PANUTS CREATOR CHARLES SCHULZ said, “I love mankind; it’s people I don’t like.” I have a friend who puts it more bluntly: “I hate people.”

She doesn’t mean all people of course. She means stupid people. Weird people. Annoying people. And the stupid, weird, annoying and frightening things they do, like trying to shoot fireworks from their rear end and dying in the process, or dressing up like clowns and keeping people locked in their basements until it’s time to eat them.

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other,” says a character in John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. If they’re not, maybe they should be.

FACT 159 Male drivers involved in fatal car crashes are twice as likely as female drivers to be intoxicated.

FACT 160 Men drink more than women and are responsible for more drunken-driving cases, but the gap is narrowing quickly. One reason cited is that women are feeling greater pressures at work and home than before.

FACT 161 According to the California Office of Traffic Safety, women accounted for nearly 20 percent of all DUI arrests in California in 2007, up from 13.5 percent in 1998.

FACT 162 In July 2009, Diane Shuler drove her minivan the wrong way on Taconic State Parkway in New York and collided with an oncoming vehicle, killing eight people including herself, her daughter, three nieces and three men in the other vehicle. Shuler’s autopsy showed that she was under the influence of alcohol and marijuana at the time of the accident.

FACT 163 Research has shown that marital trouble is the most frequent cause of depression in married men, who can’t seem to cope with disagreements as well as women.

FACT 164 Women apologize more often than men, but studies suggest that the cause could be a gender difference in what is considered offensive in the first place.

FACT 165 Men lose more money to Internet fraud than women: $1.67 to every $1 lost by females.

FACT 166 A UK study found that men tell lies more often than women. Men admitted to an average of three lies a day, women only two. But they’re all lying, so who can say for sure?

FACT 167 From 1995 to 2008, eight of ten lightning strike fatalities in the United States were male. The reason is simple: “Men take more risks in lightning storms,” says an expert with the National Weather Service.

FACT 168 Census data in England and Wales reveals that since 1991, for the first time in the twentieth century, more males than females are patients at residential mental health facilities in Britain.

FACT 169 In 2008, four times as many men as women in this country took their own lives, even though women attempted suicide three times as often as men.

FACT 170 A woman attempts suicide every seventy-eight seconds in the United States; one is successful every ninety minutes.

FACT 171 Women are twice as likely as men to have a history of attempted suicide. This is attributed to a higher rate of mood disorders among females, such as major depression, dysthymia (chronic mild depression) and seasonal affective disorder.

FACT 172 Firearms are now the leading method of suicide for both men and women.

FACT 173 Suicide rates for men rise with age, most significantly after age sixty-five; rates for women peak between the ages of forty-five and fifty-four.

FACT 174 Do real men cry? Ninety-nine percent of women say yes, but men see it differently: 39 percent say men should only cry in response to tragedies, like the death of a loved one, and 5 percent of males say real men never cry, no matter what.

FACT 175 More than a quarter of women polled by Cosmopolitan have been dumped electronically (via email, IM or text); 80 percent of guys say they believe breakups should be face-to-face.

FACT 176 Depression is the most common women’s mental health problem.

FACT 177 Overall rates of psychiatric disorders are almost identical for both genders, but major depression is twice as common in women.

FACT 178 Doctors are more likely to diagnose depression in women compared with men, even when they have similar scores on standardized measures of depression or present with identical symptoms.

FACT 179 Men are three times more likely than women to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, and twice as likely to develop an alcohol dependence.

FACT 180 Another stereotype obliterated: women are better drivers than men, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University. They found that male drivers have a 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women.

FACT 181 During times of food shortages and higher prices—circumstances expected to aggravate with climate change—the health of females suffers before that of males. In India, for example, reduced rainfall is more strongly associated with deaths among girls than boys.

FACT 182 Women are up to fourteen times more likely than men to die from natural disasters.

FACT 183 Case studies suggest that public shame, social inhibitions and lack of survival skills contribute to a greater death rate of women in natural disasters. Also, women often place themselves at higher risk by caring for children, the sick and the elderly.

