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    Author Michael Miller examines quiet national rules that make other countries seem fictional.
    Blog 7 min read

    The Quiet National Rules That Make Other Countries Feel Fictional

    Last updated: Thursday 16th April 2026

    Quick Summary

    This blog is about the odd, unwritten rules and unusual historical accidents that secretly shaped our world. It's surprising because familiar things, like the letter J or how we eat pizza, are far newer than you'd think. Discovering these often-overlooked origins makes everyday life feel remarkably strange and fascinating.

    In a hurry? TL;DR

    • 1The letter J is a relatively recent addition to the English alphabet, solidifying its distinct form around 500 years ago.
    • 2Physics and geometry explain why one large pizza offers more area than two medium-sized pizzas combined.
    • 3In 1999, a chimpanzee named Raven outperformed thousands of professional fund managers by picking stocks with darts.
    • 4To avoid drowning, marine mammals have evolved to sleep with half their brains at a time, keeping the other half alert.
    • 5Samsung has evolved from a chip maker to a dominant, integrated infrastructure provider in South Korea.
    • 6Understanding the history of seemingly fixed elements reveals their arbitrary or accidental origins.

    Why It Matters

    It's fascinating how seemingly fundamental aspects of our lives, like the alphabet or how we order pizza, are actually the result of relatively recent and sometimes accidental historical changes.

    History is rarely a straight line of kings and battles. It is more often a messy, overlapping collection of accidental discoveries, linguistic shifts, and odd statistical anomalies that define how we eat, speak, and invest today. This month, we look at the pivots that turned a letter into a distinct character, transformed a chimp into a Wall Street contender, and changed the geometry of the Saturday night takeaway.

    • Alphabet Evolution: The letter J finally broke away from I to complete the modern English alphabet.
    • Mathematical Hunger: The surprising physics of pizza area proves why one large always beats two mediums.
    • Financial Satire: A chimpanzee named Raven outperformed the world's most sophisticated fund managers in 1999.
    • Biological Marvels: Maritime mammals mastered the art of sleeping with only half a brain to avoid drowning.
    • Sporting Extremes: The NBA witnessed its most statistically improbable pairing with teammates at both ends of the height spectrum.
    • Corporate Saturation: Samsung moved beyond chips and screens to become a cradle-to-grave infrastructure in South Korea.

    Why It Matters: Understanding these historical pivots helps us recognize that many things we take for granted as fixed were actually late-stage additions or mathematical quirks.

    The Alphabet’s Final Piece

    The English alphabet feels like an ancient, immovable set of twenty-six characters, but it only reached its current form roughly 500 years ago. Until the mid-16th century, the letter J did not exist as a separate entity. It was merely a decorative flourish for the letter I, often used at the end of Roman numerals to signal the conclusion of a sequence.

    The letter J was the last character added to the modern English alphabet after splitting from I. This linguistic divorce was spearheaded by Italian grammarian Gian Giorgio Trissino, who argued that the symbols should represent distinct sounds. Before this, Jesus was written as Iesus. The change was slow to stick; the King James Bible of 1611 still used I where we now use J.

    This evolution mirrors the way the words we use to dodge the truth shift over time. Just as we create new letters to clarify sounds, we adapt our vocabulary to obscure or reveal intent.

    The Chimpanzee Who Shook Wall Street

    In April 1999, the financial world received a humbling lesson in humility. While analysts at major firms were using complex algorithms to predict the dot-com boom, a chimpanzee named Raven was using a different method: darts.

    By throwing ten darts at a board of 133 internet companies, Raven became the 22nd most successful money manager in the USA. Her portfolio delivered a 213 per cent return, outperforming more than 6,000 professional fund managers. This event remains a foundational anecdote in behavioural economics, cited by experts to demonstrate that in a market driven by noise, sophisticated analysis often fares no better than random chance.

