March
13. Historians have said that Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival celebration in 1919, after the Spanish flu ravaged much of the world, led to many of today’s Carnival hallmarks, including the occasional kissing of a stranger.
In Glitter and Leotards, They Took a Stand: Carnival Must Go On
14. Over the past decade, California has added a little over three times as many people as housing units, driving its median home price over $800,000, which is more than twice the national figure.
Legislators Find Way to Let U.C. Berkeley Increase Its Enrollment
15. Most office building thermostats follow a model developed in the 1960s that takes into account, among other factors, the resting metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man weighing 154 pounds.
A Two-Year, 50-Million-Person Experiment in Changing How We Work
16. Upon receiving the Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1962, Rita Moreno delivered one of the shortest acceptance speeches in Oscars history: “I can’t believe it! Good Lord! I leave you with that.”
Oscars Rewind: When Rita Moreno Made History and Thanked No One
17. If stars in the night sky are sparkling, it’s a sign of atmospheric turbulence.
How to Spot Asteroids
18. The Clock of the Long Now, a huge mechanical clock being constructed inside a 6,000-foot mountain in southern Texas, is designed to keep time without human intervention for 10,000 years.
What the Silicon Valley Prophet Sees on the Horizon
19. In the history of American prisons, no one has been held in solitary confinement longer than three Black men, known as the Angola Three, who spent over four decades in solitary at Angola penitentiary in Louisiana.
