American men are weighing in at an average of 196 pounds—16 pounds more than in 1990, a new Gallup survey has found.The average weight for women jumped 14 pounds—to 156 pounds— over the same period. Gallup estimates 62 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese.
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52: Number of unprovoked shark attacks in the U.S. last year (compared with 20 elsewhere in the world). None were fatal. 28: Number of attacks in Florida, the most of any state. Runners-up were Hawaii (seven), South Carolina (five), California (four) and North Carolina (four). 65%: Percentage of attacks involving surfers (or people doing other board sports); 32% involved swimmers. The rest involved […]
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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.
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“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher
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A British accent is the most attractive in the world, according to a poll of 11,000 people in 24 cities around the world. An American accent came in second, followed by Irish and Australian. French, once considered the language of love, finished in fifth place.
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Crack cocaine is one of the most addictive drugs because of its strong, quick-onset high that lasts minutes, leaving users wanting more. Less addictive drugs are not necessarily less dangerous. Opioid pills, for example, can be gateway drugs to heroin.
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A ladder might be installed near the peak of Mount Everest. Authorities in Nepal say the ladder would provide a shortcut over a steep cliff, and thus ease congestion near the 29,035-foot-high summit of the world’s tallest mountain.
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Sorry, science-fiction fans: Time travel is impossible. That is the sobering conclusion, anyway, of a Hong Kong-based team of physicists. They found that the maximum speed of a single photon, the basic unit of light, “obeys the traffic law of the universe,” Agence France-Presse reports. The photon cannot go faster than the speed of light—186,282 miles per second—and thus provides […]
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Portion of the Indian Ocean that is underexplored by scientists because of pirates: 1/4
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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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