Facts & Trends

Men kick friendship around like a football but it doesn’t seem to break. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces ...

Gallup ranked 143 countries by how great a share of respondents said they had recently had positive experiences such as laughter or enjoyment. A sampling, from greatest to least: 1 - Paraguay 8 - Costa Rica 15 - U.S. 134 ...

A record 38 million people were displaced in their own countries at the end of 2014, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Here’s a sampling: Syria - 7.6 million Colombia - 6 million Democratic Republic of Congo - 2.8 million ...

Percentage of the world's 25 largest news organizations that have been targeted by state-backed hackers: 84 ...

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic.  But will they keep it?  Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom?  Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction." - Thomas Jefferson ...

Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has blistering 800-degree temperatures at its equator—but its poles are full of ice. New data from NASA's Messenger spacecraft, which began orbiting Mercury last year, has revealed that as much as a trillion ...

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 ...

Boston police found a scribbled checklist on suspected burglar Evan Dorsey that included such goals as "find crystal meth," "sell drugs," "rob a dealer," and "do one altruistic thing for a stranger." ...

Fish flee existing habitats in search of better ones.  Atlantic sea bass, for example, are migrating north to cooler waters—but the heat will chase them there ...

A Polish prisoner triggered a crackdown on other inmates after he posted a photo of a large Cannabis plant that he'd grown in his cell.  To boast about his green thumb, Dozy Zendarski took a selfie with the plant using a smuggled smartphone and posted it to ...