I had accepted the call as senior pastor of a large congregation that had recently erected a huge, state-of-the-art building resulting in major debt. Feeling the pressures of my new responsibility—and with a strong desire to impress my parishioners—I hit the ground running. I was in the office early every day, and almost every evening I was out shepherding the flock or reaching out to ...

Researcher Mark Bellis of Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, England, collected statistics concerning 1,064 rock stars from the United States and Europe between the 1950s and the present. His conclusions suggest that, statistically, rock stars really do die younger than the general population. The average age at death for American rockers was 42; for Europeans, 35.

Partying, transportation ...

Boston's Charles Street jail used to be home to the city's most notorious characters. Among its former inmates was Frank Abagnale, Jr., the con artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the feature film "Catch Me If You Can" (Steven Spielberg, 2002). Once the paragon of prison architecture, the facility fell into disrepair by the 1960s, when it became overcrowded, riotous, and filthy with pigeon droppings. ...

People will pay top dollar for anything, as long as they think it's a rare treat.

Taiwanese coffee farmers have long been pestered by Formosan rock monkeys, which eat the reddest, ripest berries from coffee plants and spit out the seeds. But now farmers are collecting these half-chewed seeds and roasting them to produce a coffee that connoisseurs consider a delicacy. Not only does the monkey "save ...

Percentage of adults who participated in the following leisure activities at least once in the previous 12 months:

Dining out: 48.3 percent

Entertaining friends or relatives at home: 37.5 percent

Reading books: 35.4 percent

Barbequing: 34.3 percent

Surfing the net: 27.9 percent

Playing cards: 25.1 percent

Going to the beach: 22.4 percent

Going to bars/nightclubs: 18.6 percent

Also of note:

19.9 percent of ...

Children will play with virtually anything they get their hands on. It's no surprise, then, that when Dutch children in the town of Barneveld uncovered an unexploded World War II artillery shell, they played with it. In fact, they had games with it for several months.

That shell was still live and contained high explosives. Thankfully, the deadly plaything did not explode in the Barneveld playground ...

Is it possible to play yourself to death? Officials at a Chinese Internet cafe think so ever since a 30-year-old man died after playing a game online for three days. The man collapsed, and paramedics failed to revive him on the scene. About 100 other people using the cafe for Internet purposes left in fear.

China is second only to the U.S. in number of Internet users and is home to millions of online ...

The image of an apron-clad matriarch delivering a home-roasted turkey to the table on Thanksgiving Day (as immortalized by Norman Rockwell) is increasingly an icon of the past.

The National Restaurant Association reports that in 2006, 53 percent of American households used restaurant-prepared takeout items to supplement their Thanksgiving dinners, and 6 percent purchased fully prepared meals from restaurants, ...

In data collected from over 20,000 Christians in 139 countries (though mostly in America) and between the ages of 15 and 88, The Obstacles to Growth Survey found that, on average, more than 4 in 10 Christians around the world say they "often" or "always" rush from task to task. About 6 in 10 Christians say that it's "often" or "always" true that "the busyness of life gets in the way of developing ...

Rest and relaxation doesn't seem to come as easily or naturally to Americans as it does to those in other nations. According to the 2006 World Almanac and Book of Facts:

• a worker in Italy averages 42 vacation days per year.

• a worker in France: 37 days

• a worker in Germany: 35 days

• a worker in Brazil: 34 days

• a worker in the United Kingdom: 28 days

• a worker in ...