FACT 184 More than 9.4 million women—one in three visitors—access adult websites every month.

FACT 185 A 2003 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that mothers pregnant with male babies ate more than those carrying female babies, but did not gain noticeably more weight than the expecting mothers of girls.

FACT 186 Men have more blood than women: 1.5 gallons versus 0.875 gallons.

PAGING MR. DARWIN:
THE STUPID AND THE DEAD

HEY, YOU! Out of the gene pool!

FACT 187 At a July 2011 protest ride against motorcycle helmet laws in Onondaga, New York, a fifty-five-year-old man died when he was thrown over the handlebars of his bike and hit his (helmetless) head on the pavement.

FACT 188 A Washington man died in 2010 at a racing event when he and a pal filled a fifty-five-gallon barrel with methanol, climbed aboard and lit the bunghole on fire, hoping the barrel would shoot across the parking lot like a rocket. It didn’t.

FACT 189 In 2010, after an elevator departed without waiting for him, a handicapped South Korean man began angrily ramming his wheelchair into the doors. On the third impact, the doors gave way and the man plunged to his death down the now-empty shaft.

FACT 190 A man fell to his death in the Grand Canyon in 2000 when he ignored warning signs and jumped onto a ledge to collect money tossed there for good luck wishes. He made the first jump, but the added weight of the coins made his return jump fall short.

FACT 191 A circus fire-eater in Romania died in 1998 after belching up flammable liquid during his act and catching himself on fire. No one came to his aid, as the audience thought the stunt was part of the show.

FACT 192 In 1997, an Italian stripper suffocated to death after waiting an hour to jump out of a sealed cake at a bachelor party.

FACT 193 Attila the Hun died on his wedding night in AD 453 after drinking too much, passing out in bed and drowning on his own blood from a nosebleed.

FACT 194 An Austrian man who once had the world’s longest beard (4.5 feet) died in 1567 when, while fleeing a fire, he stepped on the beard, fell and broke his own neck.

FACT 195 Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe held his pee so long during a banquet in 1601 (excusing oneself during dinner was considered rude) that his bladder developed an infection that killed him. Dying during dinner is also rude.

FACT 196 In 1911, French tailor Franz Reichelt died while testing his latest invention, a combination overcoat and parachute, by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. Reichelt had planned to use a dummy for the test—and, in one sense, did.

FACT 197 Isadora Duncan, the “mother of modern dance,” died in 1927 when one of her trademark scarves got caught in the wheel of a car in which she was riding and snapped her neck.

FACT 198 In 1985, a party for lifeguards at the New Orleans Recreation Department to celebrate a drowning-free swimming season came to an abrupt halt when a man was found drowned at the bottom of the pool.

FACT 199 A Seattle man died in 2005 after anal intercourse with an Arabian stallion perforated his colon. I wonder if the horse’s name was Pokey.

FACT 200 In 2010, a couple in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was killed while having sex in their car, which they had parked on the shoulder of a busy highway during morning rush hour. The car was hit by a large truck whose driver did not see it because of dense fog covering the roadway.

FACT 201 After the dead naked bodies of a young couple were found next to a Columbia, South Carolina, office building in 2007, police determined that the pair had fallen while having sex on the pyramid-shaped roof, where their clothing was found.

FACT 202 The first man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel died fifteen years later after slipping on an orange peel and fracturing his leg, which became infected.

FACT 203 While reviewing troops in 1197, King Henry of France stumbled over his court dwarf, causing both men to fall from the balcony to their deaths. It’s always the little things that get you.

FACT 204 A day after telling the New York Times that he would live to be a hundred, Jerome Rodale, founder of the organic food movement, died of a heart attack during an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Thinking his guest had fallen asleep, Cavett asked, “Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?”

FACT 205 An opponent of mandatory seat belt laws died in 2005 when an SUV in which he was traveling slid from an icy highway and rolled several times, ejecting the unbelted man from the vehicle.

