Ever since early humans first stared at the night sky, the moon has played a starring role in stories and folklore. Personified by gods and goddesses such as the Greek Selene, Roman Luna, Chinese Chang’e, and Hindu Chandra, the moon takes various shapes depending on who’s doing the looking. Many Western cultures see a man’s face in the moon, with his misshapen eyes, nose, and mouth formed from the dark lunar “seas” — actually vast hardened lava plains — on the moon’s near side. Others see a whole male figure, with stories from Germany and elsewhere telling of a man banished to the moon for chopping wood on the Sabbath.

The moon is slowly getting closer to Earth.

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The moon is slowly moving away from, not closer to, Earth, at a rate of about 3.78 centimeters a year. The moon would stop this slow separation in about 15 billion years, but by then the sun will have engulfed the Earth during its red giant phase.

Some cultures don’t see a man at all, but instead a woman, like the New Zealand Maori legend of Rona, the moon’s maiden. In Angola, a tale tells of a frog in the moon. In a Chinese tale, the goddess Chang’e flees to the moon, where she is turned into a toad; according to the myth, she and her rabbit, Yutu, can be seen on the moon’s surface creating the elixir of immortality with a mortar and pestle. Many of these tales are thousands of years old, but some remain alive and well to this day. In 2019, China landed the world’s first spacecraft and lunar rover on the far side of the moon; their names were Chang’e-4 and Yutu-2. 

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Iceland is often called “the land of fire and ice,” a nickname describing two of the nation’s most prominent geological features — volcanoes and glaciers. But in recent years, the world’s 18th-largest island has gotten a new reputation as a destination for readers and book lovers, and it’s because Iceland has more authors per capita than any other country in the world. It’s estimated that on an island with a population around 372,500 people, one in 10 will publish a book. There’s even a phrase in Icelandic that relates to the popularity of writing — “ad ganga med bok I maganum,” which roughly translates to “everyone gives birth to a book.” Many writers reside in the island’s capital city of Reykjavik, a major publishing hub that in 2011 was named a UNESCO City of Literature.

Iceland banned most beers for most of the 20th century.

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Like many places, Iceland experimented with prohibition, banning wine, liquor, and beer in 1915. The law was mostly repealed in 1933, but kept beer limited to 2.25% alcohol; full-strength brews weren’t allowed until March 1, 1989 — a day Icelanders celebrate as “Bjordagur” (Beer Day).

Icelanders’ love of reading is culturally ingrained in a country that has a nearly 100% literacy rate. It’s likely that storytelling became a tradition thanks to the family sagas passed from generation to generation; these stories described how the first Icelanders found and adapted to the land from around 930 to 1030 CE. Poetry and story recitation became a popular way for Icelanders to keep the stories alive, and provided an important form of socializing on long, winter nights. Today, sharing stories has spawned a more modern tradition, in which Icelanders give books to friends and family on Christmas Eve. The holiday season strain on publishers is so great, and so many books are gifted, that the tradition has its own name: Jolabokaflod, aka the Christmas Book Flood.

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Every single- and double-digit number has something in common that has nothing to do with their mathematical values: When spelled out, none contains the letter “A.” The first number spelled with the first letter of the alphabet is 1,000. Every other vowel appears at least once before “A” makes its long-awaited debut.

The alphabet used to contain different letters.

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It formerly contained six alternative letters: eth (ð), thorn (þ), wynn (ƿ), yogh (ȝ), ash (æ), and ethel (œ), all of which predated J, U, and W.

The letter “B,” meanwhile, doesn’t show up until 1 billion, and “C” isn’t used until much later, in 1 octillion (a little-used number featuring a whopping 27 zeros). Funnily enough, less commonly used letters such as “Z” and “X” show up extremely early — in zero and six, respectively — with “X” showing up more than 200 times before “A” shows up once.

Other rarer letters are also seldom used: “J” doesn’t appear in any number, and “Q” doesn’t show up until 1 quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros). “E” is the most common letter, showing up in approximately 11% of spelled-out numbers.

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