The Mona Lisa became the world’s most famous painting only after it was stolen. Before its theft in 1911 it was not widely known outside the art world. But its disappearance prompted an international media frenzy and a frantic criminal investigation, and two years passed before it was discovered.
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The aphorism was seemingly proven in 2010, when economists found no increase in well being above an annual income of $75,000. But the research was flawed – in how the data was collected and how the questions were asked – and when it was revisited in 2023 the conclusion changed: well being and life satisfaction continued to rise with income, even past $500,000.
Monopoly released a new ‘simplified’ version of the game, where a mobile app handles all transactions and removes the need for a banker or physical money. Sure, players will find it easier to pay, and harder to cheat, but in the words of one journalist: “it is nowhere near as tantalising as the prospect of flaunting piles of pink and orange notes in a delicious victory over your competitive mother.” Plus, as any regular player will know, a bit of fraud is part of the fun.
By the time of Monty Python’s 25th anniversary, author George Perry wrote that “the five surviving members had with the passing years begun to occupy an institutional position in the edifice of British social culture that they had once had so much fun trying to demolish.”
One of the most iconic scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail shows the knights riding around on invisible horses, using coconuts to sound like horses’ hooves. But this wasn’t the original plan – it was done because the Pythons couldn’t afford real horses. Without this constraint, the scene wouldn’t have been nearly as funny.
The bank initially required customers to join a three week waiting list, creating the sense that the product was special. It then gave customers a golden ticket – but only one – to pass to friends so they could skip the waiting list and get immediate access. According to founder Tom Blomfield, “it just worked incredibly well – about 40% of our sign-ups in 2017 came from golden tickets and it cost us nothing.”
The brand has a simple rule: add ‘by monkeys’ to any sentence to ensure you are writing in the active – not passive – voice.
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Michael Jackson may be synonymous with the iconic dance move, but he certainly didn’t invent it. Charlie Chaplin and Cab Calloway used it in the 1930s, when it was called the “Buzz”, and it was used by singer James Brown on several occasions throughout the 60s and 70s.
Most people think moral values are getting worse. But archival data shows we’ve been thinking that for over 70 years. Plus, there is no evidence that morality is in fact declining (e.g. in terms of how helpful and respectful we are to each other).
Every penny counts for supermarkets. So Morrisons has recently increased the temperature of its freezers from -18°C to -15°C, after a previous trial suggested the move would save 10% on energy costs.
In fact they’re very rare. Panel data shows that the most common number of items purchased in a supermarket is one, with half of all trips buying 5 or fewer items.
Motown record label dominated the charts in the 1960s, collecting 35 number ones from artists like Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and the Jackson 5. The label’s founder, Berry Gordy, had the idea of building this factory of talent while assembling cars at a Ford plant. “Different stations would put things on there, and they would go out another door a brand new car. I said, my goodness, I could do this with people.”
In 1953, climbing Everest was the pinnacle of mountaineering. It took roughly 30 years for the first 300 people to reach the summit, but in 2019 that number ascended the mountain on one single day – a remarkable upward trajectory.
People like to think they have sophisticated taste in movies, but as Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos puts it, “they just want a movie that they love.” Maestro, with its seven Oscar nominations, couldn’t get it into the top ten most-watched films on Netflix at Christmas: viewers preferred Zack Snyder’s space opera Rebel Moon and the arrival of the 1990 classic Pretty Woman on the service.