The Checkup: Swallowed Pen Still Writes 25 Years Later

• Oh man, does this woman have something to hold over her husband’s head for years to come. Twenty-five years ago, she saw something on her tonsil and decided to use a pen and mirror to try and get a better look. She ended up swallowing the pen by accident (um, ouch?), but neither her husband nor her doctor believed her story when the pen didn’t register on X-rays. Now, a quarter century later, the woman was proved right when a CT scan showed that the pen was sitting fully in tact in her stomach. Doctors decided to operate to remove it, lest the implement puncture a hole in her stomach after all these years. And guess what? They found that the pen still works. I’ll be darned. NPR has the CT scan and proof positive of the pen’s working condition.

• I’m sure you’ve heard of the whole “27 Club” thing, right? The urban legend that the age of 27 is somehow unlucky for musicians, since several—Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and others—never made it to 28? Well, a team in Australia decided to test the theory to see if famous rock stars really are more likely to die at 27 years old. Turns out no, they’re not, but the research did find that on the whole, musicians in their 20s and 30s are two to three times more likely to die prematurely compared to the rest of the population. Probably has something to do with all the drugs. But that’s just a guess.

• Starchy foods like bread and crackers can turn your infants into tiny sodium addicts, according to a new study. No, really.