Driving and Cell Phones
Chance that a U.S. automobile accident occurs when at least one of the drivers is texting or talking on a cell phone: 1 in 4
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It Was A Good Week For . . .
Knowing your limits, after Molly Schuyler, a 120-pound mother of four, won a Texas eating competition by wolfing down 13 pounds of steak in four minutes, 18 seconds. Schuyler said she had room for more steak but got sick of the taste.
Read moreFBI Files
The FBI has files on roughly 77.7 million people in the U.S.—the equivalent of one in three American adults. As many as 12,000 new names are added to its master criminal database every day, largely as the result of minor arrests connected to “zero-tolerance” policies at schools.
Read moreStanding Up For Your Family
A Tennessee woman was banned from her lifelong church after she refused to publicly condemn her lesbian daughter. The Ridgedale Church of Christ said it was exiling Linda Cooper for the sin of condoning homosexuality. “They’re exiling members for unconditionally loving their children,” said Cooper’s gay daughter, Kat.
Read moreInches of Rainfall
4.36 – The average rainfall, in inches, for the contiguous United States in May, the country’s wettest month since record keeping began in 1895.
Read moreChina: Destination For Immigrants
China has surpassed Mexico as the largest source of new U.S. immigrants. China was the country of origin for 147,000 immigrants in 2013, compared with Mexico at 125,000, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau study.
Read moreThe Cost of Dementia
As the population ages and lives longer, dementia has become one of the country’s most expensive medical conditions, with $109 billion in direct medical costs in 2010, a new RAND study found. The medical cost of dementia exceeds that of both heart disease, at $102 billion, and cancer, at $72 billion.
Read moreTrying anything to find water
A growing numbers of drought-afflicted California farmers began hiring dowsers to locate underground water. “Scientists don’t believe in it,” said vintner Marc Mondavi, “but I do and most of the farmers in the [Napa] Valley do.”
Read moreThe Man Who Removed His Own Appendix
Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1960–1961. He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station and, while there, developed appendicitis, which meant he had to perform an appendectomy on himself, a famous case of self-surgery. Leonid Rogozov was born in Dauriya Station, Chita Oblast, a remote […]
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.
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