Our First Four

Issue 1: We start with our first list of four nuggets. Enjoy!

1. Why do planes have oval and not square windows?

   

   Square windows on a plane, combine with a pressurized cabin, are inclined to stress which can lead to cracks that can cause a plane to disintegrate mid-air! Rounded corners, conversely, help ease such stresses by distributing it around the boundary of the window rather than having it amassed in the corner of a 90 degree square window.

2. Michelin Ratings - From a company that makes Tires?

   

   Michelin Restaurant Ratings — the gold standard for restaurants today — was actually started by the Michelin Tires company in Europe for car drivers. In 1900, there were fewer than 3,000 cars on the roads of France. To increase the demand for cars and, accordingly, car tires, car tire manufacturers and brothers Édouard and André Michelin published a guide for French motorists, the Michelin Guide. Nearly 35,000 copies of this first, free edition of the guide were distributed; it provided useful information to motorists, such as maps, tire repair and replacement instructions, car mechanics listings, hotels, and petrol stations throughout France.

   The original ratings reflected the bias towards driving:

   1 - A very good restaurant in its category (on your current route)

   2- Excellent cooking, worth a detour

   3 - Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey 

3. The Fall and Rise of the Great Gatsby

   

   When F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby” was initially published in 1925, it was a flop. One headline read "Fitzgerald's Latest A Dud." Fitzgerald hoped it would sell 75,000 copies, but it didn’t even sell 20,000 in its initial run. This lack of success probably contributed to Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and subsequent writer’s block. It only became popular and a success more than 3 decades later, long after the author’s death in 1940. 

4. SPAC?

   

   A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. Also known as "blank check companies”, they accounted for over half the IPOs last year. 248 SPAC companies launched in 2020 (yes, that year) - 4 times those that IPO’d in 2019.