The mortgage market is so tight (how tight is it?) that even Ben Bernanke couldn't refinance his own home loan. As former Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was influential in controlling interest rates and the supply of money in the American economy.


Preview of Obamacare? Britain's National Health Service funded a sex-change operation (allowed since 1999) and this one is causing controversy because ... it was for an 81-year-old man. The procedure cost 4,000 pounds ($6,429). But why? Maybe James decided he'd rather be Ruth after reading that women live longer than men.

President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 proclaimed the second Monday in October as Columbus Day, although 16 states don't recognize is as a public holiday. And Berkeley, Calif., along with Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and several other cities, chose to observe it as Indigenous People's Day, focusing on the people Christopher Columbus encountered in the New World.