The beginning of a new year is quickly approaching, which makes now the perfect time to take stock of your priorities and set goals for your future. Setting goals helps you focus your attention, get more done, and change your life. Robert Pozen, MIT professor and author of Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours, shares his top tips for honing in on your goals—be they to live a healthier lifestyle, advance in your career, or prioritize your relationships—and seeing them through to fruition.

1. USE THE RIGHT TOOLS.

Just brainstorming your goals isn’t enough—you need to write them down. To give you one place to organize and categorize your goals, Pozen partnered with the Wall Street Journal to create the Productivity Planner for their Journal Collection. “If you don’t write down your goals and prioritize them, you are not likely to achieve them,” Pozen writes in the foreword to his Productivity Planner.

“Begin by jotting down all your goals for the next year, both personal and professional,” Pozen writes. “Use your notebook to then divide both sets of goals into ‘high priority’ and ‘secondary priority.’” The planner then helps you translate your goals into monthly objectives, and uses a two-sided schedule to help you manage your time. For every appointment you pencil in to your planner (meetings, phone calls, lunches, etc.), you also provide its purpose, or what you want to get out of it. “This will help you actively manage your day,” Pozen writes.

2. START WITH SHORTER-TERM GOALS.

Pozen’s Productivity Planner starts by asking you to list your yearly goals, but coming up with these can seem like a monumental task, especially when you’re young. “Start with your goals for a relatively short period—like the summer or a semester,” Pozen tells mental_floss in an email. “Those periods are easier to see as relevant.”

Once you have your list of goals, “divide your goals into personal and professional,” Pozen says. “When you think about personal goals, start with the easy ones such as what type of social life would you like to have? When you think about your professional goals, similarly, start with something like what new skill would you like to develop?”

3. GIVE EQUAL ATTENTION TO YOUR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS.

“It is often easier to think about your professional goals because most people have an idea of a career path,” Pozen says. “Do you want to advance to a higher level in your current organization, or get a job someplace else? Do you need to go to a short training course or get a new degree or simply do a lot more networking? In this process, you can consult a colleague at work or a professional mentor.”

Personal goals often get the short shrift since it’s more difficult to nail down what it is you want and how to get there, but they shouldn’t be neglected. “When you try to generate personal goals, you should try to think through your daily life and needs. If you are single, do you want to meet a girlfriend or boyfriend? If you are married, do you want to have children?” Pozen says. “Then you might focus on your free time. Do you want to become better at playing a physical sport or start a new hobby or go on a special vacation? In this process, you can consult your partner or a friend.”

4. DO THINGS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

Pozen recommends you live by the principle OHIO: Only Handle It Once. “OHIO means that it is most efficient to deal with important matters right then and there, instead of waiting a week,” Pozen says. “If you wait a week, you may forget the important matter or it may take you a hour to get back up to speed. So if you receive an important email from your boss, only handle it once—answer it right then and there.”

5. MAKE TIME FOR MORE SLEEP.

You need a solid seven hours of rest for more than just your beauty. “Without enough sleep, your performance will decline on complex tasks without you even realizing,” Pozen writes in the Productivity Planner.

Without a doubt, this is something you’ve heard before. But it can feel impossible to put in the hours you need at work, get your chores and errands done, exercise, eat dinner, and hit the hay at a decent hour. While Pozen notes that there are tricks you can try to fit more in—“routinizing low priority tasks like eating breakfast, trying not to procrastinate by getting started with an easy part of a large project, and limiting meetings to 90 minutes at the most”—the most important thing you can do is de-emphasize the number of hours you’re putting in at the office. “The key points are to set your priorities and focus on getting them done, rather than just staying long hours at work—that is a false sense of productivity,” Pozen tells mental_floss.

6. EXERCISE.

“Devote at least 15 minutes each day to exercise,” Pozen writes in his planner. This will help you feel more alert and eager to tackle the day. But again, how do you fit this time into your busy schedule? “You should try to exercise in the middle of the afternoon when your energy is low – that will help you be more energetic and productive for the rest of the day,” Pozen tells mental_floss. Moreover, an afternoon workout won’t cut into your dinner prep or sleeping time.

7. MAKE SOME SIMPLE CHANGES TO YOUR ROUTINE.

To increase your productivity and work more efficiently, Pozen recommends making five easy changes to your daily routine—right now.

1. Get prepared the night before so in the morning you can quickly dress, eat a standard breakfast, and leave for work.
2. Use a two-sided schedule where you list your appointments on the left and what you want to get out of them on the right.
3. Don’t call a meeting unless you need to discuss something and keep all meetings to 90 minutes at the maximum.
4. Skip over two thirds of your email—you can tell they are not worth reading by the subject matter and sender.
5. Think about your purpose before reading anything, then read the intro and conclusions to decide if you need to read more.