FACT 206 In 2007, a UK man being treated for psoriasis burned to death after the paraffin-based cream that had been applied to his body caught fire as he tried to sneak a cigarette.

FACT 207 Fear of clowns is called coulrophobia.

FACT 208 Among the 8 percent of adults who suffer from phobias, coulrophobia is common.

FACT 209 In a British survey of phobias, coulrophobia placed third, outranking common fears such as flying and heights.

FACT 210 A 2008 study of phobias in England revealed that children universally fear clowns, finding them “frightening and unknowable.”

FACT 211 Some experts attribute coulrophobia to the heavy makeup and exaggerated features of clowns, which can frighten young children.

FACT 212 Horror movie film star Lon Chaney, Sr., once said, “There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight.”

FACT 213 Many experts point to obscured facial features as the most frightening aspect of clowns, and relate this to masked or disfigured movie killers like Michael Myers in Halloween, Jason in the Friday the 13th movies and Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

FACT 214 Others attribute coulrophobia to the prevalence of evil clowns in popular media, such as the child-murdering Pennywise in Stephen King’s It and the clown doll that attacks a boy in Poltergeist.

FACT 215 Fear of Santa Claus is a type of coulrophobia.

FACT 216 One of the worst serial killers in U.S. history, John Wayne Gacy entertained kids dressed as a clown.

FACT 217 Gacy was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing thirty-three boys and young men.

FACT 218 Paul Kelly, son of famous clown Emmett Kelly Jr., was arrested in 1978 for the murders of two of his homosexual lovers. Kelly admitted to the slayings, but listed his clown alter ego Willie as an accomplice. And I’m sure the cops totally bought it. I bet there’s still an APB out on Willie the Clown thirty-five years later.

FACT 219 Coulrophobia may result from the incongruity of the exaggerated expressions of joy on the faces of clowns and their aggressive, mischievous behavior.

FACT 220 Some health activists want McDonald’s to drop Ronald McDonald as a mascot because he markets unhealthy food to children.

FACT 221 Coulrophobia can be treated with exposure therapy, which presents patients with photos and dolls of clowns to help them slowly work through their fears.

FACT 222 Famous coulrophobics include Johnny Depp, Daniel Radcliffe, Billy Bob Thornton and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

FACT 223 Coulrophobic Sean Combs has been known to include a “no clowns” clause in contracts—even at the risk of being banned from his own shows.

FACT 224 Johnny Depp attributes his coulrophobia to childhood nightmares about clowns leering at him.

FACT 225 Planking (lying down in an unusual place) began in 2006 when two Britons created a Facebook page that attracted fifteen hundred followers within the first two weeks, and now boasts more than nineteen thousand image submissions.

FACT 226 Planking (aka the Lying Down Game) has spread to the rest of the world and goes by many names, including “playing dead,” “à plat ventre” (“on one’s belly”), “extreme lying down” and “facedowns.”

FACT 227 The official Facebook page for planking had more than 130,000 fans in the first week, and currently boasts more than 715,000.

FACT 228 Planking’s origin might be in the 1993 movie The Program; its trailer features a scene of a football player proving his bravery by lying down in the middle of a highway as cars fly by.

FACT 229 After several teens were killed while mimicking a lying-down scene from 1993’s The Program, the scene was cut from the movie.

FACT 230 According to the official Facebook page, the rules of planking include lying facedown and expressionless, keeping legs straight with toes pointed, having arms by side with fingers pointed and boldly declaring that you are, in fact, planking.

FACT 231 Planking began to grow in popularity in March 2011 after Australian rugby player David “Wolfman” Williams planked during a match.

FACT 232 In August 2011, Playboy Playmate Anna Sophia Berglund posted on her Twitter page, “I got Hef to plank! @playboy” and included a link to a photo of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner planking on a table in what appears to be the Playboy Mansion.

FACT 233 The fad made news in September 2009, when seven doctors and nurses working at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, England, were suspended for planking while on duty.

