DAY 52 | 02.21.22 | BLOOD BREAKTHROUGH

Day 52 / 365

144YEARS ago today the world's 1st telephone directory was issued; a single piece of cardboard that listed 50 individuals and businesses with telephones in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

RECC’E OF THE DAY

4MAJOR blood type groups exist: A, B, O, and AB. Think of type O as the base model, it has no antigens that attach to it. The A and B blood types each have extra antigens that attach to that core and AB blood has both types of antigens.

35%OF DONORS have type O blood and are considered “universal donors” meaning their blood and tissue won’t set off an immune response for recipients of any blood type. The rarest is AB at 1%.

80%OF DONOR lungs in general aren’t healthy enough to be used. Some are too damaged from being on prolonged ventilation, others are infected, or the donor is simply too far away for their organs to get to the patient in time.

100KPEOPLE in the United States are currently waiting for organs and researchers in Toronto looking to address the issue of blood type’s not matching the organs available recently attempted to alter the antigen properties of organs to make them universal; the results were astounding.

90%OF ANTIGENS had been removed within an hour and after 4 hours, 97% were gone. Researchers had essentially changed the blood type of donated organs from A to O, results that could have a dramatic effect on shortening transplant times around the world and saving lives.

NEED-TO-KNOW

50%+INCREASE over the last week in the volume of Russian disinformation seeking to frame Ukraine as a threat to justify military action by Russia. Biden and Putin have now agreed “in principle” to hold a summit amid the ongoing crisis.

10PEOPLE still missing from a ferry fire near Greece are all thought to be lorry drivers from Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey who may have chosen to sleep in their vehicles rather than the ship's overcrowded cabins. Firefighters have found the first body of a missing passenger in a burnt-out lorry.

11YEARS AGO construction began on the $4.2bn (£3.8bn) Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), Africa's biggest hydroelectric project to date. Yesterday with the build 83.9% complete it began generating power for the first time. It will double the nation's electricity output once fully completed.

18KBANK ACCOUNTS of Credit Suisse customers holding more than $100bn (£73.6bn) exposed in a 2021 whistleblower data leak have now led to allegations of banking clients involved in serious crimes such as money laundering or drug trafficking. The bank denied the allegations on Sunday.

409DAYS since Donald Trump was “permanently suspended” from Twitter his self-designed social platform “Truth social”, a proclaimed "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages free speech without discriminating against political ideology, has launched on Apple’s App store.

SHOULD-KNOW

98%OF FUNDS raised by a UK Royal charity - The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust - was spent on staff. The charity set up to help young Commonwealth leaders transform their communities brought in £796,106 from donors in 2021 but £787,314 went on paying just 10 staff; the 5 most senior executives earned £420,000 between them.

$1.7M(£1.25M) IN NFT’s have been stolen in an apparent phishing attack on 32 users within the OpenSea platform. 254 tokens were stolen over the course of the roughly 3 hour attack.

7CHILDREN have been killed in Niger in an accidental air strike by the Nigerian army targeting "bandits"; four were killed instantly and three died on their way to hospital. 5 more children were hurt.

15DISCIPLINES comprising of 109 events entered into by almost 3,000 athletes encapsulates the Beijing Winter Olympics that have now been brought to a close with a “plea for peace”. Norway took home the most golds (16) and also had the highest medal tally overall (37).

9.5MPEOPLE visited Australia from overseas in 2019. Today it has reopened its international border for the first time in nearly two years, delighting families and providing a much needed boost for the 660k people employed in it’s tourism industry.

GOOD-TO-KNOW

7:37PER MILE is the average speed of 40-year-old American endurance athlete Camille Herron over a 100 mile race as she broke her own women's world record set in 2017 by 89 seconds, clocking 12:41:11; finishing a whole 29:14 ahead of the first male athlete.

10DAYS earlier by 2100, this is how much sooner the Spring season could arrive by the end of the century as a decline in the total number of rainy days is causing plants to flower earlier in northern climates; with current rain levels, leaves will arrive 1-2 days earlier each decade.

1933KMWEST of Perth is where aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey believes flight MH370 vanished nearly 8 years ago with 239 people aboard. Based on this information Australian air safety investigators have restarted the search.