Astronaut Jeffrey Williams has a new record for NASA under his space belt. The commander of the International Space Station marked a U.S. recording-breaking 521st day in orbit Wednesday, a number accumulated over four flights. That surpasses the 520-day record set by Scott Kelly, whose one-year space station mission ended… Read More

Paleontologists say they have enough funding for one more season of digging at a Wyoming cave where they’re carefully removing a trove of animal bones from the last ice age to discover their secrets. Scientists led by Julie Meachen at Des Moines University in Iowa have been excavating fossils from… Read More

After scanning the vast reaches of the cosmos for Earth-like planets where life might exist, astronomers have found one right next door. A planet that is rocky like Earth and only slightly bigger has been discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri , the nearest star to our solar system, scientists reported Wednesday…. Read More

A Mississippi firefighter who received the world’s most extensive face transplant after a burning building collapsed on him said Wednesday that he feels like “a normal guy” for the first time in 15 years. Patrick Hardison, 42, said he can now eat, see, hear and breathe normally, thanks to last… Read More

Lawyers representing 17 people injured when a railing collapsed at a Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa concert in New Jersey earlier this month have filed a lawsuit against the venue’s owner and the performers claiming they didn’t take enough precautions to ensure concertgoers would be safe. The suit filed Wednesday… Read More

Federal regulators are proposing to ban swimming with dolphins in Hawaii, a move that could imperil one of the Aloha State’s most popular tourist activities and the industry that has sprung up around it. The National Marine Fisheries Service says spinner dolphins — the playful nocturnal species that humans in… Read More

A childless Bosnian couple have staged and attended their own funeral saying they wanted it to be an opportunity to celebrate life with friends and family. Dragan Maric, 61, and his 65-year-old wife Dragica had sent invites to their pretend funeral and some 200 people turned up. During the ceremony… Read More

Nearly two-thirds of this year’s high school graduates took the ACT college entrance exam, and their scores suggest that many remain unprepared for the rigors of college-level coursework. The testing company said Wednesday that only 38 percent of graduating seniors who took the exam hit the college-prepared benchmark in at… Read More

A minor league baseball player in southern Illinois hit a grand slam homerun only to find the ball smashed the windshield of his own truck. The Gateway Grizzlies of Sauget (SAW-zhay), Illinois, say Brandon Thomas hit the homer during Sunday’s game against the Joliet Slammers. The 25-year-old outfielder sent the ball… Read More

The four-legged mayor of a northwestern Minnesota village greets voters like a true politician. Duke, a 9-year-old Great Pyrenees, won a third one-year term as honorary mayor of Cormorant Township on Saturday. The big, shaggy white dog was overwhelmingly re-elected at the sixth annual Cormorant Daze Festival. Anyone could pay… Read More