FACT 234 Some critics of planking, including rapper Xzibit and author Marcus Rediker, call the activity racist, claiming that it is reminiscent of how Africans were stacked in slave ship hulls for transport to America.

FACT 235 Supporters of planking deny any intentional connection between the activity and slave ships.

FACT 236 Planking has been criticized for being dangerous, with people posing on ledges of tall buildings, on railroad tracks and in high trees to compete with other plankers.

FACT 237 In May 2011, a twenty-year-old Australian man fell seven stories to his death while attempting to plank between two balcony railings of an apartment building.

FACT 238 Police in Australia have warned that people caught planking on private property will be charged with trespassing or the more serious charge of unauthorized high-risk activity.

FACT 239 After a photo of his son planking appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Herald in May 2011, Prime Minister John Key defended the practice and said his son learned about it from him.

FACT 240 In 2011, American journalist Michelle McMurray declared First Annual Global Planking Day on May 25 and encouraged readers to celebrate the inaugural holiday.

FACT 241 Planking has spawned several copycat fads, including “teapotting” (bending the arms in a shape of a teapot in reference to the children’s song “I’m a Little Teapot”), “owling” (squatting like an owl) and “dogging” (putting your legs over your arms and dragging your butt along the ground after you poop).

SERIAL KILLERS:
GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT

Come on, guys, save some for the rest of us.

FACT 242 Nicknamed the Sadistic Aristocrat, Gilles de Rais was a fifteenth-century French nobleman who liked to rape, torture and murder young peasant boys. Yep, that’s sadistic, all right.

FACT 243 America’s first serial killers might have been brothers Micajah and Wiley Harpe, who killed at least forty men, women and children in the late 1700s.

FACT 244 A vigilante mob hunted down killer Micajah Harpe in 1799 and placed his severed head on a pike at a crossroads in western Kentucky still known as “Harpe’s Head.”

FACT 245 Wiley Harpe was captured and hanged in 1804. He got to keep his head.

FACT 246 England’s Mary Ann Cotton is believed to have killed twenty-one people, including her own mother, several of her children, four husbands and two lovers, in the late 1800s.

FACT 247 From 1884 to 1885, the Austin Axe Murderer killed at least seven women, most of them servants, in Austin, Texas.

FACT 248 Victims of the Austin Axe Murderer were slashed or axed to death; some had spikes driven through their faces or ears.

FACT 249 The Austin Axe Murderer was never caught. He must have split. Ha! Get it?

FACT 250 The Bloody Benders were a family of four immigrant innkeepers in 1870s Kansas who worked as a team to kill and rob at least eleven guests, including women and children.

FACT 251 Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli came to be known as “The Soap-Maker of Correggio” after disposing of her victims’ bodies by turning them into soap. She was the world’s first green mass-murderer.

FACT 252 Joseph “The French Ripper” Vacher murdered, raped and mutilated at least eleven people in France over a three-year period beginning in 1894.

FACT 253 1920s serial killer Carl Panzram, who called himself “rage personified,” confessed to twenty-one murders and the rapes of more than a thousand young boys.

FACT 254 About his crimes, serial killer Carl Panzram said, “I am not the least bit sorry.” If nothing else, you have to give him points for honesty.

FACT 255 French serial killer Henri Landru preyed on lonely widows during the First World War by seducing them, taking their money, then killing them and cooking their bodies in his oven.

FACT 256 Hélène Jegado was a domestic servant-turned-nun in nineteenth-century France who killed as many as thirty-six people by arsenic poisoning, including her own sister.

FACT 257 After serving time for poisoning several patients in Illinois, Dr. Thomas Cream moved to London and resumed his murderous ways until he was caught and sentenced to death in 1892. His hangman claims that Cream confessed to being Jack the Ripper. What Cream really said was, “I hate my fucking name.”

FACT 258 English physician William Palmer, aka “Palmer the Poisoner,” was convicted of one murder but suspected of many others, including those of his wife, brother, four infant children and mother-in-law.

FACT 259 Andrei Chikatilo, “The Rostov Ripper,” killed fifty-two women and children in the USSR over a twelve-year period that began in 1978.

