be that as it may, this year I learned:
• Michelangelo was standing, not lying down, while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling (I probably read this before but had partially forgotten it again)
• the electrocution of Topsy the Elephant was not an anti-alternating current demonstration organized by Thomas A. Edison during the war of the currents
• the dodo’s intelligence was above average for an avian, and also its meat was inedible