The NYPL's upcoming exhibition Lunch Hour NYC won't open to the public until June 22nd—but it already has managed to teach us things we didn't know and whetted our appetite for the full show. Who knew school lunches got their start in New York? To see what we mean, check out the NYPL's little preview for the upcoming exhibit, below. Not only are they going to have a reconstructed section from an actual Horn & Hardart Automat for you to walk around but they'll also have some old push carts on display with stories about New York street foods (pretzels!) not to mention tons of menus and lunch stories and a history of peanut butter. Because you can never know enough about peanut butter! If ... Continue reading →

Mollie Hughes, 21, climbs Mt Everest for ActionAid! 23 May 2012 11:16 Mollie Hughes took ActionAid supporting to new heights (sorry I couldn’t help myself) this weekend, by climbing the highest mountain in the world – Mount Everest! Mollie’s passion for mountaineering started with a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya when she was 17. Since then she’s racked up mountaineering experience in the Himalayas, the Andes, the High Atlas and East Africa. But even for an experienced climber like Mollie, taking on the world’s highest mountain was a major challenge. To reach the summit, Mollie had to spend almost two months on the mountain acclimatising as much as possible to the extreme altitude and the reduced levels of oxygen. Sadly 3 climbers tragically died on ... Continue reading →

ASHEVILLE — The number of reported cases in a three-month Buncombe-based salmonella outbreak is still climbing, but health officials say they�re seeing fewer and fewer new cases of the disease each week.The total number of reported cases linked to the outbreak was 83 as of Friday afternoon, 62 of which involved residents of Buncombe County.The Buncombe total increased from 59 to 62 cases over the last week. The total count includes cases of people who visited or otherwise had connections to Buncombe County and were believed to have been exposed to the bacteria here.�We do know there�s still transmission going and believe that it is all person-to-person at this point,� said Sue Ellen Morrison, disease control supervisor for the Buncombe County Department of Health.�At this ... Continue reading →

Birds made from Lego - in pictures Lego enthusiast, avian admirer and professional tree surgeon Thomas Poulsom has taken inspiration from birds to create this brilliant series of (almost) life-size Lego models. He hopes to persuade the toy company to make his birds into official Lego kits - vote for him at lego.cuusoo.com Continue reading →

Atlas Thiex of South Dakota is one of almost 3,000 children enrolled in the US National Children's Study. ERIN NIEMANN/ELP-STUDIO.COM Trisha Massmann got a jolt when she received a letter informing her of imminent changes to the US National Children's Study (NCS). She had enthusiastically signed up to the project as an expectant mother in the summer of 2009, after one of its recruiters knocked on the door of her blue clapboard house in the farming community of Granite Falls, Minnesota, population 2,881. By the time Massmann's son, Brett, was born the following February, two fieldworkers from the NCS — a hugely ambitious effort to track environmental and biological influences on the health of 100,000 US children from before birth to age 21 — had ... Continue reading →

Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets. Back to Twitter Learn more Continue reading →

There was a seat at the bar. The restaurant, on Ninth Avenue in midtown, was crowded, but at the bar a stool stood like an empty island against a sea of men who were all standing and talking to one another. They were all elaborately dressed, even bejeweled, in sharp shirts and two-tone shirts and cuff links, and as soon as I saw them, I asked the restaurant's hostess two questions: One, if I could eat at the restaurant dressed as I was, in jeans and a T-shirt. And two, if I could just go to the bar and take the empty seat."Well, you can," she said, "as soon as those men leave." She was very young and chirpy, and spoke to me with a ... Continue reading →

Strange doesn't even begin to describe Silicon Valley tech executive Thomas Langenbach's arrest. Langenbach was arrested swapping barcodes on Lego boxes at several Target retails, buying them at huge discounts and then selling them on eBay to turn a profit. It was all working out so well, until he got caught. According to Mercury News, Langenbach "brought his own bar code stickers to the store, used them to cover up the real ones, and then purchased his plastic prey at enormous discounts." It was actually Target security that cracked the case, then turned the bar code bandit over to the cops. According to police, Langenbach was observed buying two Lego items at reduced prices on April 20 -- truly a Black Friday for him, if ... Continue reading →

Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times THE MONEY FINDS A HOME Hadyn Packer, 8, at a check presentation at St. John Neumann Regional, a Catholic school in Williamsport, Pa. When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy. Pennsylvania House Republican Caucus LAWMAKER IN THE LIMELIGHT Sam Smith, speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, at a scholarship celebration. The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to the Georgia treasury — about $50 million a year — would ... Continue reading →

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal administrative judge has ruled that POM Wonderful used deceptive advertising with its claims that its pomegranate juice could treat or prevent heart disease, prostate cancer and other illnesses. Chief Administrative Law Judge Michael Chappell sided with federal regulators and ordered POM to halt all claims of health benefits and performance for its beverage. Expert witnesses testified in court that pomegranate juice is not proven to treat or prevent the diseases mentioned in POM's advertising. The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against POM and its parent company, Los Angeles-based Roll International Corp., in September 2010. The agency said there is no science to support the company's advertisements. POM Wonderful is seen as having started the pomegranate craze that spread to ... Continue reading →