According to British writer Michael Munn, author of “John Wayne?the Man Behind the Myth”?Stalin tried to assassinate Wayne several times in the 1940s and early 50s, because he was an avowed anti-Communist. In the first attempt, two Russian assassins posing as FBI agents tried to kill him in his office at Warner Brothers in Hollywood. However, the plot was uncovered and the potential assassins were captured.
read more
Insects are invading people’s ears in the U.K. 82-year-old Ron Packer heard a high-pitched hum in his hearing aid that turned out to be an attack by a swarm of wasps. And Patricia McLeod had to go to the doctor to have a large moth removed from her ear.
Packer disturbed a wasp’s nest while gardening. When the wasps attacked him, they swarmed around his hearing aid. He was eventually stung 8 times. He says, “They stung me at the front and back of my hearing aid area and really homed in on it. I was badly stung and was left with a boxer’s cauliflower ear. I couldn’t wear the hearing aid for a few days or sleep on that side.”
read more
Shankar Vedantam writes in the Washington Post that scientists are debating whether male infidelity is biologically normal. A recent worldwide survey of more than 16,000 people revealed that men?whether single, married or gay?want more sexual partners than women do.
“This study provides the largest and most comprehensive test yet conducted on whether the sexes differ in the desire for sexual variety,” says researcher David P. Schmitt. “The results are strong and conclusive?the sexes differ, and these differences appear to be universal.”
read more
72-year-old Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser is taking Monsanto to the Supreme Court. In 1998, Monsanto accused Schmeiser of planting their patented genetically-modified canola without paying a fee. He said he’d only done what he did every year: collect seeds from his own crop to plant. This made scientists aware of the fact that GM seeds were being spread by the wind into fields where they weren’t planted. The GM plants take over because they’re stronger and more resistant to insects, meaning we may soon have no non-GM varieties of these crops left.
read more