.1
1995
684.5
8.2
37.1
220.9
418.3
4,590.5
2000
506.5
5.5
32.0
145.0
324.0
3,618.3
2005
469.0
5.6
31.8
140.8
290.8
3,431.5
2008
458.6
5.4
29.8
145.9
277.5
3,214.6
2011
387.1
4.7
27.0
113.9
241.5
2,905.4
2014
361.6
4.4
26.6
101.3
229.2
2,574.1
2016
386.6
5.4
30.0
102.9
248.3
2,451.6
2017
383.8
5.3
30.7
98.6
249.2
2,362.9
2018
370.4
5.0
31.0
86.1
248.2
2,209.8
2019
368.6
5.1
31.4
81.8
250.4
2,130.6
2020
387.8
6.5
27.6
73.9
279.7
1,958.2
The graph below is taken from this article from the Pew Research Center tells the same story. The graph. It shows that the US violent crime rate has nearly halved since the 1990’s. There is a slight uptick in crime for the years 2020 and 2021 but according to this PBS article the downward trend has continued in 2022 and 2023.
The four graphs show that both violent crime and property crime has declined since 1990. Click on the picture to see the Pew Research article it is taken from.
Since this is a surprising fact that some does not even want to acknowledge (in my experience) I consider this a super fact.
Do you feel it is hard to believe that violent crime in the US has been declining over the last few decades?
This post is not another super fact but a blog note about the blog and a request for opinions. My most recent post included three super facts combined into one post. The three super facts were:
There has been a steep decline in extreme poverty
There has been a steep decline in child mortality
War and violence have declined
The post became very long. It had more than 2,000 words and several graphs filled with additional text and data. In addition, I rushed the third super fact. The discussion of the third super fact was muddy, incomplete, and it lacked references. Therefore, I deleted the third super fact. I think that was the right thing to do, especially since I had planned a separate super fact entry for it anyway with the title “We are living in relatively peaceful times”. I will write that post for it soon.
However, I’ve realized that some of my other posts have problems as well. The second half of the post titled “Two events may be simultaneous for some but not for others” feature equations and complex reasoning that physics nerds may appreciate but not typical readers. I don’t think I need to delete that section but, in the future, I need separate such sections from the rest and make it clear that I don’t expect readers to read that, well unless they are physics or math nerds, etc.
Expand your mind. Smash your old beliefs with new surprising facts, so called super facts. But there’s no need to confuse or bore your mind. Shutterstock ID: 1685660680 by MattL_Images
So, I am wondering what you all think about this and if you have suggestions or opinions on how I can improve my super fact posts. Blog notes are very much welcome.
Bamboozlement Misunderstandings Big Surprises and My Journey
“Bamboozlement Misunderstandings Big Surprises and My Journey” is the first post of my super-factful blog. The goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important and known to be true yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many.
These facts are not trivia, they are accepted as true by the experts in the relevant fields, the evidence that the fact is true is impressive, and they are important to the way we view the world and to what we believe, and despite being known to be true they are hard pills to swallow for many. They are not scientific theories or complicated insights but facts that can be stated simply. In a paragraph or less. They may need more explanation than what you can fit in one paragraph, but they can be stated, perhaps with a brief explanation in just one paragraph.
Some important facts that are known to be true may still be hard pills to swallow. Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com
In lack of a better term, I am referring to these facts as “Newstrade” and so far, I’ve made a list of more than a hundred. In addition to just stating the fact I will explain why we know that the fact is true and discuss the evidence, give background information and provide links. My posts will not be deep dives into the topics in question. However, I will try to remember to provide links for further study.
Why I Created This Blog
The reason for wanting to create this blog is not to prove anyone wrong, but because I think a list of important and true but often disputed, misunderstood or surprising facts would be a very interesting list. I am hoping that you my readers as well as I will learn from it. I am hoping it will be a growth opportunity for all of us. If we learn that something we used to believe is wrong, well that’s progress, that’s growth.
I am hoping to make the site interactive. I am open to suggestions for super-facts as well as challenges to super-facts that I’ve posted, or other things I have written that someone may disagree with. In fact, I would find that helpful, as long as we can discuss the issue in good faith and keep it friendly. I should say I would like to avoid politics.
I will certainly be open to counter arguments but let’s keep it friendly. Photo by Vera Arsic on Pexels.com
My Journey
One thing I would like to make clear in this post is that I have been bamboozled, misled, and I have misunderstood facts and information, and I have disputed information that turned out to be true. I have also seen others stubbornly insist on things that were obviously false. As time as passed, I have come to realize that it is very common that people believe what is known to be false, and conversely reject facts that are known to be true, and I am including myself in that. We are all guilty but naturally we are not aware of this and being told you are wrong can sometimes be unpleasant.
It is not just about being misinformed or ignorant about the topic in question. It is very much about arrogance, thinking you know when you don’t. I have often heard people say the darndest and strangest things about topics they obviously know almost nothing about and with total confidence on top of it (that includes myself). I have seen people with not even a paragraph worth of knowledge on a topic (and that little piece was wrong) lecture experts and professors on the topic, completely unaware of how silly that is.
