If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Oops, I Wrote It Again

Hi!

A week or so ago, I shared the story here about the guy who cheated on the original (that is, the UK) version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” And in doing so, I accidentally cheated you out of a new Now I Know story — because it turns out, I had also written about this guy seven years ago. But alas, I had forgotten.

Oops.

I honestly did not remember, at all, that I had written about it before. I only discovered the problem late this week, and only because not only did I repeat the story, I repeated the headline. I had sent someone links to three recent Now I Knows and when I copy and pasted the URL to the one from last week, I noticed that it had a “2” in there — it reads “the-million-pound-cough-2” at the end — and that only happens when WordPress sees a repeated headline and needs to differentiate between the old one and the new one. I immediately checked to see what the 2-less URL (that is, “the-million-pound-cough”) yielded, and … yeah, same story, seven years earlier.

As far as I know, this is the first or second time this has happened. (Ironically, I can’t remember that, either.) I do remember a close call though. In November of 2012, I shared this story about where ice cream headaches come from, and again, the dreaded “2 in the URL” thing appeared. I had written the story only about a year prior, but hadn’t done such a good job. The new version was so much better that I shared it, again, with a note at the top explaining my mistake and revision.

Anyway, the good news from all of this: none of you emailed me to tell me that I had re-shared a story, so I guess you either didn’t remember, are new-ish to the newsletter, or didn’t mind! So no harm, no foul, I guess!

The Now I Know Week In Review

I was at a work off-site all week and therefore, haven’t gotten through your emails yet (with maybe two exceptions) so if you’ve sent through a correction, follow-up, or other note, it’s probably not incorporated here. But I hope you enjoyed the stories! In case you missed some, here’s what I shared:

Monday: The King of the Solar Eclipse: An eclipse story for an eclipse day.

Tuesday: The Case of the Missing Space Tomatoes: How do you lose a fruit on the International Space Station? (And is it a fruit or a vegetable?)

Wednesday: I Hadn't a Scooby About This One: Cockney rhyming slang!

Thursday: The Environmental Intervention That Backfired: I forgot to actually link to the bracelet mentioned in the final paragraph, and I called the Army Corps of Engineers the Army “Core” of Engineers. Both have been fixed!

And some other things you should check out:

Some long reads for the weekend:

Have a great weekend!

Dan