Forty years after Lyndon Johnson left office, only 20% of college students could identify his position as president of the United States. “By the year 2060, Americans will probably remember as much about the 39th and 40th presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as they now remember about our 13th president, Millard Fillmore,” Roediger said.   read more

A new study published in the Journal of Sports Economics says crime shoots up when NFL games take place. Total crime increases about 3% when a city hosts a pro football game. With certain crimes, such as larceny and auto theft, the jumps are even higher: 4% and 7%, respectively, according to researchers David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee.   read more

Drones can now be purchased for about $500, well within the budget of many. Consequently, the global civilian drone market has skyrocketed by 45% since last year. Part of those sales are going to those who are using the craft for pranks and even criminal acts. Drones have flown flags over soccer games and have been used to case buildings for burglars.   read more

Researchers in Europe have concluded that passionate kisses can involve a lot more than just emotion. They can also include upwards of 80 million bacteria being exchanged between two people. The findings originated in the Netherlands, where researchers asked 21 couples to have their mouths swabbed. “To our surprise, we found that those people that are intimately related ... share much more of that bacteria on their tongue than unrelated individuals,” said microbiologist Remco Kort.   read more

Bush, the former governor of Florida, has four businesses registered to the same address in the Miami suburb of Coral Gables that don’t appear to have conducted any business anywhere, according to an investigation by ThinkProgress. Bush also has a consulting firm, Jeb Bush & Associates, registered to that address.   read more

Government installations covered by overflight restrictions include the Kennedy Space Center, the sky over presidential retreat Camp David, and the Bush family compound in Maine. But then there’s restricted airspace over Disneyland and Disney World, brought about by a provision slipped into a 2003 spending bill. Aircraft are also barred, of course, from flying over the conspiratorially-rich secret government complex in Nevada, Area 51.   read more

“The 113 plant illustrations...seem to depict no flora found on Earth," wrote Allison Meier. There are also "visuals of the cosmos, a small army of naked women cavorting through pools of water, and the arcane alphabet that has so frustrated linguists and cryptographers." One theory is that the manuscript was created to serve as a medieval guide to creating medicinal drugs. A linguist in the UK devised sounds to match the book’s unusual symbols and claimed that he decoded 14 of them.   read more

“The hard truth remains that people wake up in the morning and turn on their televisions — and political groups know this,” said Kantar Media's Elizabeth Wilner. “Good Morning America” proved the most popular with campaigns, which bought time for nearly 30,000 Senate ads there during the 2014 election cycle. “Today” and “CBS This Morning” came in second and third, respectively. “Wheel of Fortune” fans were subjected to 20,000 election ads, and “Jeopardy!” viewers 18,000.   read more

The Nov. 4 turnout was so Republican friendly that even Sherri Ybarra won her race. The much-maligned GOP candidate for Idaho superintendent for public instruction narrowly defeated her Democratic rival, Jana Jones. Numerous missteps plagued Ybarra’s campaign. These included plagiarsm, claiming non-existent endorsements, and failing to vote in 15 of the past 17 state elections. Her opponent, Jones, had nearly twice the experience, having served for two former superintendents.   read more

Residents of the Big Apple have long (and proudly) claimed that there were so many rats in the city that the rodent population was on par with the human one. That meant the metropolis had about 8 million rats. Not so, says statistician Jonathan Auerbach, who calculated that New York’s rat population was closer to 2 million. Rat expert Robert Sullivan concurred. “But...everybody loves the idea of eight million rats," he said. "The one-rat-per-person scenario is too good.”   read more

To help make cars and driving safer for larger Americans, manufacturers are now making obese-sized crash test dummies. “We’re still testing with a dummy that was created in the ’80s that weighs 170 pounds. It’s not representative of the population, and obviously it’s a much different load on the system,” said Chris O’Connor. “Obese people are 78% more likely to die in a crash. The reason is the way we get fat. We get fat in our middle range. And we get out of position in a typical seat.”   read more

The next case of school overreaction happened at Strong Elementary School in Maine. One of its teachers attended a conference in Dallas, which was the site of a U.S. Ebola case. Of course, the conference was about 10 miles from the hospital where the Ebola victim was treated and the teacher had no contact with anyone who’d been near the victim. That didn’t matter to the staff at Strong, who sent home the teacher for 21 days.   read more

The wealthy, often criticized for hogging too much of the nation’s wealth, also are disproportionate contributors to global warming. A new study from the Center for Global Development says the richest 2% of Americans are responsible for producing four times as much greenhouse gas emissions per person—53.5 metric tons of CO2 a year—as the bottom 20% of the population, which generates about 12.5 metric tons per person.   read more

After Roger Hoeppner refused to pay $80,000 to the city and come out of his house after 24 deputies showed up, the department sent in its military surplus vehicle, known as the MARV (Marathon County Response Vehicle). Hoeppner agreed to come out once he saw the MARV, and later paid the money he owed. “People may not always understand why, but an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now,” said Sheriff's Captain Greg Bean.   read more

Sherri Ybarra isn’t clear on how long she’s been married, figured she’d be able to get a Ph.D. in education in one semester and hasn’t voted in a general election since moving to Idaho 18 years ago. But she has a good chance of being elected the state’s superintendent of schools. Ybarra has also plagiarized material from the website of her competitor and has claimed endorsements from elected officials who are not supporting her.   read more

A woman Chicago police detectives accused of killing her son was jailed for almost two years before being freed because a defense attorney learned the defendant had been in prison at the time of her son’s death. Yesenia Santiago was accused by detectives Carlos Cortez and Roger Sandoval of killing her son Ismael Santana in 2007. They questioned her for 11 hours, feeding her information about the crime, then read Santiago her Miranda rights and videotaped her making a “confession.”   read more