As of December 2018, The Itchy & Scratchy Show that takes place within The Simpsons has 107 episodes.
100 Mind-Blowing December Facts
December 3rd is known as “Roof Over Your Head Day” – a day to be grateful for what we have in life!
Paddington Bear has 2 birthdays (just like the Queen). Paddington celebrates his birthdays on June 25th and December 25th.
December 12th is Ding-A-Ling Day – a day to call friends and family that you haven’t spoken to in a while.
As of December 2023, the most popular boy baby name of the year is Noah and the most popular girl baby name of the year is Olivia, based on names registered with BabyCentre.com.
The U.S. treasury once printed $100,000 bills. Between December 18, 1934, and January 9, 1935, the notes with Woodrow Wilson’s face were issued to Federal Reserve Banks but never went out to the general public—which is probably for the best. Can you imagine losing that bill?
The first aeroplane flew on December 17, 1903. Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with their first powered aircraft, aka the first aeroplane.
Children are born less frequently on Saturdays. Among all the days in the week, most children in the world are born on a Thursday. Babies born on weekends in December are also the least common.
A meteor with the force of 10 atomic bombs crashed on Earth and no one noticed. On December 18, 2018, a meteor hit our atmosphere but failed to be detected by NASA at the time. The reason for this is because it took place in the Bering Sea which was a closed area.
70% of cell phones are manufactured in China. In December 2019, 175.29 million cell phones were produced in China. Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Realme are all Chinese phone companies that dominate the mobile phone market.
The longest TV ad of all time is 14 hours long. Created for a product that supposedly “lasts forever,” this Old Spice commercial features actor Terry Crews and is airing for “an eternity” online. Since TV airtime is particularly expensive, a 14-hour version was aired in Brazil, on December 8, 2018, and earned the Guinness World Record for the longest TV ad ever.
The most M&Ms eaten with chopsticks while blindfolded is 20 pieces. The most M&Ms eaten in a minute (while blindfolded and with chopsticks) is 20 M&Ms. It was achieved by Ashrita Furman of the U.S. on December 8, 2011.
Conception occurs most in the month of December. Improved sperm quality, ovum receptivity, and rising sexual activity in the winter months all contribute to most babies being conceived in December.
The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company – on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The first airplane flight was on December 17, 1903. Wilbur and Orville Wright took the first aeroplane on four short flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The first airplane flight happened on December 17, 1903. In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the aeroplane four short times.
The First Computer ever (ENIAC). The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) made history as the first computer in the world (which was electronic programmable). Development of the computer was completed in 1945, and the computer entered service in December of that year. ENIAC could displace the computational power of 2,400 human beings for $500,000. ENIC relied on octal-base radio tubes to function. However, these tubes constantly burned out daily and required replacement. This means that ENIAC ran about 50% of the time and experienced downtime for tube replacements otherwise. More specialised and durable tubes eventually became available, leading to failures every one to two days.
This Is The World’s Largest Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Seagate launched the Exos 20+ hard disk drive (HDD) in December 2020. The HDD utilises HAMR and MACH2 technologies to offer 20 terabytes (TB) of storage. Typically, home computers utilise hard drives ranging from 1TB to 4 TB. Businesses and data centres may use significantly larger hard drives. It’s an impressive development from Seagate. The company recently launched 18TB hard drives to the market as well. Lately, companies have released larger and larger hard drives with improved performance. Solid state drives (SSDs) continue to grow in popularity, but the HDD remains a competitive alternative, especially for larger capacities.
The first commercial text message was sent in 1992. On December 3, 1992, a software architect, Sema Group, used a computer to text “Merry Christmas” to a Vodafone employee who was using an Orbitel 901 handset. These days, over six billion texts are sent per day!
Record-breaking vaccine. The record for a vaccine to be developed and licensed was four years. The record holder was the mumps vaccine which was licensed in 1967. Following the UK government’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 in early December 2020, that record is now just under 11 months.
Two significant car crashes. On 13 December 1931, Winston Churchill was struck by a car while crossing Fifth Ave in New York City. He had looked the wrong way before crossing the street and was dragged for several yards, sustaining bruises, sprains and cuts. In the same year, a 19-year-old British aristocrat named John Scott-Ellis was driving a red Fiat in Munich and almost hit the future Führer, Adolf Hitler. Scott-Ellis jumped out of his car and apologised, and Hitler only suffered minor bruises. They shook hands, and Scott-Ellis later remarked, ‘For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. . . [Hitler] was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.’
A sparse audience. Fewer than ten people witnessed the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903.
The Maya had multiple calendars to measure time. The most familiar is the Long Count Calendar. These calendars measured around 5125 years, beginning around August 3114 BCE. The Long Count calendar’s cycle came to an end around December 21, 2012, sparking a craze of Armageddon conspiracy theories.
The First Commercial Linux Distribution: Yggdrasil is the first commercial Linux distribution and was released in Live CD format on 8, December 1992, offering a unique blend of open-source software and a user-friendly interface for sale, marking a significant milestone in the history of Linux. Yggdrasil incorporated the X Window System and provided a graphical user environment when Linux was primarily command-line-based. Although it faced competition from free Linux distributions, its pioneering approach paved the way for the commercialization of Linux and the development of more user-friendly distributions in the years that followed.
The number of IoT attacks in the world reached over 10.54 million in December 2022. (Statista)
YouTube had 8 million users per day by December 2005.
YouTube introduced a new interface in December 2011.
OpenAI halted ChatGPT Plus sign-ups in November 2023 due to excessive demand surpassing GPT capacity and reopened subscriptions in December.
In December 2023, the European Parliament released an Artificial Intelligence Act, a regulation that aims to protect citizens from “high risks of AI.”
OpenAI’s annualized revenue surpassed $1.6 billion in December 2023 due to ChatGPT’s growth, up from $1.3 billion as of mid-October.
Additionally, ChatGPT reached the 100 million weekly user mark in November 2023. ChatGPT garnered around 266 million visits in December 2022.
OpenAI’s annualized revenue surpassed $1.6 billion in December 2023, reflecting ChatGPT’s growth and its influence across industries.