Copyright (c) 2012 by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company. From The Lifespan of a Fact, by writer John D’Agata and…
A Christian martyr. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich released their most recent tax returns. Romney’s showed that he made $21.6 million in 2010, paid taxes at a…
A kinkajou, 1886. After weeks of infighting, Congress passed a two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut. House Republicans, who had rejected a nearly identical measure days earlier, were left divided…
Weighing the soul, 1875. Russians in nine time zones rallied to demand a revote of their country’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the ruling United Russia party won a…
Greek prime minister George Papandreou agreed to step down following a week in which he proposed a referendum on EU measures to save his country’s collapsing economy, narrowly won a…
A Small Family. A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a Toyota Corolla loaded with an estimated 1,500 pounds of explosives into an armored bus in Kabul, killing 17 people; the Taliban…
A kinkajou, 1886. Libyan forces shot and killed deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi after finding him hidden in a drainage pipe in Sirte. Upon being discovered, Qaddafi reportedly raised his hands…
The United States observed the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. Thousands of mourners gathered at the World Trade Center site…
An earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 5.9 and an epicenter in Mineral, Virginia, shook much of the East Coast, and Irene, a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall in North…
A kinkajou, 1886. A cholera epidemic struck refugees fleeing a famine in southern Somalia that has killed an estimated 29,000 children so far. Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu reported 181 deaths…