52 Things I Learned in 2020

This year, I graduated from college in my pajamas from a living room in Montana, bonded with a cat through quarantine, traveled across seven different states to be reunited with that cat, and learned about the subtleties and quirks of a crazy 2020 world.

Here’s some of what I learned:

1. Poorly ventilated rooms negatively impact cognitive ability and decision-making. [Joe Romm]
2. Only two individuals have their own zip code in the United States: the President and Smokey the Bear. [Matt Gray]
3. Hummingbirds enter a state of hibernation each night to avoid starving to death in their sleep. [James Gorman]
4. When given identical slices of pizza, $8 pizza tastes 11% better than $4 pizza. [Bourree Lam]
5. To slow the spread of COVID-19, the Chinese central bank destroyed millions of dollars worth of cash that may have come into contact with infected individuals. [Jessie Yeung]
6. Three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Library of Congress orchestrated a top-secret mission to transport the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, and four other “utterly irreplaceable” documents inland to Fort Knox in Louisville, Kentucky. [Stephen Puleo]
7. In the wake of the 2019-2020 Australian bush fires, Australian National…