Things I learned lately - 8 Sep

• The Dalton Highway in Alaska has a 240 mile (386 km) stretch with no gas stations, restaurants, hotels or any other basic services.
• The Heiltsuk Nation, an indigenous group in British Columbia, claim that its ancestors fled for survival to a coastal area in Canada that never froze during the Ice Age. A new excavation on Triquet Island on the BC coast seems to back up that claim. Artifacts from an ancient village, including carved wooden tools and bits of charcoal, have been discovered. The charcoal dates around 12,000 BC. For reference, the pyramids in Egypt were built in 2630 BC. This is not the only signs of habitation in western North America. A spear tip and mastodon rib bone with similar dating was found near Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
• There's no scientific evidence that Epsom salts do anything.
• China has laid more than 12,400 miles of high-speed rail to date, with the intention of adding another 6,000 miles by 2020. The Beijing-Shanghai line will begin operating on 21 September and will shorten the nearly 820-mile journey by an hour, to four hours thirty minutes. Nearly 600 million people use this route each year. The trains will once again run at 350 km/h, with a maximum speed of 400 km/h (248 mph).