Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan
Sharing is Caring — So Please Share?
Hi!
I’m going to introduce a new feature for the Weekender in a moment (well, for this week at least). But before I do, I have a small request:
Tell a few friends about Now I Know. And suggest they subscribe. (They can subscribe using this link, if you want to just forward them this email with a quick note.)
I write Now I Know because I love sharing what I learn (more on that below!), but I don’t have the budget to advertise and bring in new readers. New people typically come in via word of mouth, so when you share Now I Know with your friends, you’re encouraging me to keep on sharing these stories, too.
Thank you — I really appreciate it! Your support really does make a difference.
Dan
Three Things I Learned This Week
Being super curious, I learn a lot of new things each week. But not everything has an interesting story behind it (or, at least, not one that warrants 500 or so words). But I still want to share them!
So here’s a new thing for this Friday — I’m not sure if this will become a regular feature: Three fun facts and a tiny bit of context behind them. Let’s jump in.
Where does “Elphaba” come from? In Wicked, the protagonist has a name: Elphaba. But in the Wizard of Oz and the L. Frank Baum book it is based on, she doesn’t — she’s known simply as “the Wicked Witch of the West.” Her unusual name is an homage to Baum. Author Gregory Maguire, who wrote the novel that the Broadway show and now two-part film adaptation are based on, came up with the name “Elphaba” by combining Baum’s initials, L.F.B, and squeezing out a pronounceable word.
I can’t watch “The Great British Bake Off” because I live in the United States. I have to watch “The Great British Baking Show” instead. It’s the same show, just a different name. In the US and Canada, “bake-off” is a trademark owned by Pillsbury, so the producers adopted a region-specific name. (I really do like the show, for what it’s worth.)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is very, very old — or, at least, the 1964 TV special claims to be. Check out the copyright notice from the opening credits, below:
The date MCLXIV is displayed, but that’s not how you write 1964 in Roman numerals — that’d be MCMLXIV, with that second M after the C. The letters on the Rudolph copyright notice are MCLXIV, or the year 1164. CBS Television, which now owns the rights to the program, has never fixed the mistake.
Like this addition to the Weekender? Hate it? Email me back and let me know. Thanks!
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The Now I Know Week In Review
Monday: At Least He Was Right About the Cake Thing?: The Unabomber gets caught… by cake?
Tuesday: The Lake That Killed Its Neighbors: This is bad.
Wednesday: Blame It on the Record Label: They didn’t sing. They wanted to, though.
Thursday: How Bob Marley Fed the Poor: Blame it on the record label.
Long Reads and Other Things
Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:
1) “Pizzastroika” (Slate, 18 minutes, November 2025). In 1990, as the Soviet Union was undergoing perestroika (economic reform), Pizza Hut made a bold move: it opened a restaurant in Moscow. It wasn’t what anyone expected.
2) “A Beloved Clothing Store Closed. A Customer Bought All 4,500 Items.” (New York Times/gift link, 11 minutes, November 2025). The subhead: “Everything in the shop appeared to have been abandoned. A devoted customer took it all home and started selling the items herself.”
3) “The Case Of The Missing Channel” (Tedium, 9 minutes, April 2018 ). The subhead: “The cable channel Genesis StoryTime aired in numerous homes in the U.S. and Canada. Yet few records of it exist online. Here's our attempt to fix that.”
Have a great weekend!
Dan