The goal of this blog is to create a list of super facts. Important facts that are true with very high certainty and yet surprising, misunderstood, or disputed by many. This blog aims to be challenging, educational, and fun, without it being clickbait. I determine veracity using evidence, data from reputable sources and longstanding scientific consensus. Prepare to be challenged (I am). Intentionally seek the truth not confirmation of your belief.
Super fact 51 : In 1968 5,033 Americans died from a drug overdose. In 1978 5,506 Americans died from a drug overdose. In 1999 16,801 Americans died from a drug overdose. In 2022 107,941 Americans died from a drug overdose. 82,000 of those deaths involved opioids (about 76%). The number of people who died from an opioid overdose in 2022 was 10 times the number in 1999. More than half of all opioid deaths in the world were Americans despite being only 4.2% of the world population. The hardest hit demographic is white males.
Note the data in the super fact above is taken from Wikipedia, which in turn took it from CDC. However, the data across multiple sources look roughly the same (CDC / CDC, NIDA/NIH, Our world in Data, Wikipedia). I think this is a super fact. I should add that the statistics seem to have improved a little bit in 2023 and 2024.
I’ve posted about good super facts in this blog several times:
However, unfortunately there are also bad super facts, like this one.
The Severe Drug Overdose Epidemic in the US is a Super Fact
We recently went to the funeral for the young son (in his 20’s) of good friends of ours. He died from a drug overdose. The same thing happened to another friend of ours not too long ago. Despite all the talk about drugs, the war of drugs, and the “just say no campaign”, in the 1980’s I don’t remember this happening to people I knew when I was young, so I looked up the statistics. I knew we had an opioid epidemic with Fentanyl being the greatest culprit followed by Heroin. I just didn’t realize how severe it was and how American it was. This is important and shocking and the sources behind the data are reliable, which is why I consider this a super fact.
The United States Has by Far the Highest Death Rate from Opioids
If you play around with this graph from Our World in Data you will notice that the United States has a very high rate of deaths from drug overdoses, especially opioids, much higher than any other country. For example, take my home country Sweden, where 283 people died from opioid in 2021 (398 all drugs, data from IHME). Compare that with the United States, where 55,452 died from opioid in 2021 (70,893 all drugs, data from IHME). Adjust that for the population in each country you get a rate of 16.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants for the US and 2.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants for the Sweden. Sweden and the US are both open wealthy democracies in which certain opioids are legal for medical purposes but otherwise illegal. The graph below has slightly different numbers but notice that the year (2024) is different.
Data source : Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Global Burden of Disease (2024). The graph is taken from Our World in Data .
Some illustrative Graphics on Drug Deaths
The graphs below illustrate both the sharp rise in drug related deaths, especially opioids, as well as how hard hit the United States is compared to the rest of the world.
The population of the United States is 340 million.The population of South America is 438 millionThe population of Europe is 744 million.The population of Asia is 4,800 million.This graph shows the contribution to US deaths from specific drugs including synthetic opioids (Fentanyl), Heroin, prescription opioids, and cocaine. Notice that the vertical axis shows the death rate per 100,000 people and not the total number of deaths. Data source : US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER. Note: Opioids include prescription pain relief drugs, synthetic opioids, excluding methadone and other opioids such as heroin. The graph is taken from Our World in Data.
This is my 100th post on my Superfactful blog. There are 50 super-fact posts. The other posts are posts about the blog, like this one, or posts featuring interesting information that I think is important, or book reviews of non-fiction books, travel posts with some information, posts about me, or mysteries.
However, the goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important, not trivia, and that are known to be true and yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many, perhaps shocking. Learning or accepting such a fact will change how you view the world. This makes these facts deserving of special attention, which is why I refer to them as super facts. You can also consider the super facts as a form of myth busting, major myth busting.
As mentioned, at the time of writing this I have come up with 50 super facts and made 50 posts about those super facts, but I am hoping to come up with hundreds. I am open to suggestions for super facts as well as critique of super facts. Tell me if you think it is trivia, not important, not surprising, or not an established fact. To see the first 50 super facts click here.
Smash your old beliefs with new surprising facts, super facts. Expand your mind. Shutterstock ID: 1685660680 by MattL_Images
Deciding on What is an Important Fact
Deciding what is an important fact or not is subjective, but for the same reason it also makes it an easy thing to decide. Ultimately, I decide what is important. It is difficult to compare the importance of facts, but my main concern is to avoid trivia. I also try to avoid facts that may be important to me but do not concern others very much.
