Family mystery solved in Polk County – Lovely reunion tale

One Less Secret for Rick Scott – My latest piece. Curiously, I couldn’t find any source ever mentioning even Rick Scott’s birth name – in spite of the fact that he’s been Florida’s governor for almost 8 years.

The Roots Recipe for Betty White

U.S. Citizen Deaths Overseas – OK, this is a bit morbid, but still interesting. There’s a database of non-natural deaths of Americans abroad – not their names – but place and cause of death. It starts in Oct 2002 and goes through June of this year at the moment. I selected June 2018 just to get a feel for it, but was brought up short when I spotted what was clearly Anthony Bourdain’s entry. 🙁 It’s mostly accidents, drowning, drugs, homicide, and yes, suicide. Also things like disaster and execution (only spotted one of them so far). And not surprisingly, if you focus on places like Iraq and Afghanistan, you get a lot of “terrorist action” due to the presence of our military.