Economy
Discover facts about economy. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Economy
Corporate purchasing catalogs are entirely detached
An employee ordering from a company catalog isn’t spending their own money. Without much personal reason to hunt for a cheaper alternative, they may accept…
Discover more
How actuaries turn your lifespan into statistics
An actuary doesn’t need to guess the day you’ll die. Life tables combine patterns linked to health, habits, and location to estimate how long a group is…
Discover more
A sealed casket cannot promise permanent preservation
A gasket can help keep outside moisture out, but it cannot stop the body's own decomposition. The US Funeral Rule bars misleading claims that funeral goods…
Discover more
An aircraft tire is several materials pretending to be one ring
Rubber compounds, reinforcing fabric, and steel perform different jobs inside the tire. It must carry an aircraft, survive rapid spin-up on landing, and…
Discover more
The Roman leader who put his own face on coins
In 44 BC, Caesar didn't wait to become an ancestor before appearing on Roman money. The living ruler's profile replaced the familiar dead ancestors, gods, and…
Discover more
Woodpecker crests could be a form of treasure
Ethnographic accounts of northern California peoples, including the Yurok and Tolowa, describe scarlet woodpecker scalps as valuable wealth items used in…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
GDP can grow without adding another factory
An economy creates value through services, repairs, and ideas as well as manufactured goods. That makes GDP different from a count of materials consumed. The…
Discover more
Tutorial completions sit at surprisingly low rates
For roughly one in ten buyers, the tutorial ends before the basics do: they abandon it without completing the introductory section.
Discover more
In Argentina, candy can be your change
The till is short on coins, so some Argentine merchants make up the difference with hard candy. Customers leave with sweets instead of the change they expected.
Discover more
Why rare-earth minerals are so toxic to process
Rare-earth minerals don’t come out of the ground ready to use. Extracting them can mean crushing rock and treating it with strong acids, which can severely…
Discover more
Goats can plant argan trees by spitting out their seeds
Goats eat argan fruit and later regurgitate many of its hard nuts while chewing cud. A 2017 study highlighted this overlooked route of seed dispersal. The…
Discover more
The stock market ticker was once a noisy paper machine
Traders could follow prices as they arrived: the machine printed them on a continuous paper ribbon. That noisy strip was the live market feed of its day, and…
Discover more
Allied nations created the modern global financial system
The fighting was still underway, but leaders were already deciding how money would cross borders afterward. They tied national currencies to the U.S. dollar,…
Discover more
The lucrative business of spying on suspicious spouses
Instead of confronting a partner empty-handed, suspicious spouses pay investigators to watch and photograph them. The detective gets paid to turn private…
Discover more
The barcode began as lines drawn in beach sand
Norman Joseph Woodland drew out a barcode idea by extending Morse-code dots and dashes into lines in beach sand. Different widths could carry information for…
Discover more
M&M's were made for soldiers in hot climates
The military wanted chocolate troops could take into hot climates, and M&M’s hard sugar shell kept it from melting into a mess. During World War II, the U.S.…
Discover more
Britain briefly taxed the clocks people owned
In 1797, annual duties were imposed on clocks and watches, with different charges for different timepieces. The unpopular experiment was abandoned the…
Discover more
Tired workers cost the economy billions
A tired worker may think more slowly and make more mistakes, costing employers time and money. One estimate puts the global economic cost of sleep deprivation…
Discover more
Why modern money doesn’t need gold behind it
A dollar doesn’t have to be redeemable for gold if the government will accept it for federal taxes. People need dollars to settle those bills, helping keep…
Discover more
A country can refuse to repay its debt
A bondholder can demand repayment, but can't tow a country away or auction off its government. If a government defaults, investors can be left unpaid—and the…
Discover more
How one old oak can raise a home's value
Mature trees can make a home more appealing because buyers value their shade. They may have to rake the leaves every fall, but the shade can still win them…
Discover more
When a marriage license was basically a tax
Before a couple could legally marry, they had to pay for a license. Governments promoted the fee as a way to register citizens while collecting money from…
Discover more
Massive corporations actively block new competitors
Large startup costs can keep a would-be competitor from getting started. Established firms also benefit from scale, making it harder for a newcomer to match…
Discover more
Why tourists buy dirt from famous places
A tourist doesn’t need a chunk of a monument to bring home a piece of the trip. Ordinary soil from near a landmark can go into a tiny glass vial and sell for…
Discover more