Happy Friday! 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

Chasing My Own Tail?

Hi!

On Tuesday, I shared a story about the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, which you can read at that link. The story is about the unintended consequences and, given the topic, makes the quote “the best-laid plans of mice and men oft' go awry” really seem true. But that’s neither here nor there — if you want to read that story, click the link. Today’s newsletter is a story about me writing that story.

I’ve known about the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre for a long, long time, and assumed I had written about it. And I wasn’t alone. A week and a half ago, reader John E. sent me an email asking me to send the story to him — he serves on the board of a nonprofit and wanted to share it with his colleague because he was looking for a good example of “people responding to incentives in unexpected (and counter-productive) ways.” He couldn’t find the story, which makes sense because it’s not easy to search my archives. So I gladly tried to help. I have back-end access to my website (obviously) which lets me search rather thoroughly, but I also came up empty. That was weird, because both he and I remembered me sharing the story.

I checked my books and sure enough, I had used the story as a bonus fact. (If you’re interested, it’s on page 100 of my first book.) But John was convinced he had read it online. Regardless, he needed something he could forward to his colleagues and I didn’t really like that I had wasted such a good story on a bonus fact, so I decided to give it the full Now I Know treatment. By their very nature, bonus facts are pithy, and I often give them short shrift. Good stories deserve to be told fully, so I don’t mind resurfacing old ones here and there.

But all that said, I have no idea if I ever shared the story somewhere else online — fourteen-plus years of this is more than my memory can manage, and I’ve published stories in places beyond my own platforms, so that story may exist somewhere under my byline. I’m not too worried about it, though — as long as it’s interesting to you, it’s worth me publishing, even if I’m accidentally repeating myself.

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: Tobacco To School: Schools and cigarettes don’t mix — well, unless sponsorship is involved?

Tuesday: The Worst Way to Calm the Rat Population?: See above!

Wednesday: Making Light Work of Wall Street: A scam that tried to break the speed of light.

Thursday: The Cheap Action Figure That Became Super Popular: This also has the backstory to the Now I Know tagline “That’s half the battle.”

A Few Dollars = A Big Difference

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And thanks! — Dan

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “The track that caused so much chaos on the dancefloor it got banned” (BBC, 7 minutes, October 2024.) Here’s how the story opens:

2) ”‘Not here to come third’: the world’s senior minigolfers get serious” (Financial Times, 19 minutes, October 2024). The title alone should be reason enough to click.

3) “Full of Themselves” (At least 5 minutes, and a lot more if you play with it). A “title drop” is when a character in a movie uses the title of the movie during the movie. This is a website analyzing title drops throughout movie history and includes a searchable database. Thanks to reader Robert C. for sharing this! It was a lot of fun to play with.

Have a great weekend!

Dan