… that Canada took home gold at the very first World Championship? The Winnipeg Falcons won at the 1920 Winter Olympics with a score of 27–1.
—The Greatest Game: The Montreal Canadiens, the Red Army, and the Night That Saved Hockey by Todd Denault
Excerpt from The Greatest Game:
Stockholm, Sweden, March 7, 1954. Canada is a country often divided by geographic, spiritual, and linguistic differences, and yet there is one sport that can bring everyone together. The first organized indoor hockey game on ice took place in Montreal on March 3, 1875, and by the dawn of the twentieth century, hockey was established as Canada’s most popular sport.
… that while working as an assistant brand manager for a pet food company, Kevin O’Leary had to eat cat food in front of a potential buyer during a pitch… and pretend to enjoy it?
—Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life by Kevin O’Leary
Excerpt from Cold Hard Truth:
“Listen, kid,” said the brand manager. “Do you have a strong stomach?”
I had survived Cambodian street soup. I had washed putrid ooze from the inside of a garbage truck. I told him I was the least queasy person he knew.
… that Germany’s “feed-in tariff” has created more than a quarter of a million jobs in just a decade and given rise to a $50-billion renewable energy business.
—The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy by Chris Turner
Excerpt from The Leap:
In 2000, after several years of sporadic, incremental change by half-measures and test runs, the German government passed a wholesale revision of its energy policy. It was a deceptively simple piece of legislation known as a “feed-in tariff,” which obliged grid operators (the companies that transmit electricity from power plants to customers) to buy power from renewable sources at rates far above the standard rate for electricity. Disguised as an effort to introduce a little green power to the German grid, the feed-in tariff has fundamentally changed the way the entire nation approaches the energy and climate crises and laid the foundations for the second industrial revolution.
… illnesses in developing countries account for 90% of global disease, yet, only 10% of global spending on health research focuses on these afflictions?
—The Grandest Challenge: Taking Life-Saving Science from Lab to Village by Abdallah Daar and Peter A. Singer
Excerpt from The Grandest Challenge:
In 1990, one study revealed that only 10 percent of global spending on health research was used to study conditions in developing countries, even though people there suffered 90 percent of the global disease burden. This became known as the 10/90 gap. Citizens in the United States, Canada and Western Europe were getting the lion’s share of health research dollars even though their people suffered only a small fraction of the world’s diseases. In other words, if you were an impotent, depressed, rich adult man living in the West, science delivered for you, in the form of Viagra and Prozac and a host of other remedies. If you were a poor person in Tanzania, you likely died long before you had to worry about the onset of midlife health concerns.
… that in 1874, while still a fugitive with a $5,000 bounty on his head, Louis Riel won the federal seat for Provencher, Manitoba, and snuck into Ottawa to sign the members’ register?
—Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times by Richard J. Gwyn
Excerpt from Nation Maker:
In one vital matter, Mackenzie’s performance was a good deal more than just creditable. He found a way to settle the longstanding issue of an amnesty for Louis Riel. And he did it by employing the same skills that the Conservatives had perfected: “the fine arts of double-talk, put-it-off, dodge-the-issue, and fool the voters.” As magnified the accomplishment even more, Mackenzie had been a member of the Liberal government in Ontario that had escalated sectarian hostilities by offering a five thousand-dollar reward for Riel’s capture.
… that Mother Teresa’s rules for sisters forbid friendships, emotional attachment, and any physical contact — even as slight as a tap on the shoulder?
—An Unquenchable Thirst: One Woman’s Extraordinary Journey of Faith, Hope, and Clarity by Mary Johnson
Excerpt from An Unquenchable Thirst:
I was sometimes confused by the myriad references to the Rule, the rule, the Rules, or the rules — singular or plural, capitalized or not, without any apparent change in meaning. Though Sister Carmeline referred to both the Constitutions and a seemingly endless number of unwritten customs and traditions as Rules, only the Constitutions carried what she called “the Church’s stamp of approval”; the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious had authorized the Constitutions as an infallible path to holiness. Failure to observe the Constitutions could be sinful, especially in matters connected with the vows. All religious (it felt strange to think of that word not as an adjective but as a noun referring to vowed sisters and brothers and some priests) took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Missionaries of Charity were privileged to take an additional vow of wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. We aspirants wouldn’t make these vows until we had completed three years of training, but we were to practice them already.
…that, despite his novel Amerika being an exploration of the United States and its culture, Franz Kafka never traveled further west than Paris?
Excerpt from The Tao of Travel:
Franz Kafka cannot be held accountable for the title of his novel Amerika. Left unfinished, it was published after his death by his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, who gave it this name. Kafka usually referred to it as Der Verschollene (The Missing Person or The Man Who Disappeared). The man in question went to America.
… at the Bali climate talks, in the vote on which countries did the most to hurt the potential for progress in fighting climate change, Canada “won” first, second and third place?
—This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge by Tzeporah Berman
Excerpt from This Crazy Time:
It was the oddest thing to watch as one after another, the scientists and UN officials and all my environmental colleagues from around the world made statements condemning Canada.
…that despite the airplane’s invention in the U.S., disputes over the Wright’s patents tied up innovation so badly, that the American Army Air Service flew French biplanes during WWI?
—Creeping Failure: How We Broke the Internet and What We Can Do to Fix It by Jeffrey Hunker
Excerpt from Creeping Failure:
Throughout modern history, public policies have helped, hindered, or shaped the course of progress through technology. The airplane was invented in the U.S., yet during World War I, the American ace Eddie Rickenbacker and his Army Air Service squadron flew French biplanes. Why? Because disputes over the Wright brothers’ patents in the U.S. had tied up innovation so badly that their home country built no aircraft able to perform on a level with European fighter planes. The government stepped in, creating a shared patent pool that allowed the U.S. aviation industry to move forward again in the years ahead.
…for hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike, Israel was meant to be a country founded on the best modes of social, political and economic organization?
—The Moral Lives of Israelis: Reinventing the Dream State by David Berlin
Excerpt from The Moral Lives of Israelis:
I came to Israel because I thought the new state was all about getting it right: Zionist thinkers and political leaders were brimming with cosmic ambition. They seemed intent on showing the world what it means to create a country that is at once a secure state and a refuge, a welcoming new home for strangers. To my adolescent eyes it seemed clear that such an experiment would necessarily entail establishing the best modes of social, political and economic organization. Secular Jews in Israel would insist on such things, driven by the prevailing idea that Jewish morality itself needed to find secular expression. The concept that drew me in, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike, was the possibility that we could show the world what it means to found a country upon this morality, which Judaism had long ago introduced to the world.
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