On September 9, 2014, the Blogosphere saw a brand new blog post, “FDR’s Fears.” It briefly shared the possibly interesting fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt had a phobia about fire and being trapped in a locked room. At two paragraphs and one snarky follow-up sentence, it was hardly the opus magnum of the literary world. There were about 7.5 million other articles published that day, so you might have missed it. It was, however, a monumental day in our neck of the woods, because it marked the debut of Commonplace Fun Facts.
Now, 3,652 days and 2,403 articles later, we celebrate a decade of bringing you fun facts, trivia, and other interesting notions. Here are a few things we have learned over that time:
- What started as a family project has primarily become a dad project, now that all of the kids are out of the house. They still provide a regular stream of ideas, but it’s the old (and getting older) patriarch who churns out the finished product. Commonplace is still our preferred way to share and collect the things we find to be interesting.
- As you can tell from the content, our interests remain quite varied. That’s one of the most enjoyable things about writing for Commonplace: it might involve a dive into history today, science tomorrow, and science fiction the day after that. Despite the variety, certain topics do tend to show up more often than others. Presidential trivia, aviation, and language factoids definitely outweigh sports and popular culture. We may be older, but we’re still a family of nerds.
- We think we have had visitors from every country — except for North Korea. Can’t imagine why no one from the Hermit Kingdom has graced these pages, especially since it is such a rich source for so many of our articles.
- Our thinking in the beginning was that the blog posts would be in the style of L.M. Boyd, who could say so much with very few words. Consider, for example, this snippet from his final column in 2000: “‘Fathom what’s fathomable, and revere the rest.’ That’s not exactly what Goethe said. But pretty close. … Larvae of all true wasps are flesh eaters. … Giraffes, too, get kidney stones …Nose length of the female flight attendant averages 2.18 inches. The Federal Aviation Administration has determined that, but I don’t know why. A ‘spork,’ don’t forget, is a plastic picnic spoon tipped with pointy prongs …The walrus, too, loses hair with age … ” We quickly learned, however, that one or two lines typically created more questions than answers. As a result, it seems that the longer we do this, the wordier we get.
- We may have been writing for ten years, but we’re still surprised by what ends up grabbing people’s attention. For a long time, “How ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’ Led to a Radioactive Disaster‘” was our most popular article, periodically getting reposted on sites around the world. Then it was “Indiana Jones and the Swallowed Bug.” Readers evidentally got tired of swallowing bugs at some point, and their interests shifted to Tic Tacs and the time-honored question, “If Tic Tacs Contain 94.5% Sugar, Why Are They Labeled as ‘Sugar-Free’?” Currently, the most popular article is a two-year-old piece entitled “How Sony Accidentally Created a Camera That Could See Through Clothing.” Meanwhile, the article “Why Did Europe Get Bombed With Severed Chicken Heads?” has gotten drawn scarce interest, for some reason.
- We’ve also been doing this for so long that we sometimes lose track of what we have already written. Every few weeks we will be in the midst of researching a new and exciting topic, only to find that one of the key sources for the information is an old Commonplace article we forgot we had written.
Despite a few dry spells when the demands of life kept us from writing, Commonplace Fun Facts remains one of life’s great joys. The list of ideas for articles continues to grow faster than we can turn them into finished products. At this rate, we hope to have at least a couple more decades to share with you.
Thanks to each of you who have helped Commonplace Fun Facts reach this milestone!
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