7 Interesting Things from October 2025
Notes, Oddities, and Arguments That Do Not Deserve a Full Post
A new paper argues that black Americans who served in World War 1 were more likely to be Civil Rights leaders.
“Leveraging novel variation from the World War I draft lottery and millions of digitized military and NAACP records, we document the pioneering role these men played in the early civil rights movement. Relative to observably similar individuals from the same draft board, Black men randomly inducted into the Army were significantly more likely to join the nascent NAACP and become prominent community leaders in the New Negro era… we show that increased civic activism was driven by soldiers who experienced the most discriminatory treatment while serving their country.”
An interesting Quora post on how far a plane can glide.
“For every airplane, there is some configuration that produces the best glide ratio. Stray from that configuration, and you won’t be able to glide nearly as far… a Boeing 767 can manage a 20:1 glide ratio, but only with no flaps and a speed of around 220 - 240 knots (depending on several factors). So in the event of loss of all engines, the first thing a pilot will want to do is maintain altitude, allowing the plane to bleed off energy and slow down to best glide speed — a plane absolutely cannot continue to fly at 550 mph and expect to get any kind of decent glide distance. Once the plane slows down to best glide speed, the pilot would begin a descent to maintain that speed. Like a car going downhill, the plane is trading altitude for airspeed. There is some descent rate at which the plane will be “going downhill” at just the right rate to maintain 240 knots (or whatever the proper speed is), and the pilot will find that descent rate and stick to it.”
Was America saved (from the metric system) by British pirates?
“In 1794, British privateers captured French scientist Joseph Dombey who was sailing to the U.S. at the behest of Thomas Jefferson to deliver kilogram and meter standards for the newly developed metric system. Dombey died in captivity and the standards never made it to Jefferson. Some historians believe the incident may have contributed to the metric system’s failure to be fully adopted by the U.S.”
The Berlin Wall was officially called the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”. As a mutual said: “Oh, you want the East Germans to tear down the Anti-Fascist Wall? What does that make you, then?”
Mount Everest is apparently an easy mountain to climb from a skills perspective.
The transmission of a 1998 Chevy Tahoe.
Last month, I mentioned Trey Yesavage’s amazing first few months in the MLB. And, ya, it has not stopped. He racked up 12 strikeouts, at least one K against each batter, against an LA Dodgers lineup with at least three Hall of Famers in it. A masterpiece.
