11 Things We Didn't Know Last Week

News, discoveries and ... fun

1. Parents are serving " smash cakes" for youngsters to destroy at their birthday parties. (Learn more at Today)

2. About 1 in 5 Americans - some 57 million in all - live in multigenerational family households. (Learn more at AARP)

David Freund

3. A Chinese woman takes her 88-year-old grandma with her to work every day, sometimes on her back. (Learn more at Daily Mail)

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4. Beetles killed a tree planted in memory of George Harrison. (Learn more at NME)

5. Niacin, widely prescribed for heart patients, has little beneficial effect in lowering cholesterol or improving heart health. (Learn more at AARP)

6. Stroke rates are down for older Americans but up for younger people. (Learn more at USA Today)

7. The newly discovered giant dobsonfly edges out the helicopter damselfly as the world's biggest aquatic insect. (Learn more at Discovery)

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8. The best kissing begins with mouths closed, and then moves on to parted lips and dancing tongues, a new survey finds. (Learn more at AARP)

9. Aladdin, Wyo., can be yours for $1.5 million. (Learn more at AARP)

10. Scientists have generated mutant worms that do not get intoxicated by alcohol. (Learn more at UT Austin)

11. Elephants in zoos are getting too fat to reproduce. (Learn more at Discovery)

Bonus video: The world is still awaiting a little more background on the story of the man who threw away his crutches and danced up a storm:

Learn something this week? Mail your ideas to  11things@aarp.org, and we'll try to include your story next time.

On Twitter, we're using the hashtag   #11things.

Let us read 11 Things to you:

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Images - Smash cake: Flickr/Alicia Kowalski; Three generations of women: iStockphoto/Davidf; Chinese woman and grandma: Central European News (link); George Harrison tree: Flickr/Carlos; Giant dobsonfly: Courtesy of Insect Museum of West China; Elephant eating: Flickr/Kurt

Music - Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra plays Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - Blue Blazes by Sy Oliver, Creative Commons, courtesy of Smithsonian Remix project.

Also of Interest

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• Fight fraud and ID theft with the AARP Fraud Watch Network.
• Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being

 

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