FACT 260 The Soviet government covered up some of Andrei Chikatilo’s murders, which critics say extended his spree. He was executed in 1994.

FACT 261 In 1999, Pakistani Javed “The Boy Hunter” Iqbal confessed to the rape, murder and mutilation of one hundred boys over a five-month period.

FACT 262 Serial murderer Earle Nelson’s penchant for dispatching victims with his bare hands and brute strength earned him the nickname “The Gorilla Killer.” He also loved bananas.

FACT 263 Earle Nelson strangled at least twenty-two people across the western United States and Canada before being caught and hanged in 1928.

FACT 264 Hungarian serial murderer Béla Kiss is believed to have killed at least twenty-four young women in the early 1900s. He kept their bodies preserved in large tin drums filled with alcohol.

FACT 265 Béla Kiss was never caught despite numerous alleged sightings around the world, including one in New York City.

FACT 266 Mohammed “The Desert Vampire” Bijeh was an Iranian serial killer who confessed to sixteen murders. Sentenced to hang, Bijeh actually died by slow, painful strangulation after his noose was hoisted by a crane in front of an angry, jeering mob. Iran: never boring.

FACT 267 Though she claimed to have premonitions of each of her five husbands’ deaths, 1930s Chicago serial killer Tillie Klimek was actually planning their murders by poisoning. She was successful with four of the five.

FACT 268 German Bruno Ludke killed at least eighty people, most of them women, over a fifteen-year spree that began in 1928.

FACT 269 Declared insane (ya think?), serial killer Bruno Ludke was sent to a Vienna hospital, where he was subjected to numerous experiments before being executed in 1944.

FACT 270 “Lonely Hearts Killers” Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck seduced, robbed and killed vulnerable women in the 1940s before being caught and executed in 1951.

FACT 271 In 1944, the false promise of safe passage from Nazi-occupied France led at least sixty-three Jews to their deaths at the hands of serial killer Marcel Petoit.

FACT 272 Notorious UK murderers Fred and Rose West took the lives of thirteen women and girls, including Fred’s first wife and two of his daughters, before their capture in 1992.

FACT 273 Miyuki Ishikawa, nicknamed “Oni-Sanba” (demon midwife), was responsible for the deaths from neglect of at least 103 Japanese infants in her care.

FACT 274 South Korean policeman Woo Bum-kon is responsible for one of the largest killing sprees in modern times, murdering fifty-six people and wounding thirty-five more in an eight-hour rampage in 1982.

FACT 275 After his conviction for fifty-two murders, Ukranian Anatoly “The Terminator” Onoprienko issued a press release from his prison cell to say that he had hoped to achieve the world record for killing.

FACT 276 Nicknamed “The Monster of the Andes,” Pedro Alonso Lopez is thought to have murdered as many as three hundred young girls in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

FACT 277 Mass murderer Pedro Alonso Lopez served eighteen years of a life sentence in Ecuador before being deported in 1998 to Colombia, where he promptly disappeared. His whereabouts are unknown to this day.

FACT 278 Australia’s two most prolific convicted serial killers are James Miller, who raped and murdered seven women in the 1970s, and Ivan Milat, the notorious “backpack” murderer, who killed seven tourists in the 1990s.

FACT 279 The 2005 horror film Wolf Creek is based in part on Ivan Milat’s murders.

FACT 280 Pietro Pacciani, “The Monster of Florence,” was convicted in 1994 of murdering eight couples in lovers’ lanes between 1968 and 1985.

FACT 281 In his book The Silence of the Lambs, author Thomas Harris based fictional killer Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill, on as many as six real-life serial murderers, including Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Gary Heidnik, Jerry Brudos, Edmund Kemper and Gary Ridgway.

FACT 282 Henry Lee Lucas was considered one of America’s most prolific killers after he confessed to murdering more than six hundred people, a figure police later determined was highly exaggerated.

FACT 283 Despite confessing to hundreds of murders he didn’t commit, Henry Lee Lucas was convicted of killing eleven people, including his own mother.

