When I visited the Snapple website this week, I was served one of the drink brand’s famous fun facts: that a jiffy is an “actual time measurement equaling 1/100th of a second.” Fun indeed! And arguably even a little bit true!
In 2013 in The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance courageously exposed that many of Snapple’s bottle-cap facts were false. I wished to determine whether the company had since cleaned up its act; the intervening rebrand from “Real Facts” (scare quotes theirs) to Real Facts (no quotes!) felt like a vow.
Alas, a jiffy was first proposed as the name for the time light takes to travel one centimeter in a vacuum—about 33 trillionths of a second. In electronics, a jiffy might be 1/50 or 1/60 of a second. Only in Linux computing specifically can it be 1/100 of a second, and even then only sometimes.
Oh well. I did not have the heart to check the next statement: “Mangoes can get sunburned.” Whatever, sure. For the foreseeable future, stick with Atlantic Trivia for your fun facts.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2025
- The film director Chloé Zhao describes what line of William Shakespeare’s as “the great paradox of the universe”?
— From Shirley Li’s story about reinterpreting Shakespeare for the screen - The post-hardcore band Fugazi often stopped live sets to chastise violent fan behavior in what space just in front of the stage?
— From James Parker’s story about the empathy you can find at heavy-metal shows - What Black-nationalist leader of the early 20th century spearheaded the “Back to Africa” movement, which encouraged Black Americans to migrate to the continent?
— From Dara T. Mathis’s story about the Black-liberation activist Audley Moore
And by the way, did you know that the country of Liberia was founded when formerly enslaved Black Americans migrated there en masse in the mid-19th century? It’s the oldest republic in Africa (it declared independence in 1847), and it’s the only state there never colonized or occupied by a European power.
Its first 10 presidents were all born in the United States, and its capital, Monrovia, is the only in the world (other than America’s) to honor an American—namely, President James Monroe.
See you tomorrow!
Answers:
- “To be, or not to be.” In Zhao’s new film, Hamnet, the speech containing this line shows up twice, delivered once by Shakespeare himself and once by one of his actors. Shirley writes that it’s a daring take to reinterpret the soliloquy as more of a conversation. Read more.
- The mosh pit. James recently attended a metal music festival on the hunch that the self-policing pit might hold lessons for how to live together in 2025. He admits that it’s “the kind of idea only a journalist would have,” but the pit ended up teaching him plenty. Read more.
- Marcus Garvey. Mathis writes that Garvey’s philosophy was hugely influential in the early life of Moore, who became an ideological “midwife” to many of the century’s Black-nationalist activists but herself remains sorrowfully overlooked. Read more.
How did you do? Come back tomorrow for more questions, or click here for last week’s. And if you think up a great question after reading an Atlantic story—or simply want to share a fact—send it my way at [email protected].
