Some (More) Frightening Facts from 2008 (Harper's Index)

1. The United States marked the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Over four million Iraqis had fled the country or been internally displaced, and the total cost of the war, currently about $650 billion, was expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five years.

2. Tom Jones insured his chest hair for $7 million.

3. Australian police tasered a ram.

4. Japanese men began to wear bras.

5. The United Nations expected the number of starving people in the world to rise to 950 million.

6. A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered in China’s Sichuan Province left tens of thousands of people dead and millions homeless.

7. The Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, heralded on television by fake, computer-generated fireworks.

8. A man in Swansea, Wales, died from eating too much fairycake, and an elderly German woman filed a lawsuit against a hospital in Bavaria after she went in for a leg operation and was instead given a new anus.

9. One in 100 American adults was behind bars.

10. Global stock markets lost $3.1 trillion in four days, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 10,000 for the first time in five years.