FACT 284 After the arrest of German serial killer Karl Denke in 1924, police found the butchered remains of his nearly three dozen victims pickled in jars in his basement.

FACT 285 Denke told police that he had eaten nothing but human flesh for three years before his capture, and had sold leftover meat to his neighbors as “boneless pork.”

FACT 286 Albert Fish was a kindly grandfather figure who confessed to molesting more than four hundred children, many of whom he tortured, killed and ate.

FACT 287 After Albert Fish murdered and ate ten-year-old Grace Budd in 1934, he wrote to her mother to describe how delicious the child tasted.

FACT 288 Albert Fish was put to death by electrocution in 1936 at New York’s Sing Sing prison.

FACT 289 Former Liberian warlord Joshua Blahyi confessed to human sacrifices and cannibalism of children during his conflict with President Charles Taylor’s militia.

FACT 290 In 2008, a group of illegal Dominican immigrants en route to Puerto Rico resorted to cannibalism after they were lost at sea for over two weeks. No one thought to pack a fishing pole?

FACT 291 Cannibal killer Dorangel Vargas, “The Hannibal Lecter of the Andes,” told the press that he preferred the taste of men to women, and never ate hands, feet or testicles. “I have standards, you know,” said Vargas.

FACT 292 Vargas also eschewed the elderly, he said, because their flesh was “contaminated and very tough.”

FACT 293 Armin “The Cannibal of Rotenburg” Meiwes filmed himself killing and eating computer engineer Bernd Brandes, forty-two, whom he had met after posting messages in Internet chat rooms seeking “men for slaughter.”

FACT 294 In 2008, twenty-two-year-old Canadian Tim McLean was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized by the man sitting next to him on a Greyhound Canada bus.

FACT 295 The Korowai of Papua New Guinea are one of very few tribes still believed to eat human flesh as a cultural practice.

FACT 296 Anthropophagy (cannibalism) is not illegal in most countries or even most states in the United States. People who eat human flesh are usually charged with other crimes, such as murder or desecration of a body.

FACT 297 Some settlers of colonial Jamestown resorted to cannibalism during a period known as the Starving Time (1609–10), digging up corpses when food supplies ran out.

FACT 298 Survivors of the whaling ship Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean in 1820, resorted to cannibalism during three months adrift at sea. By the time they were rescued, only two survivors remained.

FACT 299 After Alexander Pearce led a group escape from Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in Tasmania in 1922, his men killed and cannibalized one another for weeks until Pearce was caught, the last escapee alive.

FACT 300 There were reports of cannibalism during the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–61, during the famine of 1571 in Russia and Lithuania, and in World War II in Nazi concentration camps and during the Siege of Leningrad.

FACT 301 In 1947, a war crimes tribunal prosecuted thirty Japanese soldiers who had killed and consumed nine American airmen in Chichijima in 1945. Five Japanese officers were hanged.

FACT 302 According to author James Bradley, in his book Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, some of the Chichijima airmen were eaten for sustenance over several days, their Japanese captors amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh.

FACT 303 In 1972, a Uruguayan plane carrying forty-five passengers, mostly students and rugby players, crashed in the Andes Mountains. With no food and bad weather preventing their rescue, the thirty-three survivors were forced to feed on the bodies of the dead to survive.

FACT 304 America’s most famous cannibals, the Donner Party, would have survived their journey had they not taken a so-called shortcut around the Great Salt Lake that cost them valuable time. Though weeks behind, they still only missed making it through Donner Pass before heavy snows by one day.

EAT, DRINK AND BE SCARY:
FOOD TO FEAR

Deliciousness kills, but you’ll die happy.

FACT 305 There is more real lemon juice in Lemon Pledge furniture polish than in Country Time Lemonade, even though they taste the same.

FACT 306 According to USFDA standards, a cup of orange juice is allowed to contain ten fruit fly eggs and two maggots. But don’t worry, they don’t drink much.

