Do you ever get the feeling that the universe owes you something in return for a spate of bad luck? Well, in the case of Bill Morgan, the payout came quickly - and in spades.

In 1988, Bill was a 37-year-old truck driver living in a caravan. A close brush with death in a car crash resulted in a serious heart condition. That same year, the medication for his condition caused a fatal heart attack, leaving him clinically dead for 14 minutes and 38 seconds before being revived. He then fell into a coma for 12 days, during which his family was advised to turn off his life support. However, after being transferred to another hospital, he miraculously woke up and fully recovered. And that’s where the turnaround started.

Within a year of his recovery, Morgan won a scratchcard prize of an AU$30,000 Toyota Corolla, secured a new job, and got engaged to Lisa Wells. His incredible change of fortune caught the attention of local media. In May 1999, while filming a re-enactment of his win for a news report, Morgan scratched off another card on camera and won AU$250,000. Overwhelmed, he exclaimed, "I just won 250,000. I'm not joking," and then celebrated with the newsagency staff before calling his fiancée to share the news that they could now buy a new house.

Talk about living a full life.

The lesson in all this? When life gives you lemons, start buying scratchcards.

You can see Bill’s winning moment live here on YouTube (warning: this is from the 80s and the sound quality is terrible).

Speaking of luck, Trump definitely used at least one of his nine lives in the recent assassination attempt. Without wading into dangerous political territory (not least of all on a Sunday when we are all trying to rest), Dominique Olivier couldn't help but be reminded of a famous Delacroix masterpiece when seeing the iconic photograph of Trump after the shooting. This got her thinking about whether cancel culture online is really just a new method for a very old idea. Read her thoughts here>>>

Read on for why the name you give your kids is an important decision, as well as fast facts bringing you the world in numbers.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

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TL:DR: Nominative determinism is the theory that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their names.

A lawyer named Sue Yoo. A meteorologist named Storm Field. A substitute teacher named Mr. Fillin. A piano teacher named Patience Scales. What do they all have in common?

Besides what I can only imagine to be a lifelong dread of introducing themselves to people, these individuals are all card-carrying members of the nominative determinism club. The term is a mouthful, but the phenomenon it describes is quite simple: sometimes, people have surnames that link to their jobs in humorous ways.

The term was coined in 1994 by New Scientist magazine. It originated in the magazine's witty "Feedback" column, in an article which highlighted studies conducted by researchers whose surnames amusingly matched their fields of expertise. For instance, Daniel Snowman authored a book on polar explorations, while researchers named Splatt and Weedon contributed to an article on urology. These instances sparked playful speculation about whether psychological factors were at play - an idea later adopted by the famous psychologist Carl Jung.

The history of naming is worth exploring here. Originally, people were known by single names chosen for their meaning or given as nicknames. It wasn't until after the Norman conquest in England that surnames began to appear. These surnames were often derived from patronyms (e.g., John, Willam’s son became John Williamson), occupations (e.g., John Carpenter), characteristics (e.g., John Long), or locations (e.g., John from Acton became John Acton). Initially, surnames were not hereditary, but by the mid-14th century, they gradually became so. Surnames tied to trades or skills were among the first to become hereditary, passed down through generations as these skills persisted within families.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Smith and Taylor were two of the three most frequently occurring English surnames; both were occupational, and both withstood the test of time better than the trades they were named for.

There are three main theories that attempt to explain nominative determinism, all put forward by psychologist Lawrence Casler in 1975:
 

1. A person’s self-image and self-expectation being internally influenced by their name.

2. The name acting as a social stimulus, creating expectations in others that are then communicated to the individual. 

3. Attributes suited to a particular career being passed down the generations alongside the appropriate occupational surname.

Of these three theories, I’m particularly partial to the third. So were the writers of a research report in 2015, who found that today's Smiths still tend to have the physical capabilities of their ancestors who were actual smiths. People called Smith reported above-average aptitude for strength-related activities. A similar aptitude for dexterity-related activities among people with the surname Tailor, or equivalent spellings thereof, was found, but sadly it was not statistically significant.

The cherry on top of this trivia sundae? The existence of the term 'nominative contradeterminism', which describes people who move away from their name, creating a contradiction between name and occupation. Notable examples include Andrew Waterhouse, a professor of wine, a doctor named Thomas Edward Kill, and the Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Sin.

If you want a good laugh, check out this collection of modern-day cases of nominative determinism.

An assortment of facts that will take you only a minute to read.

1. Not only is the Trans-Siberian Railway the longest railroad in Russia, but it’s also the longest one in the world. The journey takes seven days, during which passengers pass through eight different time zones and cross 3,901 bridges.

2. ​The Philippines is an archipelago, which means it’s made up of a group of islands - 7,641 islands, to be exact. That figure does not include the thousands of sandbars and other landforms that emerge during low tide.

3. Spanning 3,764 kilometres, the Mississippi River is the third-largest watershed in the world. That’s one long stretch of water. So long, in fact, that it takes one drop of water approximately 90 days to travel its entire length.

4. The British Empire was most powerful in the 1920s, when it controlled 23 percent of the world’s population and approximately 22 million square kilometres of territory - or nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land area, according to a report from Statista.