Only one... But all...!

June 27, 2023 5:25 AM

I need a surprising, encouraging, or otherwise remarkable true fact about “one” and “all.” It should follow a format something like: “Only one X does thing Z. But all Ys do thing Z.” Or, “Only one X had ever happened. But since then, X has happened at all times.” Or, the reverse is just as good: "All Xs have Zs, but only one Y has a Z."

It’s essential to have both a “one” and an “all” in the fact. But what they refer to is fully flexible. These examples are made up, but any could qualify if it were true:

Only one high schooler engaged in the innovative Team Up program has parents who graduated from high school. But today, all students who entered the program four years ago are graduating.

Only one band has had a hit topping the charts in Indonesia and the US at the same time. But The Winching Swoogies have done it not just once, but with all the releases from their latest album.

Only one crustacean is known to have stable social hierarchies. While they look just like crustaceans, all trinchtodeans have them.

Boring or pointless facts won't help, like "only one primary color has an R in it, but all three have Es." Upsetting or otherwise negative facts also won't help, like “before 2014, a polar hemi-monsoon had only happened one time in history. But since then, all summers have had damaging polar hemi-monsoons.”

Please note: I do hope to use one of your replies (though not verbatim) as an element in something that’s intended for publication. I'll reach out via memail if I'm intending to use yours, and if you ask me to refrain, I will.

posted by daisyace to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

All Indians can be cowboys, but not all cowboys can be Indians.
posted by scratch at 7:47 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I thought of a form of these facts that could potentially be particularly good. It would be something like this: "All of Beethoven's operas feature a prisoner saved from his grave at the last minute... but Beethoven only ever wrote one opera." I.e., the first part of the fact would be surprising because the reader would assume it was "all" of a substantial number, and the second part would reveal that, in fact, it's just "all" of the one, single case that exists.

(And scratch, thanks for trying, but 'all Xs are Ys but not all Ys are Xs' isn't the form I'm asking for.)
posted by daisyace at 8:16 AM on June 27, 2023

This is a comment Derek Lowe made in the comment section of one of the posts on his blog In the Pipeline:

For many years, fructose was known as the “uncrystallizable sugar”. Finally, a seed-with-everything effort gave some; as I recall, the vial that was nucleated with pentaerithritol crystallized, so all the crystalline fructose in the world is presumably derived from that!

I can’t link to it because, for reasons unknown to me but as you can see, all the comments from that particular post, but not other contemporaneous posts, have been scrubbed.

So, something like 'before that one seed crystal came along, there was only fructose syrup, but now it’s granulated everywhere!'
posted by jamjam at 10:23 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've been wondering whether Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile would work into this. Before he did it, it was considered literally impossible, but afterwards a lot of people were able to.

So he was briefly the only person who could break the four-minute mile. Obviously, afterwards, not "all" people could then do it, but all people believed it was possible, which was not true before.

Wikipedia article.
posted by FencingGal at 10:36 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: All the US Presidents had First Ladies. Only one, James Buchanan, was never married.

All mustache styles have descriptive names, but only the Walrus Mustache is named after an animal.
posted by Mchelly at 2:17 PM on June 27, 2023

I was also going to mention the four minute mile. First there was only one person who did it. Now I imagine there are races where all entrants run 4 minute miles.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 2:37 PM on June 27, 2023

The standard logical statement we got in college (or high school?) was:

Every poodle is a dog, but not every dog is a poodle.

Not quite your framing, but it's been memorable for me for decades and illustrates it well to ... people that might not understand logic :)
posted by intermod at 2:59 PM on June 27, 2023

It's not polished because migraine, but what comes to mind for me is -

All mammals communicate with their own species, and many with other species, but humans are the only ones who produce elaborate fictions.

(I say elaborate fictions, because my cats definitely lie to me about how starving they are)
posted by Vigilant at 5:51 PM on June 27, 2023

Best answer: All states in the U.S. have Target stores. Only one state - Vermont - has only one Target store.
posted by Redstart at 10:48 AM on June 28, 2023

Could you apply your criteria to the rules of baseball and how the offense is only one batter at a time? On offense, the one player goes against all other players. It seems, all other major league team sports need more player to get on the board/score, but baseball. In that sport, the offense is unique.
posted by brent at 7:15 PM on June 28, 2023

Response by poster: Thank you! (Continuation of this effort is here.)
posted by daisyace at 9:20 AM on June 29, 2023