Random Intelligence I

I have decided to create a new game/series. This one is called “Random Intelligence.” The point is for me to provide you with five to ten new (to me) facts, figures, or stories. These need not be particularly rare, important, or obvious, but interesting and true. The goal is to cover the huge gulf that is my ignorance of the world around me with a few random facts that I can throw out if I ever have to discuss these in public.

If you still don’t get it, you’ll catch on soon enough. Watch:

1. About 89.5% of the people of Romania are ethnic Romanians, a group that— in contrast to its Slav or Hungarian neighbors — traces itself to Latin-speaking Romans, who in the second and third centuries A.D. conquered and settled among the ancient Dacians, a Thracian people. As a result, the Romanian language, although containing elements of Slavic, Turkish, and other languages, is a Romance language related to, among others, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
2. The South African Constitution provides that children under 18 have a right to be protected from work that is exploitative, hazardous or otherwise inappropriate for their age, detrimental to their schooling, or detrimental to their social, physical, mental, spiritual or moral development. The term ‘work’ is not limited to work in so-called economic activities (e.g. paid employment) but includes chores or household activities in the child’s household (such as collecting wood and fuel), where such work is exploitative, hazardous, inappropriate for their age or detrimental to their development.
3. Turkey borders eight countries: Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest; Georgia, Armenia and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan and to the northeast; Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south.
4. The title Marquess of Winchester was created in 1551 in the Peerage of England, making it the oldest English (and British) Marquessate still in existence. Therefore, the holder is considered the Premier Marquess of England. The Marquess of Winchester, incidentally, is the only Marquess in the Peerage of England without a higher title; all other Marquesses in that Peerage are also Dukes.
5. Humans have an estimated 100,000 billion or 10^14 cells

I have decided to create a new game/series. This one is called “Random Intelligence.” The point is for me to provide you with five to ten new (to me) facts, figures, or stories. These need not be particularly rare, important, or obvious, but interesting and true. The goal is to cover the huge gulf that…