Here are five completely unrelated things that I learned recently. Perhaps you’ll be enlightened too.

1. I’m extremely skeptical of zero calorie sweeteners. If there is no glucose/fructose what is the sweetness coming from? Well, I just learned about monk fruit sweetener: “However, unlike in most fruits, the natural sugars in monk fruit aren’t responsible for its sweetness. Instead, it gets its intense sweetness from unique antioxidants called mogrosides. During processing, mogrosides are separated from the fresh-pressed juice. Therefore, monk fruit sweetener does not contain fructose or glucose.” (source) Have you ever tried it?

2. If the flames of your gas stove burn orange instead of blue, it means incomplete combustion is occurring, which may result in unsafe levels of carbon monoxide.

3. Harvard has only 6,800 undergraduate students. For some reason I never realised it was that small. (My alma mater, Western University, has about 33,000 undergrads.)

4. When Prince Charles becomes king he may choose to reign as George VII rather than Charles III. (He was christened Charles Philip Arthur George and he could use any of those given names. Interestingly, both Edward VII and George VI had the first name Albert.)

5. Women did not gain the right to vote in federal elections in Switzerland until 1971! (Compared to 1918 in Canada and 1920 in the U.S.)

What did you learn in February?