Nothing in this library is ever returned
Robert Lee Parton never got a chance to go to school. He could not read or write, and by his daughter’s account he was quietly ashamed of it. Dolly…
Category: Seasonal
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…
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…
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…
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…
The science prizes for making you laugh, then think
Every September, a few weeks before the Nobel Prizes are announced, a rowdier ceremony hands out awards for research that, in its own words, first…
The Founding Father’s English farmhouse
The man whose signature anchors the U.S. Constitution came from a family that began in a Tudor farmhouse in the English Midlands — a house…
The submarine that attacked New York — in 1776
The first submarine attack in history did not involve steel, engines, or torpedoes. It involved a hand-cranked wooden barrel, a single exhausted volunteer, and a…