Pleading Guilty
Percentage of all criminal defendants in the United States who forgo a trial by pleading guilty: 97 Percentage of U.S. convicts exonerated last year who had previously pleaded guilty without a trial: 17
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
To Delay Aging, Spend More Time Standing Up
To delay aging, spend more time standing up. That’s the surprising conclusion of a new study by Swedish scientists, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Researchers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm took blood samples from a group of sedentary, overweight men and women, all 68 years old, and measured the length of their telomeres—caps on the ends of DNA that […]
Read moreBungling British Burglar
A bungling British burglar who volunteered to be fitted with a police GPS tracker was arrested after he carried out a string of burglaries while wearing the device. Nicholas Broadley, 33, wore the tracker as part of a program to help career criminals go straight. But when police checked his movements, they discovered that he’d been at the scene of three […]
Read more7 GOOD REASONS TO BEFRIEND A SHARK
If nightmares about Jaws are keeping you from taking a dip in the ocean, relax. You’re much less appetizing than you think. 11: U.S. fatalities from sharks, 1990-2006 16: U.S. fatalities from collapsing sand holes, 1990-2006 1 in 310,733: Odds of dying in a fireworks accident 1 in 3,750,000: Odds of dying in a shark attack 80: Total unprovoked shark attacks around the world in 2012 30 Million: Sharks killed by people each year 219: Estimated […]
Read moreWhy There’s a Skyscraper in the Amazon
The $9 billion, 1,000-ft. (305 m) Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory—now the tallest structure in South America—recently entered the final stages of construction. It will be inaugurated in August and fully operational by 2017. Here’s what Brazil and Germany, which co-funded the project, are hoping it will accomplish: Gather data The tower’s height and state-of-the- art instruments will enable scientists to […]
Read moreProperty Tax Paid Using Dollar Bills and Loose Change
A California man has paid off a $14,000 property-tax bill using only dollar bills and loose change. Larry Gasper says he wasn’t deliberately trying to inconvenience county officials with the unorthodox payment, which he transported to county offices in a wheelbarrow—causing the clerks’ jaws to drop. It’s just that he’s very short of money, and had to scrape up the […]
Read morePlacebo For Parkinson’s Disease
Factor by which a placebo for Parkinson’s disease is more effective when the patient is told it costs $1,500 rather than $100: 2
Read moreSecret Santa
An anonymous “Secret Santa” traveled to New Jersey and New York last week to hand out $100 bills to people who’d lost their homes and possessions in Hurricane Sandy. The Kansas City, Mo., businessman spent a day in Elizabeth, N.J., and Staten Island, N.Y., giving C-notes to the poor and homeless; he plans to give away $100,000 this holiday season. He was […]
Read moreCost of War
$6 trillion – Upper estimate of the cost to the U.S. of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan
Read moreShooting His Computer
A Colorado man was given a ticket by police this week for shooting his balky computer eight times and “killing” it. Police say Lucas Hinch, 37, had become “fed up with fighting his computer for the last several months,” so he took it outside and repeatedly blasted it with a handgun. Hinch said he didn’t realize he was breaking the […]
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