RACE AND WAGES
75%: The percentage of wages earned by full-time black and Latino retail workers relative to their white counterparts, according to a June 2 report from the NAACP and the liberal think tank Demos.
Read moreCategory: Facts & Trends
subways “teeming with life”
Researchers who swabbed and tested DNA from surfaces in New York City’s subway system identified 562 species of bacteria, including microbes from mozzarella, sausage, hummus, kimchi, sauerkraut, rats, mice, and lice. Geneticist Christopher E. Mason said the bacteria found were not sufficient to cause disease, but that his work revealed the subways to be “teeming with life,” like “a rain […]
Read moreVoyager 1 Escaping Our Solar System
On the 35th anniversary of its launch, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is close to becoming the first man-made object to escape our solar system. The spacecraft—run by a 1977 computer 100,000 times less powerful than an iPod Nano—is currently 11.3 billion miles away. In 2004, Voyager 1 entered the turbulent boundary zone beyond Pluto, where solar winds encounter plasma pushing […]
Read moreWeight Gain In America
The average American woman now weighs 166.2 pounds, about the same as the average American man weighed in the early 1960’s. Over the same time period, U.S. men have gained nearly 30 pounds, from 166.3 in the ’60’s to 195.5 today.
Read moreMILITARY ANIMALS
2,500 – Number of U.S. military dogs on duty worldwide $2,000,000 – Amount the U.S. spent on developing a robotic mule
Read moreUnruly Passengers
Reported incidents of unruly passenger behavior on airplanes soared from 339 in 2007 to 8,217 in 2013.
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 moreExecutions in Saudi Arabia
88: Number of executions carried out in Saudi Arabia so far this year, already surpassing the total number in 2014; Amnesty International called the increase under Saudi’s new King Salman a “macabre spike”.
Read moreWitch Hunt
Minimum number of murders committed in India since 2000 whose motive was witch hunting: 2,257
Read moreDrones In Flight
2,000,000+ – Number of hours U.S. drones have spent in flight
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