However, it is also about a lack of curiosity and protecting your belief system or political viewpoint or tribal belonging. But I think it mostly is about arrogance. Do you think you know better than the scientific consensus even though you don’t even have a degree in the field? Do you think you know better than the community of experts? How much do you know about the evidence? Are you really interested in the evidence? Learning and growth requires humility, open mindedness and consideration for the evidence.
Consider the evidence, respect expertise and be humble. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
First Super Fact
My first super fact, which is discussed in my next post, is “We Know That the Earth is Billions of Years Old”. The scientific community states that Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans evolved over millions of years. This is not in dispute among the scientists / experts in the relevant fields, and yet a lot of non-scientists do not believe this.
A 2019 Gallup poll showed that 40% of US adults believe that God created humans in their current form within the last 10,000 years. I think this is a good example of a super fact because it is widely disputed and yet so accepted as true amongst the relevant scientists, and you will understand why it is accepted as true if you know something about the evidence. I will provide an introduction to the evidence in my next post.
Is Earth 4.5 billion years old or 6,000 years old? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
As a teenager I believed that Earth and the Universe was 6,000 years old, and that evolution was a hoax. That was before I knew much about science. I had read agenda driven books that left out, or wrongfully dismissed the evidence for an old earth while presenting faulty arguments for a young earth. My religious background had something to do with me believing these books as well, but I also thought that I had the scientific facts on my side. The books and the so-called evidence presented in these books appeared scientific to me at the time.
Eventually I came to realize that this belief was unsupportable by science and untenable. Not by reading counter arguments, or books disputing the creationist books I had read, but just by learning about the relevant science. I was interested in science, and I got accepted to “Naturvetenskaplig linje”, a Swedish high school program for students with good grades and who showed aptitude for science. This program was like taking lots of AP classes in math/calculus, physics, biology, and chemistry, and it prepared me well for my university level studies in engineering physics and electrical engineering, which eventually led to my PhD.
A learned some interesting physics at “Naturvetenskaplig linje” and a lot more at the University. I loved physics, especially modern physics. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
In physics I learned about radiometric dating. That topic had been mentioned in the young creationist books as well, but they had insisted that radiometric dating was unreliable, they typically only talked about one radiometric dating method (carbon-14), not the several dozen other ones, they did not mention other types of dating methods, and they stated that radioactive decay rates very well could have changed. They also stated that the reason we could see galaxies billions of light years away was because the speed of light had drastically slowed. It was not an honest picture.
Radiometric dating uses the rate of radioactive decay and knowledge of initial relative abundances to establish age. Earth comes out to be billions of years old, not 6,000. Stock Vector ID: 2417370135 by grayjay
Now I learned why radiometric dating was very reliable if done correctly, and why radioactive decay rates must have remained constant. I learned about the physical laws involved, and I came to realize that highly sped up decays would have fried Adam and Eve. I learned why the speed of light could not have changed, and I encountered a large amount of other evidence for an old earth and an old universe that the creationist books did not say anything about. I realized that I had been bamboozled.
Creationism Vs Evolution
However, there was more. I also had to give up my view of creationism versus evolution. The evidence for evolution, including what creationists like to refer to as “macro-evolution” was overwhelming. From my biology classes at “Naturvetenskaplig linje” I came to realize that the fossil record and the strata as depicted in creationist books was misrepresented. For example, the talk about missing links was misleading. I came to realize that the evidence for evolution came from dozens of other scientific fields and that it all came together to form a very solid and compelling body of evidence.
The fossil record is a lot more solid and much less problematic than the creationist books I had read claimed. Shutter Stock Photo ID: 1323000239 by Alizada Studios
The creationist books I had read claimed that there was a contradiction between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics. As I studied entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, I came to realize that was just a very simple and silly misunderstanding. It eventually became clear to me that I had been misled on this topic as well. I am planning to make one, or a few, super-facts around this topic.
Second law of thermodynamics Shutter Stock Vector ID: 2342031619 by Sasha701
Back in high school (“Naturvetenskaplig linje”) I became very interested in modern physics, quantum physics and relativity, and I was in for more shocks. The second postulate of special relativity states that “the speed of light in free space has the same value c in all inertial frames of reference.” What that means is that no matter what your velocity is and no matter what the velocity of the emitting light source is, all observers, even if moving at different speeds and in different directions, will measure the light to have the same exact speed c = 299,792,458 meters per second or approximately 186,000 miles per second or 671 million miles per hour. This isn’t possible unless the different observers measure time and space differently.
In this picture Amy is traveling past Alan in a rocket. Both have a laser. Both measure the speed of both laser beams to be c = 299,792,458 meters per second.
However, as I began to learn more in depth about what this meant for space and time I started seeing contradictions of various kinds. It turned out to be a lot stranger and counter intuitive than I had imagined, and I got angry. It felt like the whole thing was impossible, illogical, and a sham. It seemed like Einstein was wrong and all the physicists were wrong and all the Nobel prize winners in physics were wrong.
