It’s Time to Learn How to Walk Like a Penguin

With winter quickly approaching, it won’t be long before we’ll be dealing with icy walkways. Good balance can prevent falls and injuries, ranging from broken arms, legs or hips to back injuries and concussions. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control says slips and falls are the leading cause of nonfatal injuries across all age groups. One in every five falls results in a serious injury, such as head trauma or broken bones. That’s more than 800,000 people being hospitalized each year.  When it comes to getting around on ice, penguins know best. Here’s how to walk like one:

• • Point your feet out slightly. This will increase your center of gravity.
• • Bend slightly and walk flat-footed with your center of gravity directly over your feet.
• • Extend your arms to your sides for balance. This improves your balance by shifting your center of gravity, and you’ll be able to break your fall if you do start to slip.
• • Go slowly, taking short steps or shuffling.

If you fall, try to relax your body. Relaxed muscles help distribute impact more evenly across your body, and therefore lessens your chance of injury. Winter weather, snow, and ice are inevitable, but following these tips and walking with care can keep you safe all winter long.

 

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Does Cheese Give You Nightmares?

If you’re concerned that consuming dairy before going to bed leads to nightmares, you may be right. A new study showed a link between nightmares and lactose intolerance, a condition that can become more common with age. The worse the subject’s lactose intolerance is, the more intense the nightmares. Cheese specifically has been thought to be the real culprit, which is why researchers wanted to see if there was any actual link. It turned out that study participants who reported that they had severe stomach symptoms from eating cheese were more likely to report more intense nightmares. The bad news for the elderly is that lactose intolerance increases with age, because there’s a natural decline in activity of the lactase enzyme that breaks down lactose. Specifically, food can remain in your gut for longer as you age, which contributes to gastrointestinal issues. As we age, we can have an increase in digestive issues, such as bloating, gas and diarrhea, and that also includes intolerance to dairy products. In other words, the digestive system isn’t working as efficiently as it once was. So what should you do? If lactose is the issue that you think may be causing your nightmares, try lower-lactose dairy options such as cheddar, Swiss, mozzarella, gouda and cottage cheese. Yogurt is lower in lactose than dairy milk, so that’s another option.

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Ready, Set, Snooze: Sleep-Deprived Japanese Compete For Best-Rested

Japan is often described as a country suffering from sleep deprivation, and now they’re putting that moniker to the test. Self-described elite competitive sleepers recently vied to lie down, relax, and nap the fastest and deepest in a contest organized by a mattress company. The Tokyo competition, dubbed “Matt Race”, saw dozens of participants fitted with sleep tracking devices sprawl on comfortable mattresses to sleep for up to 90 minutes, competing for a top prize of over ¥2 million ($14,000). Inside a dimly lit room, participants slept with monitors attached to their heads, some cradling stuffed toys in their beds. Contestants ranged broadly from their 20s to their 50s, with both men and women taking part. The winner was chosen based on how quickly and soundly they slept. This year’s winner was a woman who goes by the nickname “Suimii,” who plans to use the prize money for moving costs and to buy a princess bed.

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Bizarre Historical Coincidences

History is often taught as a linear sequence of cause and effect, but its margins are filled with bizarre, unscripted moments where timing, geography, and human fate collide with eerie precision. These historical coincidences — whether it's Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both dying hours apart on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, or a driver’s wrong turn placing Archduke Franz Ferdinand directly in the path of his assassin to trigger World War I — defy statistical probability.

 

TWO PRESIDENTS AND THEIR UNCANNY PATTERN — Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were both assassinated while serving as U.S. president. Lincoln was elected in 1860; Kennedy in 1960. Both were succeeded by men named Johnson—Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson—who were born exactly 100 years apart. Lincoln’s secretary was reportedly named Kennedy, while Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln, although the secretary-name detail is part of the later mythology surrounding the coincidence and isn’t fully supported by historical records.

THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION CONNECTION — John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. Booth’s brother, Edwin, was a famous actor. Years before the assassination, Edwin reportedly saved the life of Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, when Robert fell or was pushed toward a moving train at a railway station. Robert later identified Edwin as his rescuer. The connection between the president’s son and the man whose brother killed his father is one of history’s most unsettling coincidences.

THE NOVEL THAT PREDICTED THE TITANIC — In 1898, author Morgan Robertson published Futility, a story about an enormous British luxury liner called the Titan that strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic on an April voyage. Fourteen years later, the real Titanic struck an iceberg and sank. The fictional ship and the real ship were both described as extraordinarily large, luxurious, and supposedly difficult to sink. 

A MAN AND TWO ATOMIC BOMBINGS — Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb exploded. He survived and returned to his home city of Nagasaki. Three days later, he was there when the second atomic bomb was dropped. Yamaguchi survived that explosion as well and eventually became one of the few people officially recognized by the Japanese government as a survivor of both bombings. 

 

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