FACT 307 McDonald’s McRib sandwich contains some of the same ingredients used to manufacture gym mats and running shoes—two things McRib eaters know nothing about, so they won’t notice.

FACT 308 Some McDonald’s salads contain more fat than their burgers.

FACT 309 More than 2 billion pounds of bacon are produced every year in the United States.

FACT 310 If the average piece of bacon is one ounce, Americans consumed 32 billion pieces of bacon in 2009 alone.

FACT 311 The USDA defines bacon as “the cured belly of a swine carcass.” Never has anything that sounds so disgusting tasted so good.

FACT 312 Chef Anthony Bourdain has called bacon the “gateway protein” for its ability to turn vegetarians back into meat eaters.

FACT 313 Sixty-eight percent of bacon’s calories come from fat, almost half of which is saturated.

FACT 314 Every ounce of bacon contains thirty milligrams of cholesterol.

FACT 315 Eating foods rich in saturated fats like bacon can raise your cholesterol levels, increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke.

FACT 316 Researchers have concluded that regular consumption of processed meats (bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausage and more) can lead to higher risk for prostate cancer and several other cancers.

FACT 317 The cancer risk of processed meats could have to do with nitrates, which are typically used as preservatives in processed meat and morph into cancer-promoting N-nitroso compounds when digested.

FACT 318 The high content of nitrates may also contribute to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. In COPD, changes occur in your lungs that make breathing difficult. But even with their final breaths, many people will ask for bacon.

FACT 319 COPD is the third leading cause of death in America, claiming the lives of more than 124,000 Americans in 2007.

FACT 320 Risk of cancer from processed meats like bacon could also be related to carcinogenic PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) compounds, which can be produced during processing.

FACT 321 A 2010 study by the Harvard School of Public Health linked processed meats with a 42 percent higher risk of heart attacks and 19 percent higher risk of diabetes. The same risk was not found in consuming unprocessed red meats.

FACT 322 Scientists have confirmed that fattening foods like bacon and donuts may be addictive. A 2010 study suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in a manner similar to cocaine and heroin, overloading pleasure centers and requiring increasing amounts of the drug or food.

FACT 323 The FBI estimates that more than half a million pedophiles are online every day.

FACT 324 Pedophiles regularly create bogus online profiles on social networking sites to stalk victims and share information with other pedophiles.

FACT 325 Roughly 40 percent of investigations worked under the FBI’s Cyber Division in 2007 were related to child pornography and child sexual exploitation.

FACT 326 More than half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online. Cyber-bullying can lead to anxiety, depression and suicide.

FACT 327 A third of young people have been threatened online; a third have been bullied repeatedly via the web or cell phone texting.

FACT 328 About one in five teens has posted or sent sexually suggestive or nude pictures of themselves to others online.

FACT 329 A 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Justice found that nearly a quarter of stalking victims also experienced some form of cyber-stalking; some were electronically monitored with spyware, bugging or video surveillance.

FACT 330 One in every ten American consumers has been victimized by identity theft. There were 10 million victims of identity theft in the United States in 2008 alone. They’re the ones walking around saying, “Who am I?”

FACT 331 Households with yearly incomes higher than $70,000 are twice as likely to experience identity theft as those with incomes under $50,000.

FACT 332 Up to 18 percent of identity theft victims don’t learn about the crime for four years or more.

FACT 333 The average victim spends 330 hours and as much as $1400 repairing the damage caused by identity theft.

FACT 334 Seventy percent of identity theft victims have difficulty removing negative information from their credit reports afterward.

FACT 335 Forty-three percent of identity theft victims know the perpetrator. Unfortunately, many don’t know they know the perpetrator, or they would let the perpetrator know they know by kicking his perpetrating ass.

FACT 336 Internet addiction is defined as six hours a day of nonessential Internet use for three months or more.

FACT 337 Every day, 9 to 15 million people in the United States use the Internet. The amount of use goes up by 25 percent every three months.

FACT 338 In South Korea, 11 percent of school-aged youth are considered at high risk for Internet addiction.