    The Geometry of the Pizza Box

    Most consumers assume that two 12-inch pizzas provide more food than a single 18-inch pie. It feels instinctively correct: twelve plus twelve is twenty-four, which is clearly larger than eighteen. However, the basic geometry of a circle dictates otherwise.

    Because the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius, an 18-inch pizza has about 12.5 per cent more area than two 12-inch pizzas. When you buy the larger size, you get more actual food and less crust-heavy edge. This quirk of mathematics is a reminder that our brains are often poorly equipped to visualise exponential or squared growth, a theme we explored when discussing how certain tasks make you see the world anew.

    Survival Without Total Sleep

    In the animal kingdom, complete unconsciousness is an expensive luxury. For dolphins and certain migratory birds, the historical solution was the development of unihemispheric slow-wave sleep.

    Dolphins can use unihemispheric sleep, allowing one half of the brain to rest while the other remains vigilant. This ensures they continue to surface for air and stay alert for predators. According to researchers at the University of Zurich, this adaptation shows that sleep is not an all-or-nothing state but a flexible neurological tool. This biological multi-tasking often leads to surprising ways we describe feeling unsettled when our own circadian rhythms are disrupted.

    Modern History’s Influential Milestones

    Event Historical Impact Legacy
    Addition of J Completed the English alphabet Standardised modern spelling and phonetics.
    Samsung Expansion Dominates South Korean GDP Created the worlds most comprehensive corporate ecosystem.
    Raven the Chimp Outperformed 6,000 Wall Street pros Proved the limits of active stock market management.
    Bullets Roster Combined 5'3" and 7'7" players Demonstrated the extreme diversity of human athletic potential.
    USWS Discovery Observed in dolphins and birds Challenged our understanding of consciousness and rest.
    Pizza Geometry 18-inch area advantage Changed consumer logic regarding value and volume.

    The Scale of a Corporate Nation

    In most of the Western world, a company is a brand you buy from. In South Korea, Samsung is a landscape you live in. While the globe knows them for Galaxy phones, Samsung’s reach extends to hospitals, apartment complexes, and funeral halls.

    Reuters once noted that Samsung’s sales are equal to roughly one-sixth of South Korea’s entire GDP. This level of integration is historically unique. It is not just a business; it is a social safety net and an infrastructure provider. This level of total market saturation makes the company more akin to a private government than a traditional manufacturer.

    Extremes on the Basketball Court

    In the 1987-88 NBA season, the Washington Bullets provided a visual lesson in human diversity. They rostered both Muggsy Bogues, standing at 5'3", and Manute Bol, who towered at 7'7". This remains the largest height disparity between teammates in NBA history.

    This was more than a gimmick. Both players were elite specialists who proved that the fringes of human physiology could be harnessed for high-level performance. Bol was a premier shot-blocker, while Bogues used his low centre of gravity to become one of the league’s most disruptive defenders. Their presence on the same court is often cited in discussions of the week's most intriguing insights regarding how we perceive physical capability.

    “History is not just what happened; it is the study of why our world looks the way it does now.”

    Key Takeaways

    • Complexity often hides in the simplest places, like the size of a pizza or the letters in a word.
    • Biological evolution often finds bizarre workarounds, like unihemispheric sleep, to solve the problem of survival.
    • Human markets are frequently less predictable than we believe, as proven by a dart-throwing chimpanzee.
    • Cultural and corporate structures, such as Samsung in Korea, can become as essential as the state itself.
    • History is a series of refinements, often taking centuries to finalize something as basic as an alphabet.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    The letter J was officially recognized as a separate character from I around the mid-16th century, though its adoption was gradual, with widespread use not occurring until centuries later.

    In 1999, a chimpanzee named Raven outperformed over 6,000 professional fund managers by selecting stocks with darts, demonstrating that random chance can sometimes outperform complex financial strategies in volatile markets.

    Mathematically, one large pizza (18-inch diameter) contains more area than two medium pizzas (12-inch diameter), offering more food.

    Sources & References