Things I learned lately 3 May

• Distracted driving accounts for 25% of traffic deaths in Alberta.
• They’re building a high speed rail line between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga (Northeastern LA) called Brightline West.
• When early scientists discovered vacuum, they didn’t think it contained nothing because just like air is needed to carry sound, they thought light needed a medium to carry it as well. Since you could see stuff inside a vacuum, there had to be ‘something’ in there. They called it luminiferous ether. Therefore there is no such thing as empty space. It drove scientists nuts because they couldn’t measure it. We know now that there’s no such thing.
• Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, which featured The Sound of Silence, was a flop.
• During the Antarctic summers, there can be as many as 10,000 scientists and support staff working there and doing research. In the winter time, that number drops down to about 1,000. 
• In 1815, the eruption of Mt. Tambora caused crops to fail around the world the following year. That made it unaffordable to feed horses, which threw a damper into transportation. So a young German named Karl von Drais invented a device called the laufmaschine (running machine) consisting of two wheels, a frame and a saddle. It was basically a balance bike for adults. This was way faster than walking. In England, the invention was called a hobby-horse. It wasn't long before other engineers made additions that led to the modern concept of a bicycle.
• Calculations say there is 5 times more dark matter in the universe than normal matter, but there’s no actual proof.
• Chickens now make up more than 90% of land animals farmed in the US. In 2022, 9.2 billion of them were slaughtered.