For example, I am looking for facts that people discuss a lot, or are often mentioned in the mainstream media, or facts that people dispute fiercely despite a scientific consensus and overwhelming evidence telling us what is true. I am looking for facts from science that could change people’s perspective on nature, our world, or the universe, or facts that could change people’s view of the world, that are related to important historical events, such as the deaths of millions of people, etc.
Shocking Facts
Deciding whether a fact is highly surprising, misunderstood by many, shocking, or contentious and disputed is also not an exact science. In some cases, there are polls stating how common a certain belief is amongst the public but in most cases (that I consider) I have no polls to fall back on. I just have to use my judgment. In some cases, almost everyone I’ve spoken to about the subject is misinformed, bamboozled, or they misunderstand it. In other cases, I need to decide based on my impression. I have to guess.
Super facts can be surprising, shocking, or something you refuse to believe, and yet they are true. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Finding the Truth
As I mentioned, deciding on what is important or highly surprising is not an exact science. I think that is OK. There’s going to be super facts that are impressive and some that are less so. However, the third criteria is the one thing that I need to get right, and that is whether the fact is true or not.
We humans are not very rational, and we often believe with intense conviction things which are false. I think that is true for all of us. We don’t know what those false beliefs are, otherwise, we wouldn’t have them. However, this is where the super facts can come in handy, as tools for personal growth if we are willing to change our minds in the face of new evidence. This is easier said than done since we are emotional beings embedded in our culture, our tribal attachments and favorite myths. We have biases, we jump to conclusions, we overestimate our understanding of subjects we don’t know much about (see the Dunning Kruger effect), and we tend to believe what we want to believe. That goes for me too.
Adding to the difficulty on deciding what is true is the fact that the internet and especially social media is full of misinformation. There are an enormous amount of YouTube videos, podcasts, and websites touting false claims, conspiracy theories, and pseudo-science. There are political think tanks deceiving the public and industry funded organizations spending billions of dollars on misinformation, as well as people claiming to have special insights and superior knowledge.
I see the most ridiculous claims on Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis and the amazing thing is that people fall for it. If it supports their pre-existing beliefs or opinions, they see it as proof or conclusive evidence and they don’t take the time to question the source. When I see this, I often point out that the source is not reliable, or it may even be a satirical site, and I often add something from Snopes to my comment assuming they’ve investigated it.
Sure, when I do this, I am raining on someone’s parade, and it is quite often not welcome. No matter how politely I try to explain the situation I end up getting insulted or blocked. I should say, I’ve also fallen for fake information myself, but I try to accept it when someone points it out to me using reliable sources. The point is, we humans are really bad at deciding what is true, and we underestimate how bad at it we are, and deciding what is true is often a quite challenging task.
Before I publish a super fact, I need to be fairly certain that it is true. Outside of mathematics and logic you cannot be 100% sure about anything, but some facts we can say with very high certainty are true. For example, the earth is not flat like a pancake, the Sun is bigger than the earth, the capital of the United States is Washington DC, the heart pumps the blood, we breathe oxygen, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the light speed in vacuum is a universal constant, time dilation is real, Cesium-137 is radioactive, etc. Most likely you only know a very tiny fraction of a percentage of the facts that we know to be true with very high certainty. Some of those facts will surprise you, shock you, or are facts you would like to dispute, and I call them super facts.
Determining What Facts Are True
When I determine whether something is true with a high degree of certainty I start with my own expertise. For example, when someone claims that the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) contradict evolution I know that to be false because I have a degree in physics (master’s degree) and I’ve taken several classes in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. In addition, I am very familiar with the faulty argumentation behind the claim because I’ve read dozens of creationist books. Yes, I was once bamboozled by creationism myself. Then I learned more about science, evolutionary biology, physics and thermodynamics.
Second law of thermodynamics Shutter Stock Vector ID: 2342031619 by Sasha701
However, my personal expertise is not enough. I also find out about scientific consensus or expert consensus and evidence from reliable sources. I should say that using scientific consensus as a reliable indicator that something is true does not fall under the “appeal to authority fallacy”. The “appeal to authority fallacy” refers to appealing to influential people or organizations who may not necessarily be experts, and regardless of the evidence. In science you don’t really have authorities, you have experts who often disagree with each other. In the event almost all experts agree on a certain fact that has been thoroughly vetted you can trust that fact with nearly 100% certainty, and that is not appeal to authority but a probability argument.
I typically select several reliable sources such as research papers published in respectable journals, national academies, government websites such as NASA, NOAA, EPA, FBI, respected research organizations such Our World in Data, Pew Research Center, and academic publications and books. I make sure that they various sites I find don’t contradict each other regarding my prospective super fact. If they all seem to agree I accept the super fact and include a few of the links in my post.