You’ve still got a few days to go until that New Year resolution to indulge in fewer sweets kicks in—and Starbucks wants to help its customers end 2016 on a (sugar) high note. So they’ve introduced the Tuxedo Beverage Collection—a trio of chocolatey espresso drinks—at select locations across the U.S. and Canada.

For espresso lovers, there’s the Tuxedo Mocha, which is a mix of mocha and white chocolate sauces with espresso and steamed milk; the Tuxedo Hot Chocolate has also got a bit of white chocolate at the base and is topped with whipped cream, a drizzle of mocha, and dark chocolate curls; and the Tuxedo Mocha Frappuccino is yet another chocolate and white chocolate flavor combo, this time blended and frosty.

If you want to get your hands on one of these limited-time treats, you’d better act fast; after January 1, 2017, they’ll disappear as quickly as you can say “Where’s the aspirin?”

 
Thank goodness 2016 is almost over. It’s hard to come across one person who enjoyed much of what the year threw at us—and that’s true of its weather, too. Whether you were baked by extreme heat or drenched by never-ending rains, 2016 was an active, record-breaking year that left few parts of the U.S. untouched by tumult. Here’s a quick look back at how the weather treated us in 2016.

1. 2016 WAS LIKELY THE WARMEST YEAR EVER RECORDED.

The weather is more than what you see in your backyard. We only ever personally experience a small fraction of the weather events that unfold every day around the world, but we’re all impacted by large-scale trends like the record-setting warmth of 2016.

2016 will very likely go down as the warmest year ever recorded, the third such year in a row, topping 2015 as the previous holder of this dubious distinction. NOAA’s year-to-date temperature data for the world through the end of November has 2016 coming in 0.94°C warmer than normal, which almost guarantees that 2016 will come in slightly warmer than 2015’s astounding year-end anomaly of 0.89°C.

Some of this year’s record warmth is attributable to El Niño, the anomalous warming of the ocean water near the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but that doesn’t explain all of it. This year continued an undeniable trend that shows that our atmosphere is warming at a fairly steady pace; in fact, including this year, six of the ten warmest years recorded since 1880 have occurred since 2010. If the warming trend continues in the years ahead, it will likely result in adverse situations like more intense and prolonged droughts in some areas, more frequent flooding due to rising sea levels and heavier rainfall in others, and longer, deadlier heat waves.

2. WE HAVEN’T SEEN MANY RECORD LOWS AS A RESULT.

 
The recent cold snap that froze much of the U.S. in the middle of December felt exceptionally cold—with low temperatures dipping well below zero across many states—but it’s easy to forget that it used to get much colder than that on a pretty regular basis. As a result, this bone-chilling cold didn’t set as many record lows as one would think. That’s not an uncommon situation these days.

Climate Central recently took a look at the ratio of daily record lows to daily record highs and found that the latter significantly outnumbers the former. For every record low we’ve seen in the United States in 2016, there have been at least six record highs. Climate Central notes that the number of record highs and lows should equal out over time in a “stable climate,” but we’re in anything but a stable climate these days. 

3. THE U.S. SUFFERED FROM HISTORIC FLOODS.

On the precipitation side of things, extreme flooding events were by far the largest cause of weather disasters this year in the United States, and there were two particularly devastating flooding events in 2016. The first unfolded across Louisiana in August, the result of a storm system that stalled out over the eastern part of the state and dumped up to 30 inches of rain over a short period of time. The extreme rain led to flooding that caused more than $8.7 billion in damages, killed more than a dozen people, and forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes.

The other flooding disaster was caused by Hurricane Matthew, a powerful storm that grazed the Florida and Georgia coasts before coming ashore in the Carolinas at the beginning of October. The hurricane merged with a frontal system over North Carolina and focused one to two feet of intense rainfall on the eastern part of the state. Much as we saw in Louisiana, the floods claimed thousands of homes and resulted in multiple fatalities.

4. WHERE IT DIDN’T RAIN, IT REALLY DIDN’T RAIN.

 
The split between feast and famine was stark this year. While the West Coast’s drought slowly got a bit better, much of the eastern parts of the United States slipped into a disruptive, and at times, destructive drought. The drought is particularly bad in interior parts of the southeast, where states like Georgia and Alabama have slipped into their worst drought in a decade. The dry earth has led to devastating wildfires that have claimed thousands of homes and killed numerous people. The extreme dryness will likely last through a significant portion of 2017, and affected areas may not see any noticeable relief until next summer’s hurricane season.

