Homicide
Homicide is the leading cause of on-the-job death among women. And taxi drivers are the people most likely to be murdered while working.
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
AIR TRAVEL
THE PROBLEM Flight delays, a large share of which are caused by weather, cost the U.S. economy $31 billion annually. Regulators have been slow to approve technology that could provide pilots access to weather data. THE INNOVATION Mobile technology can keep pilots abreast of the latest weather information and plan ways to avoid bad weather in advance, even if they’re […]
Read moreThe two deadliest drugs in America are both legal
The two deadliest drugs in America are both legal. Tobacco kills more than 500,000 Americans a year. Alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths a year (including those caused by drunk driving and violent behavior) and more than 4.6 million emergency room visits.
Read moreArmed Robberies
Percent increase in armed robberies at pharmacies since 2006: 81
Read moreDANGEROUS COMBOS
There were 2.5 million emergency-room visits related to drug use in 2011—half for illegal drugs and half for misused medication. A third of patients had taken two or more substances: multiple drugs or drugs and alcohol.
Read moreStuck In A Chimney
California firefighters spent two hours extracting a naked woman from a chimney after she tried to sneak into her ex-boyfriend’s home at 5 a.m. The 35-year-old took off her clothes in the hope it would help her fit down the 1-foot-wide chimney. But halfway down, she became wedged and called the ex on her cellphone. “I said, ‘Where are you […]
Read moreSomething Fishy Going On
A Chinese fishmonger found a 3-pound live bomb inside a squid he was cutting up. Police took the squid away and blew it up in a controlled explosion.
Read moreSelf-Storage Space
The U.S. now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space, constituting more than 7 square feet for every citizen.
Read moreSlow TV
An Icelandic public broadcast station aired 24 hours of live sheep birthing, part of its “slow TV” campaign, which also featured chess, knitting, and wood-burning.
Read moreBarrel of monkeys
A wild rhesus macaque who’s stalked Tampa Bay for three years bit and scratched an elderly woman. “He gets up in my tree and starts shaking it because he wants to be fed,” said Jeff Seilbach, a neighbor of the attacked woman. “If you don’t feed him, he cops an attitude.”
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