FACT 339 In China, 96 percent of teenagers use instant messaging; 10 percent of them can be classified as messaging addicts.

FACT 340 Studies have shown that the more time a person spends on the Internet (excluding work-related usage), the higher his or her risk for social problems and self-esteem issues.

FACT 341 Adolescents who play more than an hour of video games a day have a much greater risk for ADHD and more intense symptoms of ADHD than other kids.

FACT 342 In 2003, the SQL Slammer worm infected 90 percent of the world’s unprotected computers in ten minutes and significantly slowed traffic across the Internet.

FACT 343 Every second of every day, twenty-eight thousand people are viewing pornography online and spending $3,000 on pornographic materials. With one hand.

FACT 344 A new pornographic video is produced in the United States every thirty-nine minutes—and it shows.

FACT 345 Child pornography is a $3 billion annual industry and one of the fastest-growing online businesses.

FACT 346 In 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation identified 1,536 individual child abuse domains; 58 percent of them were hosted in the United States.

FACT 347 The number of terrorist websites has increased exponentially over the last decade, from fewer than one hundred in the late 1990s to more than forty-eight hundred in 2007.

FACT 348 Terrorist websites can serve as virtual training grounds, offering tutorials on building bombs, firing surface-to-air missiles, shooting at U.S. soldiers and sneaking into Iraq from abroad.

FACT 349 Justin Bieber currently has almost 24 million followers on Twitter, more than Barack Obama (16 million) and the Dalai Lama (4.5 million).

FACT 350 Scareware, which is fraudulent and often malicious software sold via pop-up warnings of computer viruses, is one of the fastest-growing and most prevalent types of Internet fraud.

FACT 351 Security-software firm McAfee saw a 400 percent increase in scareware incidents reported in 2009 and predicts the use of scareware will be the most costly type of online scam in years to come.

FACT 352 A 2010 study by Google found eleven thousand domains hosting fake antivirus software, accounting for half of all malware delivered via Internet advertising.

FACT 353 Facebook hosts a staggering 140 billion photos: that’s ten thousand times more photos than the Library of Congress and roughly 4 percent of all the photos ever taken.

FACT 354 Facebook’s oldest user is a 103-year-old English grandmother who updates her page using an iPad. She logs on daily to see if she’s still alive.

FACT 355 The deadliest fire in American history occurred in Peshtigo, Winconsin, on October 8, 1871, the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, and killed ten times as many people.

FACT 356 Rebecca Black received multiple death threats over her “Friday” song and video, after it was dubbed “the worst video ever made.”

FACT 357 The Nazis invented an exploding chocolate bar, though there is no record of it ever being used.

FACT 358 The Nazis also pioneered the concept of the “shoe bomb” decades before “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid was caught trying to blow up an airplane in 2001.

FACT 359 A teenager won first prize in a Virginia science competition after demonstrating that laboratory mice subjected to hours of heavy metal music became so angry and aggressive that they killed one another.

FACT 360 Repeated meals of bad spaghetti caused a 1950 riot by prisoners at Alcatraz. It must have been pretty awful. How do you ruin spaghetti? Even I can make that.

FACT 361 Disruptive inmates at Los Angeles’ Men’s Central Jail are fed a “disciplinary loaf”—an entire meal molded into a baked log that is nutritious but unpleasant.

FACT 362 At least one American company can turn your remains into a synthetic diamond to be worn by a loved one after you die.

FACT 363 Want to go out with a bang? Several American companies will pack a portion of your ashes into professional-grade fireworks and stage a memorial display for your survivors.

FACT 364 One in ten managers who died on the job in 2010 was murdered.

FACT 365 In 2010, more on-the-job deaths occurred in “transportation and material-moving occupations” than in any other category.

FACT 366 Two hundred and twenty-four people died at work in 2010 after being “caught in or compressed by equipment or objects.”

FACT 367 In 2010, 258 people killed themselves while at work.

FACT 368 The IRS is immediately notified anytime you or anyone else withdraws $10,000 or more from the bank.