odd info collection No. 1

Associated Press, 03/14/07:
All prescription sleeping pills may sometimes cause sleep-driving, federal health officials warned Wednesday, almost a year after the bizarre side effect first made headlines when Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car after taking Ambien.

It's a more complicated version of sleepwalking, but behind the wheel: getting up in the middle of the night and going for a drive -- with no memory of doing so.

The Food and Drug Administration wouldn't say exactly how many cases of sleep-driving it had linked to insomnia drugs, but neurology chief Dr. Russell Katz said the agency uncovered more than a dozen reports -- and is worried that more are going uncounted.

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From AP story of 1/3/07 concerning a 13-ounce metal, rock-like object the size of a golf ball that fell from the sky, went through a house and embedded itself in a wall of the home:
Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.

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AP, 03/07/07:
Rosie O'Donnell says she began being treated for depression after the Columbine school shootings and hangs upside down for up to a half-hour a day to improve her mental state.

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An apparently actual message sent out by San Francisco City College during a power outage in 2007, reported by sfist.com:

"REMAIN CALM. DO NOT PANIC. TOAST YOUR BREAD ELSEWHERE; OR BREAK OUT YOUR EMERGENCY BREAD-TOASTING BUTANE LIGHTERS."

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FROM AP, 6/20/07:
Waves and sharks aren't the only dangers at the beach. More than two dozen young people have been killed over the last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.

Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, according to a letter from the doctors published in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The story goes on to say that doctors report 16 deaths in sand holes or tunnels from 1990 to 2006; in that same period, 12 fatal shark attacks took place, according to the University of Florida, making shark attacks less dangerous statistically than sand.