Collection
The interesting content is in the clause everyone skims.
The USGS does not say the Salton Sea was formed in 1905. It says the sea "was most recently formed" in 1905, and that one adverb turns an accident into the latest instance of a pattern. Pennsylvania’s DEP does not say the Centralia fire started in May 1962; it says the fire "was first reported" then, and declines a cause entirely. NASA does not say the Great Wall is invisible from orbit; it says it "generally isn’t" visible to the unaided eye. A patent does not claim the high five; it calls it "as known in the art" and claims the machine. In each case the popular version is what you get by reading the sentence with the qualifier deleted. Read together they teach the habit this publication is really built on: the hedge is not throat-clearing, it is the finding.
The Colorado broke through a half-finished irrigation headgate in 1905 and took until 1907 to put back. But the river had filled that basin on its own before, and each time the basin dried out again.
The fire is real and the town is gone. The two details everyone repeats — the trash fire, and the 250 years — are the two the record supports least.
Leroy Chiao shot it with a 180 mm telephoto in 2004. He said afterwards that he never saw the Great Wall, and wasn’t sure his picture showed it.
US 5,356,330 was granted in 1994 for a spring-loaded arm on a wall. Its background states the problem plainly: a high five "requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants", and a solitary fan does not have two.
Strands of volcanic glass over a metre long and under a millimetre thick, spun from lava the way sticky dough pulls into threads. The USGS advice for finding some is to leave it alone.
Highest above sea level is Everest. Tallest base to summit is Mauna Kea, by more than a kilometre. Farthest from the centre of the Earth is Chimborazo. NOAA prints all three.
Isle Royale's wolves and moose have been counted every year since 1958. The Michigan Tech project that counts them writes that what guides nature is "rich, dynamic variation, not 'balance of nature'."
The USGS computes the average interval between Yellowstone's eruptions — 725,000 years — calls it meaningless because it rests on two intervals, and notes that even if you trust it, there are about 100,000 years to go.
