The real Winnie was a girl from Ontario
A.A. Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh on October 14, 1926, one hundred years ago this month. The bear in the book was invented. The name was not. On August…
Year: 2026
Nobody can agree who pulled out the first rabbit
Ask who first produced a rabbit from a top hat and you get two names, one date, and a muddle. The usual credit goes to Louis Comte, a Swiss-born Parisian…
Why Magic Day falls on Halloween
The date is not spooky theming. National Magic Day lands on October 31 because that is the day Harry Houdini died, in a Detroit hospital, at 52. This year…
Mammogram report tells something new
Since September 2024, every woman who gets a mammogram in the United States receives the same piece of information she may not have gotten before. Federal…
Sudden cardiac arrest is often not sudden
“Sudden cardiac arrest” implies no warning, but the research says otherwise. A study from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, published in The…
New Bridge plan for Medicare covers weight-loss drugs
Medicare has never been allowed to pay for a drug used for weight loss, but a temporary program that opened July 1 changes that. Patients who qualify pay…
Candy season is 90 days long, not one night
Halloween is not really the problem. The problem is the stretch that follows — the bowl by the door, the bag on the counter, the leftovers that migrate…
The beer belly is not really about the beer
Blame the beer if you like, but the research does not. Studies find that beer raises overall body weight without steering fat toward the abdomen. The…
The first new painkiller in 20 years comes with a two-week limit
There is one, and it is real. The Food and Drug Administration approved suzetrigine, sold as Journavx, in January 2025 — the first new class of pain…
The apple will take 31 years to reach the store
An apple breeder plants for customers who have not been born yet. In 1998, at a Washington State University research orchard, someone hand-pollinated a…