Things I learned lately 1 July

• Thousands upon thousands of newly built cars wait in factory parking lots because they're still short key parts held up by the global shortage of semiconductor chips.
• The Milano-Laghi Motorway was the first highway. It opened in 1924 and connected Milan to the exclusive Como Lake country of northern Italy. The current A9 highway follows its original path.
• Germany's Autobahn highway system stretches for 13,183 km, making it the 3rd most extensive highway system in the world behind The US and China, which is impressive considering how small Germany is in comparison.
• Michigan has a coastline on 4 of the 5 Great Lakes!
• Sweden expects to go completely cashless by 2023.
• You hate the sound of your recorded voice because it's missing the low frequency you're used to hearing. When you talk, you hear your voice as it goes to the air and back to you ear. Bit it also goes through your skull to your ear, and this bone conduction mechanism transmits the low frequencies better than air does. Your recorded voice only has the air transmitted sound.
  
  
  
• Bea Arthur, was born Bernice Frankel. During World War II, she enlisted as one of the first members of the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve in 1943. After basic training, Arthur served as a typist at Marine headquarters in Washington, D.C. In June 1943, the Marine Corps accepted her transfer request to the Motor Transport School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Arthur then worked as a truck driver and dispatcher in Cherry Point, North Carolina, between 1944 and 1945. She was honorably discharged at the rank of staff sergeant in September 1945. After the Marines, she studied for a year at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, where she became a licensed medical technician. After interning at a local hospital for the summer, Frankel decided against working as a lab technician, departing for New York City in 1947 to enroll in the School of Drama at The New School.
• Having emojis in texts is really annoying for blind people. Their readers read them all and it wastes a lot of time.
• There's a new device for immobilizing vehicles that may replace 'the boot', called 'the barnacle'. It's a big plastic plate that suction cups to the windshield making it almost impossible to drive. A code releases it, which you get once you pay your fine. Students have already figured out how to hack it.
• William Shatner is 90.