Well, I was humble enough to realize that I was not smarter than all of them. It must be something I had not figured out, and finally I understood what that was. I learned to let go of thinking in terms of “absolute time” and instead thinking of time as relative. It was the depiction of time as a fourth dimension that helped me with that.
Like most people I had been preconditioned to think in terms of absolute time. The whole thing became clear to me very quickly and now it seemed perfectly logical. I was able to understand and enjoy all the amazing discoveries that this new way of looking at time and space led to. I think this is a super fact because it is an important insight into time that is highly surprising and in general poorly understood.
Time is going to be different for me and you in many ways including the order of events. From shutterstock Illustration ID: 1055076638 by andrey_l
That’s when I encountered two books that claimed that special relativity was illogical and a sham. They were written by a self-proclaimed philosopher of time, who had declared war on relativity. He really thought that Einstein was wrong, and that all the physicists were wrong and all the Nobel prize winners in physics were wrong about this. He believed he had figured something out that they hadn’t.
I saw quite easily where he was wrong. First of all, just like me had made unstated assumptions about time and space that were incorrect. Unlike me he could not even use the related physics formulas correctly.
Soon I came to realize that he was far from alone. Once upon a time there were a lot of people who like him had attacked relativity. They not only attacked the theory, but they also went after Einstein himself. In retrospect this looks pathetic, but it is arrogance again. If you have a hard time understanding something, don’t assume that you are correct and that the experts must be wrong.
One thing these failed critics all had in common was that they did not go after the General Theory of Relativity, which is even more abstract, complicated and counterintuitive. Why? Probably because it was so abstract and mathematical that they couldn’t even get started, and that should have been hint for them.
The understanding of black holes requires the General Theory of Relativity. Stock Photo ID: 2024419973 by Elena11
Rethinking My Beliefs
Well, when it is about bamboozlement, being surprised, and learning to understand what at first seems strange, I was far from done. About 15 years ago, I became increasingly skeptical and doubtful of global warming or climate change as it is more commonly called now a day. The reason was that I almost exclusively read and watched rightwing news media such as world-net-daily (tended to push conspiracy theories), Newsmax and Fox News.
I believed in the concept of global warming, it is basic science after all, but I thought that it was exaggerated and that it was promoted and distorted by left-wing agendas, and I incorrectly believed that there was no scientific consensus on the issue. I believed that whatever warming that existed could be explained more by natural cycles than our fossil fuels.
I also bought into the false narrative that this was about environmentalist ideology, politics, or even a sort of environmentalist religion, and not a real and serious problem. My disdain for environmentalists, and my gut feelings certainly aided the propaganda in misleading me. In addition, I read a lot by Björn Lomborg and Patrick J. Michaels and I believed them. To clarify, I did not know it at the time, but I was wrong, very wrong. Below is a video from NASA showing the annual shrinkage of the arctic sea ice.
To see the NASA web page from where the YouTube video of the shrinking arctic ice is taken click here.
I should say that I had some lingering doubts about my own “climate skepticism”. During my travels to national parks, the great barrier reef, and other places, I encountered guides who were scientists, as well as others, and they told me about coral bleaching, ocean acidification, receding and disappearing glaciers, the pine beetle problem, white pine blister rust, the destruction of forests due to global warming, and I could see some of the effects with my own eyes in northern Sweden, which is close to the arctic and therefore the effects of global warming are more visible.
Temperature anomaly graphs from NASA, Hedley Center, Japan Meteorological Agency, NOAA, and Berkley.
It also bothered me that my physics hero Stephen Hawing was a global warming alarmist and that other leading physicists and astrophysicists whom I admired, such as Michio Kaku, promoted and warned us about human caused global warming. Add that popular science magazines I subscribed to, such as Discover and Scientific American frequently wrote about global warming. I should say that I tended to skip those articles and I believed those magazines had a left leaning bias.
The carbon dioxide concentration measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii. Since then, several other ways of measuring carbon dioxide concentration have been added.
However, there were too many red flags regarding my “climate skepticism”. It seemed like a lot of people knew and understood something I didn’t. This prompted me to take a deep dive into the matter. I had a decent scientific background and that helped. I learned that global warming is not caused by natural cycles, something the experts on natural climate cycles repeatedly stressed. It is not the sun, or volcanoes and it isn’t a normal cycle, and the recent increase in temperature is disturbingly quick.
I also learned that warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions have a certain fingerprint; the arctic will warm faster, nights will warm faster, the tropopause would be pushing up the boundary with the stratosphere, the mesosphere would be cooling and contracting (think the troposphere as being a blanket). All of that has been observed. Long story short, I had been bamboozled. We not only know that Global Warming is real, but we also know that we are the cause, primarily because of our greenhouse gas emissions. That is yet another super fact. It has many doubters and yet the evidence and the experts are clear on the fact.
Natural causes for global warming / climate change would have cooled the planet, not warm it.
Newstrade