If I don’t have much personal expertise on a subject I start out by asking Google AI. I don’t ask ChatGPT because I believe it is less reliable with respect to information. Then I check Wikipedia and or another online encyclopedia such as encyclopedia Britannica. This is not to establish the truth but to get an idea. Wikipedia is not an academically acceptable source, but it is rarely wrong and serves as a good first filter to save time. Then I start focusing on the reliable sources above and I will make sure I understand the evidence.
So, in summary I will use my expertise, scientific consensus, reliable sources and better, agreement between reliable sources, to determine if I can say with confidence that something is true. I will also frequently include links from Wikipedia in my posts because Wikipedia typically feature good summaries that are easy to understand. Naturally, anyone is free to dispute any of my super facts. Just make sure you provide good evidence from an arguably reliable source, or I cannot take it seriously.
Fact or myth. Shutterstock Asset id: 2327968607
Sources I will not consider are claims from unreliable sources, political think tanks, talk show hosts, politicians, articles written by contrarians heavily funded by industry or political organizations, and random Reels or YouTube videos, and I will not entertain conspiracy theories for my purposes. Also, I will ignore, articles with click bait titles, sources making claims about a great swindle by the scientific community, articles claiming everyone is lying to you, articles purporting to reveal the hidden truth, articles insisting on presenting the truth that “they”/the-others won’t tell you, etc. Cults will tell you that everyone else is lying to you. I’ve learned not to fall for it at this point.
My Super Fact List
Finally, here are a few examples of my super facts.
Super fact 48 : Since 1945 we have set off more than 2,000 Nuclear Bombs corresponding to a yield of an estimated 42,000 times that of the Hiroshima Bomb.
According to the Arms Control Association there’s been 2,056 nuclear bomb tests. According to the UN there’s been more than 2,000 nuclear bomb tests, and according to Wikipedia there’s been 2,121 nuclear bomb tests, totaling 635 Megaton. Using the typical yield estimate for the Hiroshima bomb of 15 Kiloton that corresponds to more than 42,000 Hiroshima bombs. I think most of us know about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and we know about nuclear testing. However, I think the number of tests and the large total yield will come as a surprise to many, at least it was a surprise to me. That is why I consider this a super fact.
Nuclear bomb dropped on a big city. Shutterstock, asset id: 2188083835 by CI Photos.
Nuclear Landscaping
It may also come as a surprise that many of these tests were not for military purposes. Another usage for nuclear bombs is nuclear landscaping. Towards the end of the 1950’s the existing Panama Canal was thought to be insufficiently large and some people, including Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen bomb (Thermonuclear bomb), suggested that a new wider and deeper canal could be built simply by using nuclear bombs to blow multiple huge holes across Panama. The US was also interested in creating a new harbor in Alaska using nuclear bombs.
Thus, Project Plowshare was created to achieve this. As part of the Project Plowshare 35 nuclear warheads were detonated. The Soviet Union also had a similar program named “Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy” that included 124 nuclear bomb tests. Due to concerns over radioactive fallout the nuclear landscaping projects were eventually put to rest. The last Plowshare detonation was on May 17, 1973. The book Atomic Awakening by James Mahaffey recounts the history of nuclear testing and nuclear landscaping in greater detail.
Hydrogen bomb test by Alones Shutterstock Asset id: 2194195335.
Project Orion
Another non-military use of nuclear bomb testing was Project Orion. Project Orion was a study conducted from 1956 to 1964 by the US Air Force, NASA, and DARPA into the viability of a nuclear pulse spaceship that would be directly propelled by a series of atomic explosions behind the craft. A thick steel pusher plate would catch the blast and accelerate the ship forward.
The “Pascal B” shot in Operation Plumb Bob in 1957 was the first nuclear weapons test of the pusher concept. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 made it difficult to continue with the project. According to the book Atomic Awakening, if the design had been successfully completed, we could have created an interstellar spaceship that could have taken a crew and a large load to other planets and stars.
I can add that According to Atomic Awakening, in addition to Nuclear Landscaping and Project Orion, Nuclear Blasts were a tourist attraction.
Number of Nuclear Tests by Country
Below is a list of countries and the number of nuclear tests that they’ve performed according to the Arms Control Association and Wikipedia.
The United States – 1,030 – According to Wikipedia – 1,032
The USSR/Russia – 715 – According to Wikipedia – 727
France – 210 – According to Wikipedia – 215
United Kingdom – 45 – According to Wikipedia – 88
China – 45 – According to Wikipedia – 47
North Korea – 6 – According to Wikipedia – 6
India – 3 – According to Wikipedia – 3
Pakistan – 2- According to Wikipedia – 2
However, it should be noted that partially due to nuclear arms control legislation such as; the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT): Signed in 1963, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT): Signed in 1974, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signing in 1996, the number of nuclear tests have been significantly reduced. This is illustrated by the graph below from Our World in Data. The last nuclear test was done by North Korea in 2017.
