Book of Odds - Search Results

HEALTH & ILLNESS–

MISCARRIAGE: AS COMMON AS ATTENDING A BALL GAME

Posted By: Katharine Gammon

A pregnancy that suddenly ends through miscarriage is one of the most heart-wrenching events a woman can go through. As the writer N. West Moss wrote in the New York Times, “It feels as though having three miscarriages in a year means I did something wrong, when the reality is that most miscarriages take place for chromosomal reasons out of our control.” Not only are miscarriages—defined as loss of pregnancy before the fetus reaches 20 weeks old—out of human control, they are becoming more and more detectable.

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RELATIONSHIPS & SOCIETY–

ANDREW JACKSON, ONE KILLER PRESIDENT

Posted By: Kathleen Minnix

Odds that a president of the United States has killed a man in a duel: 1 in 43.*

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

SUICIDE AND THE TITANIC SURVIVORS

Posted By: Kathleen Minnix

Eight of the approximately 705 people who survived the sinking of the Titanic committed suicide.

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

GOLF CART INJURIES REACH A TIPPING POINT

Posted By: Rosalind Wright

According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy in Columbus, Ohio, the number of Americans injured by golf carts has skyrocketed in recent years, from 5,772 in 1990 to 13,411 in 2006—an increase of 132 percent over a 17-year period. In 2008, the odds of being injured in a golf cart incident were 1 in 19,100. But only half of those injuries took place on a golf course.

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

RESIDENTIAL FIRES CAN TURN DEADLY QUICKLY

Posted By: Joseph Caputo

A residential fire occurs every 78 seconds in the United States. In 2008, nearly 403,000 fires left homes charred black and water damaged from the battle between flame and firefighter. The worst blazes destroyed mementos, killed pets and ended families.

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HEALTH & ILLNESS–

IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH, OBESITY MAY ACTUALLY BECOME AN ASSET

Posted By: Lisa Song

Is it possible that if you live long enough, obesity is no longer associated with an increased risk of death? And consider this: if you reach a ripe old age, could that extra padding actually do you some good?

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

WORKPLACE DEATHS ARE DROPPING

Posted By: Katharine Gammon

On September 8, 2009, 24 year-old Annie Le, a Yale graduate student, was strangled in a campus research facility. Her body was found 5 days later, on what would have been her wedding day. A laboratory technician, Raymond Clarke, III, also 24, was arrested

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

DYING OF CANCER

Posted By: Genevieve Wanucha

Over 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates termed the sprawling, deadly tumors that develop out of this unregulated cell growth karkinoma, or “crayfish” in Greek. Its Latin translation is “cancer.”

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ACCIDENTS & DEATH–

WHO’S ON DEATH ROW?

Posted By: Chris Caverly

Tomorrow, November 10, John Allen Muhammad, one of the 2 DC-area snipers who randomly shot and killed 10 people in 2002, is slated for execution. Since the 1608 execution of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia—the first recorded application of the death penalty in America—capital punishment has remained one of the most enduring cultural institutions in the United States. Even as many countries have rejected the state’s right to end a life, American support for the death penalty is widespread, although declining.

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