In 1959, a sadistic dentist in California with perhaps a strong dislike of trick-or-treaters (or maybe a pathological obsession with preventing cavities?) handed out several hundred laxatives coated in candy to kids in his neighborhood. What followed was a national manhunt for the dentist (who fled after several dozen children fell ill) and an unending fear about kids being given tainted Halloween candy across the United States. Every year, police departments and newscasters around the country warn parents to be on the lookout for tampered treats. Yet in the last half a century, there have been virtually no documented cases of kids finding razor blades in candy apples or accidentally ingesting marijuana-laced candy handed to them by a malicious neighbor, writes The New York Times. Most reports of Halloween poisonings have later been found to be hoaxes or completely unrelated to the several hundred thousand tons of sugary treats handed out by strangers and neighbors each year, according to a sociologist who has been studying this issue for decades.
Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…
Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…
One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…
Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…
Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…
Last fall, first-year law student Karissa Kang arrived at Yale University and quickly set out…