5. TORNADO ACTIVITY AND TORNADO DEATHS ARE NEAR RECORD LOWS.

Still, not all of the wacky weather we’ve seen in 2016 was bad. The Storm Prediction Center’s data through the end of December shows that 2016 is very close to the fewest number of tornadoes recorded in one year since 1950. The United States typically sees around a thousand confirmed tornadoes every year, but that activity has been relatively minimal for the past couple of years. Adjusted for inflation—removing false reports and duplicate reports for the same tornado—2016 has seen 897 reported tornadoes through December 19, 2016. That’s significantly lower than the previous low-point of 944.

Tornadoes can grow into violent monsters that destroy entire towns, but these beastly formations are surprisingly fragile. Tornado formation requires precise amounts of wind shear, instability, and moisture—too much or too little of one ingredient will prevent a storm from producing tornadoes. This natural limitation is why only a tiny fraction of thunderstorms ever spawn tornadoes.

The near-record lack of tornadoes so far this year has had the added benefit of resulting in one of the lowest tornado death tolls on record. On average, about 98 people die every year as a direct result of injuries sustained in tornadoes [PDF]. Only 17 people have died as a result of tornadoes so far in 2016, the second-lowest number on record since 1940. Only 1986 saw a lower tornado death toll, when just 15 people were killed.

Fire water, water of life, juice—whatever you call it, whiskey (also spelled “whisky”) is having a moment. But with so many different whiskeys available, learning the particulars of even one type can be challenging. To help out, we’ve put together a list of answers to your most frequently asked questions about the brown spirit. Consider this your Whiskey 101 cheat sheet.

1. WHAT IS WHISKEY?

The answer is trickier than you might expect: What can be labeled “whiskey” varies from country to country. Many of the moonshines and white whiskeys available in the U.S. can’t legally be labeled as whiskey elsewhere, for example, because they haven’t been aged. Exactly how long the spirit must age to be called whiskey varies by country, but all whiskeys do have one thing in common: They’re made from grain.

2. WHY IS WHISKEY SOMETIMES SPELLED WITHOUT AN E?

You’ve probably noticed that some whiskey labels read “whiskey” while others are spelled “whisky.” The current convention is that Irish and American whiskeys are spelled with the e, and that Scottish, Canadian, and Japanese whiskys are spelled without. But some bourbons and Tennessee whiskies—including Maker’s Mark and George Dickel—are spelled without the e. Go figure.

3. WHAT IS BOURBON?

To be considered whiskey in the U.S., the spirit must be distilled from grain and be between 40 and 95 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) [PDF]. Usually it is distilled twice. Unlike other countries, there is no minimum aging requirement for most types of American whiskeys.

In the States, bourbon is king. To be called bourbon, the product must not only meet the baseline definition of whiskey, but must also be distilled from at least 51 percent corn. It must be under 62.5 percent ABV once it goes into a barrel, and it must be aged in charred new oak containers. To be called “straight bourbon” (or “straight” whiskey of any kind), it has to aged for at least two years. As far as taste goes, bourbon is typically thought to be sweeter than other whiskeys (such as rye or Scotch), and has a slight smoky flavor.

And last but not least, bourbon has to be made in the United States. It is so ingrained (no pun intended) in our culture, even NAFTA restricts the word “bourbon” to whiskey made in the States.

4. IS BOURBON THE SAME AS TENNESSEE WHISKEY?

Tennessee whiskey is not to be confused with bourbon, although legally, there are only a couple variances between the two. In addition to meeting all the federal requirements for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey must also be produced within the state’s limits. Since 2013, it has been required that all Tennessee whiskey is “filtered through maple charcoal prior to aging,” which is known as the Lincoln County Process [PDF] (although one distiller received an exemption from the law).

Aside from these two huge categories, the U.S. also produces rye whiskey (which must be distilled from at least 51 percent rye), wheat whiskey (which must be distilled from 51 percent wheat), unaged white whiskeys, and grain whiskeys made from everything ranging from corn to quinoa, which isn’t a grain at all.

5. SO, WHAT IS SCOTCH?

Like American whiskey, Scotch varies greatly in terms of its taste—although it’s generally thought to be smokier and peatier than its cousins. By law, it must be made in Scotland and aged for no fewer than three years in oak containers.  Perhaps surprisingly, many of these containers are former bourbon barrels. As American law requires bourbon to be aged in “new oak,” used bourbon barrels are frequently shipped to Scotland for use in making Scotch. Traditionally, all Scotch whisky was made using malted barley.

