10 interesting things I learned in 2024

Last year I read Jason Kottke's post on 52 interesting things he learned in 2023.  I thought it was a cool concept to track what you learn in a year so I tried to keep a list. But to be honest, most of the year I didn't think about it, so I hope and am convinced I learned a lot more.  And with learning, I don't mean any soft skills or new computer program or something...nope just some cool facts.  

I thought long and got this list of 10. Let's see if I can learn more 2025 (and list them)

1. You can keep walking and sporting with torn cruciate ligaments in your knee. I didn't know before. But your muscles take over the balance if you train them. 
2. Banana plants are a type of grass.  No trees, no shrubs but a hypergrass that grows from 0cm to a few meters and lives for 9 months and then dies off again, while leaving a new sprout next to it. 
3. There are red bananas 
4. You can suffer from covid without fever
5. If you want to keep sunflowers in a vase, you need to put them in hot water to keep them longer. Truly hot water.
6. The buttons fn + space light up my laptop keyboard. 
7. In history people didn't celebrate birthdays. Maybe they didn't even know the exact birth date.  But instead they celebrated name days. (the saint that has its name on the calendar).   Only the king celebrated his birthday. And that's why we now wear a birthday "crown". 
8. How to create bobbing heads of chickens: you move the body of a chicken that you are holding in your hands and the head remains immobile.  It creates hilarious Tik Tok / Instagram Reels.  It's not original anymore but I still shuckle when I see them. 
9. Some Orca's wear a salmon on top of their head like a hat
10. Spotify shuffle isn't shuffle.  You have a long list and you hit shuffle, but it's not going to play all songs. WTF?