The world did not end on May 21, as Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping had predicted. Oops. Time to start rebuilding your life.

Interesting Facts:

• In 1989, there were 1.8 million email accounts. Today, there are more than 3 billion. Over 100 trillion emails were sent in 2010.

• One in 10 cars on the road has their “check engine” lights on.

• Hawaii pays the richest unemployment benefits in the U.S., with an average weekly stipend of $416, or 54 percent of the average weekly wage. Despite concerns that generous benefits discourage job-hunting, the state’s unemployment rate is only 6.3 percent

• The Chinese factories that make iPhones and iPads responded to a wave of suicides by overworked assembly-line employees by forcing new workers to sign pledges that they would not kill themselves.

• McDonald’s is the world’s largest distributor of toys.

• At the current birthrate, the world’s population, now 7 billion, will reach 10 billion before the end of the century, the U.N. estimates. But if the global birthrate increases even slightly, the global population could soar to 15.8 billion by 2100.

•  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted an emergency guide for how to respond to an attack by flesh-eating zombies. The page, posted to draw traffic to the CDC website, became so popular that the server went down..

• Facebook could be worth as much as $100 billion when it eventually goes public, making it larger than tech rivals Amazon and Cisco. That’s twice the value analysts calculated from then price Goldman Sachs paid last year for a share of the company. Facebook expects to make over $2 billion in earnings this year.

• In America, marijuana is the #4 value crop and generates a $36 billion market.

• The average cost of health care for an American family of four insured through an employer is now $19,393–up 7.3 percent since last year.

• Chocolate milk may be withdrawn from school cafeterias and vending machines across the country for its high sugar content. “Chocolate milk is soda in drag,” said one nutritionist. “It does not belong in schools.”

•  In Mexico, more houses have televisions (93 percent) than sewerage (90 percent), refrigerators (82 percent), or showers (65 percent). Nevertheless, the Mexican home has been transformed in recent years. In 1990, one in five homes had a bare earth floor. Now, only 6 percent do.

• Last month Volkswagen opened a nonunion plant near Chattanooga, Tenn., where workers will earn average wages and benefits of roughly $27 an hour. The move ratchets up competitive pressure on Detroit’s Big Three automakers, whose union workers earn an average of $52 an hour.

• Since April 1, Amazon has sold 105 Kindle e-books for every 100 conventional books sold. E-books, which started outselling hardcover books alone last July, took just four years to emerge asthe reading format of choice for customers of Amazon.

• People who try to slim down through liposuction, a new study has found, face a cruel aftereffect: Fat deposits reappear–elsewhere in the body. “The brain senses a loss of fat and restores it,” study author Robert Eckel tells The New York Times.

• About 61 percent of couples surveyed by American Express say their discussions about money often turn into arguments. That is a sharp increase over the 45 percent who admitted to quarrels about spending a year earlier.

•  Young people “love themselves more today than ever before,” says University of Kentucky psychologist Nathan DeWall, and the proof is in their music. He and his colleagues analyzed the lyrics of Billboard Hot 100 songs from the past three decades and found a steady increase in self-centeredness and hostility toward others. Hmm. Perhaps it’s young musicians who love themselves. 🙂

• A surprising new study has determined that men with high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids—found in fish like salmon and proven to promote heart health—were more than twice as likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer as those with low levels. What’s more, the trans-fatty acids in french fries and other processed foods, which are notorious for fueling heart disease, appear to reduce prostate cancer risk by 50 percent, ScienceDaily.com reports.
• 19-year-old Autumn Braden of Michigan put her “adorable” 2-year-old cousin up for sale on eBay for $1,000. When police showed up, Braden said, “All I was trying to do was see how eBay
worked.”