Legally blind, Spitzer's room, Friday the 13th

There are some 10 million visually impaired people in the U.S., including about 1.3 million who, like David Paterson, the new governor of New York, are legally blind. Despite laws making it illegal to discriminate against the blind, only about 30 percent of working-age blind people have jobs.

Associated Press

New York State lottery officials last week closed down betting on the number 871—the room in Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel wherein former Gov. Eliot Spitzer met with the prostitute named Kristen—because too many people were playing it.

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New York Daily News

While polls show that just 1 percent of Americans say the vice presidential candidate influences their vote in a presidential race, history suggests voters might want to give that factor more consideration. Of the 46 vice presidents, 14 of them—or nearly one-third—became president. Nine moved up to the top job without being elected to it.

The New York Times

Most of the foreign jihadists who are blowing themselves up in suicide attacks in Iraq are single men in their late teens or early 20s who come from large, low-income families in which they struggled to be noticed, according to a U.S. military study of captured fighters. By traveling to Iraq and dying in an attack on the U.S., these young men hope to achieve glory back home.

Los Angeles Times

U.S. businesses lose between $800 million and $900 million every Friday the 13th because of increased absenteeism and people’s reluctance to travel or make decisions on that date, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. As many as 9 percent of Americans are said to be paraskevidekatriaphobics, or fearful of Friday the 13th.

Chicago Tribune