The biggest nuclear bomb ever exploded was RDS-220, or AN602, or Tsar Bomba. It was detonated by the Soviet Union on October 30th, 1961, on the arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, and yielded more than 50 Megaton. In other words, it was 3,300 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. According to Atomic Awakening, windows in Finland 1,900 kilometers (1,180 miles) away shattered. There are no cities large enough to match the size of the explosion. This is the kind of bomb that could obliterate states or small countries.
Tsar Bomba was a so-called thermonuclear device, or a hydrogen bomb as they are typically called. Hydrogen bombs are much more powerful than fission bombs, such as Uranium bombs or Plutonium bombs. To read my related post called “Ukraine Gave up Thousands of Nuclear Warheads” click here.
This is an illustration of the Tsar Bomba explosion by by mbafai Shutterstock Asset id: 2208486661. To see a photo of the actual Tsar Bomba explosion click here (it is copyrighted).
Would you pay to watch a Nuclear Bomb Test? (Nuclear Bomb Test Tourism)
Today, June 6 is the National Day of Sweden (or the Independence Day of Sweden). Gustav Vasa, or Gustav I, Sweden’s hero king and the father of modern Sweden, was elected king of Sweden on June 6th, 1523. This was after the Swedish War of Liberation from Denmark 1521 to 1523. Gustav rose to lead the Swedish War of Liberation following the Stockholm Bloodbath, where his father was executed. Gustav Vasa or Gustav I was King of Sweden from 1523 until his death in 1560. Since I am originally Swedish (now living in Texas) June 6 is a significant date for me.
This picture is how I imagine Gustav Vasa at his coronation. BTW this is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme ThursdayThis is how I imagine Gustav Vasa’s marriage to Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg on September 24th, 1531. This picture is also from Kevin’s No Theme Thursday
Depictions of Gustav Vasa
Kevin’s pictures above were, like I said, how I imagine Gustav Vasa. The depictions below might be closer to the truth.
Painting of Gustav I Vasa. Fashion was somewhat different back in the day.Portrait of Gustav Vasa (from Wikipedia Commons).
The Kalmar Union
In 1397 a union was formed between Denmark, Norway and Sweden called the Kalmar Union (Kalmar is a city a Sweden). The Kalmar Union came to be dominated by Denmark and there were occasional rebellions. During Gustav’s childhood, parts of the Swedish nobility tried to make Sweden independent. Gustav’s father Erik Johansson Vasa was part of that nobility.
After some problematic interactions with Denmark and the Danish King Christian II, King Christian massacred 100 Swedish nobles, November 7-9, 1520, on Stortorget in Stockholm, including Gustav’s father. In 1521 Gustav led a rebellion (or a civil war) against Denmark, which ended in the deposition of King Christian II from the throne of Sweden, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. I can add that King Christian is called Christian the Tyrant in Sweden and Christian the good in Denmark.
Sweden and Denmark has had a complicated history that included a lot of hostilities and eleven wars, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the situation today. There hasn’t been a war between Sweden and Denmark in more than 180 years and Swedes and Danes get along very well. However, it is best not to bring up the past. That is probably true for marriages as well.
Denmark vs Sweden. The yellow and blue flag is the Swedish flag. Red and white is the Danish. Shutterstock Stock Photo ID: 1114320377 by Hasanov Jeyhun.
Gustav Vasa’s Burial Place
Gustav Vasa died on September 29, 1560, and is buried together with three of his wives (while only two are engraved) in the Cathedral of Uppsala. Uppsala is an old city north of Stockholm famous for its Viking graves/mounds. During the Viking era Uppsala was the religious center of Sweden. Later as Sweden became Christian it remained the religious center of Sweden, however, the Viking temple in old Uppsala was replaced by a Christian church. Uppsala hosts one of the most prominent Universities in the world and it also happens to be where I studied Engineering Physics.
The largest cathedral in Sweden, Uppsala Domkyrka. This is where Gustav I Vasa is buried. Gustav I is arguably Sweden’s most prominent king.Inside Uppsala Domkyrka.The tomb of Gustav I Vasa in Uppsala Domkyrka. In the background is my son and his wife.
