Strange, but true!

Post 584 - I've been saving these up ..........

The safety of most chemicals used in mattresses - or any other consumer product - is simply unknown, because the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 considers all new chemicals safe until proven otherwise, and does not require companies to do any testing of their products. This means that companies such as Naturepedic, which markets non-toxic mattresses, are forced to pay to individually test nearly any component they want to include in a product. This drives up the prices of their products, making a healthy mattress a luxury only the wealthy can afford.

Anne McCartt, co-author of a recent report on older American drivers by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, pointed out that while highway deaths have dropped across the board, the decline in fatal crash involvement from 1997 to 2006 for drivers over 70 was much greater - 37 percent - than it was among drivers ages 35 to 54. Police data from 13 states also suggests that older drivers are involved less often in nonfatal injury crashes and in those causing only property damage. This confounds experts’ expectations that more old drivers on the road would lead to greater mayhem. It’s not clear why this hasn’t happened. “It probably has something to do with the cohort,” Ms. Hersman said. “Folks are more healthy, more active and more active drivers” - less likely to crash and more likely to survive if they do.

The Hindustan Times reported recently that a Nepali telecommunications firm had just started providing third-generation mobile network service, or 3G, at the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, to “allow thousands of climbers and trekkers who throng the region every year access to high-speed Internet and video calls using their mobile phones.”

In India alone, some 15 million new cellphone users are being added each month.

The U.S. government is currently borrowing $5 Billion dollars every single business day!

More than four Americans out of ten still think that Prohibition was the right way to go. What have they been drinking?

The UK's lowest ever recorded temperature in November was minus 23.3C recorded in Braemar, in the Scottish Highlands, on November 14, 1919.