Hawaiians buy more than 4 million cans of Spam a year.
Paul McCartney almost drowned in 1963 while the Beatles were vacationing in the Canary Islands.
The late Michael Crichton was also a medical doctor in addition to being a successful author and producer. He thought medical prose was weak because it was more a “display of scientific profundity” than it was “an attempt to communicate experience.”
They use toad venom to treat cancer in China. Now it’s being tested by American doctors.
In both Europe and the United States, the age at which most people start having sex is 17.
Yet teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. are three to six times higher than in Western Europe,
and gonorrhea and chlamydia rates are 20 to 30 times higher here than in the Netherlands. One major cultural difference: In the U.S., sex is generally kept secret from parents.
This article appears in November 5 • 2010.