Enjoy a glass of bubbly on the New Year? Turns out it wasn’t always a classy drink, according to Kate Bratskeir:

• Champagne was first created due to freak weather events. In 1400s Europe an abrupt temperature drop temporarily stopped the wine fermentation process.
• When temperatures warmed up in the spring the process restarted itself. This led to excess carbon dioxide and bubbly wine.
• The result was widely regarded as a sign of careless winemaking, in part because the bottles holding it would sometimes explode.
• However over time the populace grew to like it, and a monk named Don Pierre Pérignon was asked to make it even bubblier.
• In that way champagne is like lobster – it went from being a poor man’s food to one being enjoyed by the elite.
• Marilyn Monroe is said to have filled a bath with 350 bottles of it to bathe in.

Read more about the history of champagne here.

Source: Huffington Post

Alice Truong wrote about what New Year’s eve will look like around the world:

• On average Russians stay up the latest, partying until 3:43am.
• This is thought to be because Christmas was banned in the former Soviet Union and so Russians took to having a mega-celebration for both Christmas and New Year’s on December 31^st.
• The Chinese go to bed the earliest, turning in by 12:42am.
• One third of all Americans go to sleep before midnight and wake to find themselves in the New Year.

Find out the source of the data, other insights, and the best cities to party in on New Year’s over here.

Source: Quartz

The best wishes for the New Year to all.

432 Park Avenue in New York City, at 426 meters, is the tallest residential building in the world. It’s become notorious for its high prices; the cheapest two bedroom unit costs $17 million. Because of this and other factors the address ‘432 Park Avenue’ has become a buzzword in the city but people trying to find the entrance of the building are wasting their time walking along Park Avenue wrote Patrick Clark:

• While one of the building’s sides is on Park Avenue, the skyscraper’s main entrance is on 56^th street.
• However an address on Park Avenue can raise a property’s price by up to 10%.
• Getting such a ‘vanity address’ is relatively cheap, and an excellent return on investment. The government evaluates each application on a case by case basis and charges an $11,000 processing fee.
• Such vanity addresses are a particular problem on Times Square where buildings far from the Square may claim an address there.
• Inaccurate addresses can sometimes lead to tragic consequences. In 1987, in Chicago, rescue workers were unable to find a burning building in time because the building, 1 Illinois Center, was actually on East Wacker Drive.

Read about the practice, periodic outrages about it, other popular vanity addresses, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

We’ve previously covered the ambulance drone. Greg Kumparak wrote about its younger brother, the lifeguard drone:

• Project Ryptide is a self-inflating life preserver ring.
• It can attach to most common drones. A lifeguard can then control it using their phone and have it drop the life preserver next to a drowning person.
• The ring will automatically inflate upon contact with water.
• The system will be on kickstarter and is expected to cost about $99 (drone not included).

Read more about it here.

Source: Techcrunch

Bourree Lam wrote about the business of buffets:

• Studies have indicated that the more people pay for an all you can eat buffet, the higher patrons rate the quality of the food.
  • The buffet business is lucrative since restaurants don’t have to pay much for wait staff – people serve themselves.
  • At some specialty buffet places customers are presented with a range of ingredients and encouraged to cook their own food, further reducing costs.
  • All you can eat places are usually family or group affairs which is good for the restaurants as there are usually only 1-2 “super-eaters” in the group while other family members eat much less than what they paid for.
• One company inputs metrics about food that was wasted into a computer program. This is then used to figure out how much food to prepare.
• Salads, for example, are particularly popular at the beginning of a new year.

Read more about the economics of the business over here. Read our earlier coverage about all you can eat places here.

Source: The Atlantic

Aaron Schachter wrote about a (real) travel agency for…stuffed toys:

• For $45 a day the Japanese company will take your stuffed animal on a tour of Tokyo with stops in places such as Tokyo tower and the Imperial Palace.
• To prove that they visited those places the tour guide will take photos of the stuffed animal at the attractions.
• Before the trip owners of the toy will get a questionnaire asking about things such as the toy’s dietary restrictions.
  • The service seems to appeal to those who can’t afford to go on trips themselves, and so live voraciously through their stuffed animals.

Read about how the service got started, and more over here.

Source: Public Radio International

No need for any post-holiday blues, writes Matthew Yglesias. The most patriotic thing you could do as a global citizen would be to start planning for another Christmas celebration:

• Statisticians don’t usually talk about it because they like to “seasonally adjust” their numbers, but up to 3 million Americans have jobs due to the Christmas season – and are fired soon afterwards.
  • It’s not just the demand created by presents. There’s also a surge in travel and food spending that props up the economy.
• Having a second Christmas sometime in the spring would give the economy a lasting boost, and perhaps make some of the “seasonal” workers permanent ones.
• For the economy as a whole this would be affordable. Yes, you’d have to spend more on presents, but all the extra demand would ultimately raise everybody’s wages.

Read the rest of the argument, why Yglesias is serious, and more over here.

Source: Vox

Via: Marginal Revolution

Suzanne McGee wrote about research into how much society should value Santa:

• Insure.com looked at all the jobs that Santa does and added up how much he would earn if he took those skills to other jobs.
• Overall it came out to $139,924 this year.
• This is mostly due to his prowess as “an industrial engineer” managing a toy factory in the North Pole.
• His value includes 182.5 hours a year spent in labour negotiations with the elves.
• He also makes some pocket money from all the personal guest appearances he makes when he visits malls.
• The figure does not, however, include hazard pay for having to spend so much time in the North Pole.
• Santa will be pleased that he’s entitled to a raise though. Last year the same work was worth $2,000 less.
• According to (real) surveys about 29% of people think that Santa should be paid $1 for every child, meaning he should be paid around $1.8 billion.
• Another 29% of survey respondents thought he should be paid nothing.

Read about the study, its methodology, and more over here. And read our own analysis of how much it would cost to make Santa’s presents here.

Source: Fiscal Times

A Korean Airlines executive (who has since resigned) made global headlines when she forced a plane to return to the gate after her outrage over being served macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a plate. Macadamia nut growers could not be happier:

• Sales of macadamia nuts got a substantial boost after the incident made headlines.
• Demand was driven, in part, by Koreans who before the outburst weren’t widely aware of macadamias.
• Prices for the nut have risen 10% this year.
• The Australian Macadamia Society says that macadamia sales used to make up 5% of total nut sales. They are now responsible for 50%.
• In Korea one retailer reports that sales have increased 149% in a week.

Read more about why this is just the beginning for the humble macadamia nut at the source links below.

Source: Fraser Coast Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal