Here are some random facts for you.
1. The number of electoral votes is not just randomly 538. It’s based on 435 representatives and 100 senators from the fifty states, plus three electors from Washington, D.C., which were added with the 23rd Amendment in 1964.
That’s why THREE is the minimum number of electoral votes the six least-populous states get (Alaska, Delaware, both Dakotas, Vermont, and Wyoming). One for each of their TWO senators, and they each have ONE representative. D.C.’s three were just added, they don’t have any voting members of Congress.
2. There are whales alive today that have been alive since before “Moby-Dick” was written in 1851. They’re bowhead whales off the coast of Alaska, and they’re over 200 years old.
3. The opposite side of the world from where you are is called the antipode. For most of the continental U.S., it’s somewhere in the Indian Ocean, between southern Africa and Australia. (What’s YOUR antipode? Here’s a map.)
4. Anderson Cooper doesn’t have any formal journalism training. He got his degree in political science from Yale and did his summer internships at the CIA.
5. The most checked out book at the New York Public Library since it opened in 1895 is “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats.
(Wikipedia / National Geographic / Lifehacker / Wikipedia / NY Public Library)
