A Woman Who Drank 3 Dr. Peppers a Day Lived To Be 106

One hundred and six is an age few will live to experience, but for Elizabeth Sullivan it just proved that her doctors were wrong. When she was 104, she was drinking three Dr. Peppers a day. Her doctors told her that it would kill her, but she wound up outliving them. She had been a hospital patient only twice in her life: once to give birth and once to have her tonsils removed. Sullivan lived in her Fort Worth, Texas, home since 1942. A graduate of University of Texas, she taught high school and went on to tutor until just a few years before her 104th birthday. Hailed as the Texas Rangers’ oldest fan right up until her death at 106, Sullivan was a widow with two children, six grand children, and 13 great-grandchildren. While she had the option of moving in with relatives, she chose to maintain her independence by living in her own home. She even retained her driver’s license until the age of 103. She never had any illnesses and didn’t take any medications. She did, however, love Dr. Pepper, drinking three a day for more than 40 years. As soon as Dr. Pepper became aware of her claims that the soda kept her in good health, they provided her with a free lifetime supply of the drink.

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The First At-Home Test for Infected Ticks Could Improve Lyme Disease Diagnosis

Research shows that more than 31 million Americans — or nearly 1 in 10 people — experience a tick bite every year. While some tick bites can be harmless, these parasitic arachnids that feed on both animals and people can transmit dozens of diseases, including Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease, in as little as 36 to 48 hours. This spring, the CDC reported a spike in emergency room visits for tick-borne illnesses, with Lyme disease being the most common diagnosis. Lyme disease is easiest to treat during its early, or acute, stage, which makes quick tick identification critical for treatment. Most experience a “bull’s-eye” rash at the site of the bite, along with other symptoms, including fever, chills, headache, fatigue, muscle and joint aches, swollen lymph nodes, and neck stiffness. Now there’s good news — the first at-home screening tool to determine whether the tick that bit you carries Lyme disease will hit the market this month, selling for about $50. The test kit, which remains effective for up to 12 months, is simple to use. After carefully removing the tick with either tweezers or a tick-removal tool, you place it into the kit’s “Tick Crusher.” A test strip is then inserted into a slot in the grinder. Similar to a pregnancy test or COVID test, it takes about 15 minutes. Two lines indicates a positive result; one line is negative. 

 

 

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Ads That Became Funny Because of Their Unbelievably Poor Placement

When a fitness ad is placed right next to an escalator, or a fast-food billboard about crispy chicken appears in front of a cemetery, the sheer irony can make even the most stoic person crack a smile. That’s the magic of bad — or brilliant — ad placement. It really just depends on which lens you’re looking through. Since we all need a good laugh now and then, watching multi-million dollar companies accidentally turn their expensive marketing campaigns into jokes is quite entertaining. Here are some of the funniest mistakes ad companies ever made.

 

 

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Rage-Baited: How Your Angry Comments Are Paying a Stranger’s Rent

In January, a TikTok couple named Cassie and Jon started posting videos shaming their Airbnb guests over minor cleaning infractions — dirty dishes, an unfolded throw blanket — the kind of domestic crimes that could have been resolved with a note left on the kitchen counter. Instead, Cassie and Jon filmed themselves as they observed tables that had been moved a few inches. As a result, social media lost its mind. The comments were fiery, the parodies multiplied, and the discourse spread through social media at breakneck speed. Further investigation revealed that Cassie and Jon had been running a network of burner accounts and fake fan pages specifically designed to amplify the controversy. The outrage wasn’t a side effect of their content — it WAS the content. Every furious comment, every mocking parody, every “I can’t believe this!” had been anticipated, engineered, and was generating real advertising revenue for people who had turned social media comments into a moneymaker. You were not watching the spectacle — you were building it, and you were doing it for free.

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