The Trainwreck Labs Newsletter
Coming to your inbox every Monday with a brand new fun-fact and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.
This week, we have…
Get ready for Globle: Live!
A fun fact inspired by Stocktangle
Answers to last week's games
Reader survey
This summer, GLOBLE is coming to life!
On June 14, Trainwreck Labs and Toronto Games Week are turning Toronto’s High Park into a giant interactive world map for the very first GLOBLE: LIVE.
Teams will walk through a miniature Earth, hunting down all 48 countries in the 2026 World Cup while stamping their digital passports along the way. Think scavenger hunt meets geography game meets World Cup warm-up.
If you love maps, travel, trivia, soccer, and will be in Toronto this summer, come check it out!
Learn more: https://globle.live/
In the 1960s, one woman refused to be replaced by IBM
Photo from Unsplash
When IBM (Stocktangle stock #169) rolled its 7090 mainframe into NASA's Langley Research Center in the early 1960s, it threatened to make an entire workforce obsolete. The machine, which filled an entire room, could perform in hours what human "computers" did in weeks. Among those workers was Dorothy Vaughan, the first African American supervisor at NACA (NASA's predecessor), who led the segregated West Area Computing unit, a team of Black women mathematicians whose calculations powered early American aeronautics.
Rather than wait to be replaced, Vaughan made a remarkable bet on herself. She borrowed a book titled Understanding Fortran from her local public library and taught herself the programming language the IBM machine spoke. Then she did something even more strategic: she trained her entire team of Black women mathematicians in FORTRAN, ensuring they would have a place in the new technological era. She went on to become an expert FORTRAN programmer in NASA's new Analysis and Computation Division and retired in 1971.
While the 2016 film Hidden Figures, in which Octavia Spencer earned an Oscar nomination playing Vaughan, condenses and dramatizes the timeline, the core fact is true: a Black woman in the Jim Crow South essentially trained her own department to thrive alongside one of IBM's most powerful computers. In 2019, Vaughan was posthumously honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, recognition for someone who saw the future coming and decided to program it herself.
Learn more: REEL LIBRARIANS
Trivia
In the 1960s, each of NASA's IBM mainframes that helped guide the Apollo missions had only about 1 MB of memory. That's roughly enough to hold which of the following?
Answers to last week's games
Monday, May 18 to Sunday, May 24.
Globle
May 18 Bolivia
May 19 United Kingdom
May 20 Mauritius
May 21 Vietnam
May 22 Namibia
May 23 Malawi
May 24 Malaysia
May 25 Play now!
Globle: Capitals
May 18 Nicosia
May 19 Port Moresby
May 20 Jakarta
May 21 Skopje
May 22 Saint George's
May 23 Abu Dhabi
May 24 Dublin
May 25 Play now!
Chronogram
#1143 Alan Turing
#1144 Oscar Wilde
#1145 Cleopatra
#1146 Giordano Bruno
#1147 Bing Crosby
#1148 Marie Antoinette
#1149 Leonhard Euler
#1150 Play now!
Fictogram
#911 Jean Valjean
#912 Alden Pyle
#913 Pippi Longstocking
#914 Brida
#915 James Bond
#916 Saleem Sinai
#917 Heathcliff
#918 Play now!
Metazooa
#1022 alpaca
#1023 mockingbird
#1024 gerbil
#1025 praying mantis
#1026 black bear
#1027 tarantula hawk wasp
#1028 hedgehog
#1029 Play now!
Metaflora
#961 leek
#962 cotton
#963 jackfruit
#964 pearl millet
#965 seaweed
#966 garden pea
#967 macadamia nut
#968 Play now!
Linxicon
The following are the shortest paths from last week:
#826 quietly → thoughtfully → review
#827 opening → starting → after → then
#828 principal → parent → adopt → embrace
#829 dramatic → entertainment → internet → online
#830 here → trying → barely
#831 suit → fashionable → widespread
#832 furniture → food → naturally → necessarily
#833 Play now!
Elemingle
#482 Hassium
#483 Nihonium
#484 Tantalum
#485 Yttrium
#486 Fluorine
#487 Ytterbium
#488 Boron
#489 Play now!
Stocktangle
#165 Globant SA (GLOB)
#166 ServiceNow Inc (NOW)
#167 Eli Lilly and Company (LLY)
#168 Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)
#169 International Business Machines (IBM)
#170 Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM)
#171 Dell Technologies Inc (DELL)
#172 Play now!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!
Before you go…
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