May 27, 2025 - Good Morning! It’s Tuesday, May 27.
I love newspapers. I grew up reading The Houston Post. It shut down its presses 30 years ago. Like many papers, it folded in the face of this new, digital age. The Houston Chronicle is still going strong, it’s the third largest paper in America, but the majority of its readers read it online. That’s the way I get my news every morning, through the internet version of the number one newspaper in the U.S. - the New York Times.
The Times recently did an interesting study, looking at what countries had appeared the most in U.S. papers over the last 25 years. The results included some nations that would pop up here and there, depending on what was happening in the world - countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine. At the top of the list year after year, predictably, were giants like China and Russia. But, surprisingly, one country, dwarfed by all the rest, was a perennial mainstay in the world’s headlines... Israel. Here’s some interesting facts.
- Israel is about the size of the state of Massachusetts, just 8000 square miles. In comparison, the great state of Texas weighs in at 270,000 square miles.
- Israel is never wider than 80 miles, and is 10 miles across at its narrowest.
- The population of Israel is approximately nine million, about the same as New York City.
- The cell phone was invented in Israel. So were cherry tomatoes and the game Rummikub.
- Some of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane date from the time of Christ.
- Jerusalem is the only place in the world that is a Holy City for three religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