Photos from Sweden
I am a fan of Leonberger dogs, and this is a photo of the only Swedish Leonberger I met personally. Her name was Amie. We met her at an interesting place, at the top of a north Swedish mountain called Skule Mountain (Skull Mountain).One of the interesting tourist attractions in northern Sweden is the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi . The ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi is the first/original and largest ice hotel in the world. My kids at the lobby of the ice hotel in northern Sweden.
Sweden has a king (Carl XIV), and he owns a couple of big castles. This is my kids with the guard in front of the Winter Castle in Stockholm.Drottningholm, one of the Royal Palaces in Sweden. It was built in the 1660’s and inspired by Versailles.A photo of the Vasa ship from the bottom floor. My son is standing on the right in a green and black shirt.The Swedish Royal family. The two people in the middle are Queen Silvia and King Carl XVI Bernadotte. To the right of the king is the future monarch of Sweden princess Victoria and to the left of Queen Silvia is her husband. The others are their other two children and their spouses.Finally, the Swedish Flag (Wikimedia Commons). All other photos above are mine
Super fact 44 : Sulfur dioxide pollution has fallen by approximately 95 percent in the USsince the 1970s. This significant reduction is primarily due to regulations like the Clean Air Act. Global sulfur dioxide pollution has also fallen but not as much.
Sulfur dioxide is a colorless gas with the formula SO2. It has a pungent smell, which you notice after using matches. It is released naturally by volcanic activity and is produced as a by-product of burning sulfur-bearing fossil fuels and from metals refining. Sulfur dioxide is somewhat toxic to humans and by reacting with water it creates acid rain, which is a serious environmental problem.
The good news is that the Clean Air Act has driven technological advancements and the adoption of cleaner practices in industries that produce sulfur dioxide emissions. This has resulted in a drop of sulfur dioxide pollution in the US by 95% according to EPA and Statista and 94% according to Our World In Data. Statista is a pay site, so I am not going to link to it. Below is a graph from Our World In Data showing the reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution in the US.
US sulfur dioxide pollution since 1800. Data Source: Hoesly et al (2024) – Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). This graph is taken this page in Our World In Data.<<Link-5>> US Emissions peaked in 1973.
I should mention that by clicking this link you can visit the graph above Our World in Data and select different countries and regions and play around with the settings.
Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Worldwide
The worldwide emissions peaked in 1979 and fell sharply after that even though the progress (reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions) has not been as spectacular as in the US. Worldwide reductions are around 48%. Again, by visiting the Our World In Data page you can play around with the graph and the settings and view different countries and regions. This is an additional source visualizing the data.
Sulfur dioxide pollution worldwide since 1800. Data Source: Hoesly et al (2024) – Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). This graph is taken this page in Our World In Data. Worldwide Emissions peaked in 1979.Sulfur dioxide pollution worldwide since 1800 with three major polluters included. The United States is in red, China in green and India in blue. The graph for India is the one corresponding to the least overall pollution but it has no reduction. Data Source: Hoesly et al (2024) – Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). This graph is taken this page in Our World In Data.
Good News with Respect to Pollution
Sulfur dioxide emissions have gone down worldwide, which is good news. However, sulfur dioxide is not the only pollutant that we have succeeded in reducing. The graph below demonstrates that the US has also made great progress in reducing Nitrogen Oxides pollution, Carbon Monoxide, Black Carbon, and Non-methane volatile organic compounds. We have not been as successful with reducing Ammonia pollution.
However, according to Google AI sulfur dioxide, followed by Nitrogen Oxides pollution, Carbon Monoxide, and Black Carbon are the most serious pollutants. The graph below is taken from this page in Our World in Data.
US nitrogen oxide emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions, carbon monoxides, black carbon, ammonia and non-methane organic compounds pollution since 1750. Data Source: Hoesly et al (2024) – Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). This graph is taken from this page in Our World In Data.
The graphs for the world do not look as impressive. However, even in this case it looks like some progress has been made. Four graphs have peaked and are turning downwards, and one graph has flattened but unfortunately the graph for ammonia pollution is still heading upwards.
It should be noted that these pollutants are more or less local in the sense that they affect the polluting country and/or surrounding countries the most, whilst the climate change / global warming effect from carbon dioxide and other long lasting greenhouse gases tend to affect the entire planet.
Worldwide nitrogen oxides emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions, carbon monoxide emissions, black carbon, ammonia and non-methane organic compounds pollution since 1750. Data Source: Hoesly et al (2024) – Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). This graph is taken from this page in Our World In Data.
Aside from the success in reducing these pollutants there is more good news.
Natural Disasters Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago. We have gotten much better at protecting lives in natural disasters and less people die in natural disasters despite the increase in frequency, severity and cost of certain natural disasters.
