be that as it may, this year I learned:• Michelangelo was standing, not lying down, while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling (I probably read this before but had partially forgotten it again)• the electrocution of Topsy the Elephant was not an anti-alternating current demonstration organized by Thomas A. Edison during the war of the currents• the dodo’s intelligence was above average for an avian, and also its meat was inedible