6. WHAT IS MALT WHISKY?

Malt whisky must be made from a mash of malted grain (usually barley), which means the grain has been soaked, allowed to start sprouting, and then roasted to halt the process. The whisky’s level of smoky, savory peat flavor comes from how long the barley is dried over a peat-fueled fire: The longer it’s over the fire, the smokier the whisky is.

A single malt means the whisky was made at only one distillery. So, a single malt Scotch is whisky made in Scotland using malted barley in a single distillery.

7. WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES PRODUCE WHISKEY—AND WHAT SHOULD I KNOW ABOUT THEIR PRODUCTS?

The other biggies in terms of whisk(e)y production are Canada, Ireland, and Japan. Here are the basics:

Canada: Of all the whiskey-producing countries in the world, Canada (arguably) is the most misunderstood, and it’s not hard to see how it got a bad rap: 75 percent of all Canadian whisky that’s produced is shipped to the U.S., but only about 10 percent of the premium products leave Canada (which means Americans are usually tasting the less-than-stellar stuff). One of the most common misconceptions about Canadian whisky is that it was popularized within the U.S. during Prohibition. Not so, says Canadian whisky historian Davin de Kergommeaux in Canadian Whisky: The Portable Expert. According to his research, whisky’s generally anesthetic properties made it useful during the Civil War, and since many American distilleries were burned down during the fighting, we needed to turn to our neighbors to the north for our supply.

Legally, the regulations surrounding Canadian whisky provide distillers and blenders a lot of leeway in creating new products. Here, whisky must be distilled from grain to no less than 40 percent ABV, and be aged in wood for at least three years. Canada was the first country in the world to require a minimum age for whisky, which it did in 1887; Britain would follow suit about 25 years later.

Ireland: Ten years ago, there were only three whiskey-producing distilleries in all of Ireland. Thanks to the craft spirits movement, 13 others have opened up since 2006. Irish whiskey must be aged for three years, most is distilled three times, and it must be distilled to at least 40 percent ABV (as in the U.S.).

Japan: Although it’s been produced since the early 1920s, Japanese whisky has only recently become available in the U.S. And as it’s become more available, its celebrity has also grown: The 2015 edition of Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible (Murray has ranked the world’s best whiskeys since 2003) named a whisky from Yamazaki Distillery as the best in the world.

All images courtesy of iStock.

Just days after suffering a heart attack aboard a flight en route to Los Angeles, beloved actress, author, and screenwriter Carrie Fisher has passed away at the age of 60. Though she’ll always be most closely associated with her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars, Fisher’s life was like something out of its own Hollywood movie. Born in Beverly Hills on October 21, 1956, Fisher was born into show business royalty as the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds.

In addition to her work in front of the camera, Fisher built up an impressive resume behind the scenes, too, most notably as a writer; in addition to several memoirs and semi-autobiographical novels, including Wishful Drinking, Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma, The Best Awful, Postcards from the Edge, and The Princess Diarist (which was released last month), she was also an in-demand script doctor who counted Sister Act, Hook, Lethal Weapon 3, and The Wedding Singer among her credits.

Though she struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness, Fisher always maintained a sense of humor—as evidenced by the 30 memorable quotes below.

ON GROWING UP IN HOLLYWOOD

“I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, someone like me is the result.”

“I was born into big celebrity. It could only diminish.”

“At a certain point in my early twenties, my mother started to become worried about my obviously ever-increasing drug ingestion. So she ended up doing what any concerned parent would do. She called Cary Grant.”

“I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive.”

“If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive. That’s my word for it.”

ON AGING

“As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don’t.”

ON INSTANT GRATIFICATION

“Instant gratification takes too long.”

ON THE LEGACY OF STAR WARS

“People are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to be that big of a hit. Yes, we all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George.”

“Leia follows me like a vague smell.”

“I signed my likeness away. Every time I look in the mirror, I have to send Lucas a couple of bucks.”

“People see me and they squeal like tropical birds or seals stranded on the beach.”

“You’re not really famous until you’re a Pez dispenser.”

ON THE FLEETING NATURE OF SUCCESS

“There is no point at which you can say, ‘Well, I’m successful now. I might as well take a nap.’”

ON DEALING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

“I’m very sane about how crazy I am.”

ON RESENTMENT

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

ON LOVE

“Someone has to stand still for you to love them. My choices are always on the run.”

“I’ve got to stop getting obsessed with human beings and fall in love with a chair. Chairs have everything human beings have to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience, and less response. The less the merrier. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.”

“I don’t hate hardly ever, and when I love, I love for miles and miles. A love so big it should either be outlawed or it should have a capital and its own currency.”

ON EMOTIONS

“The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you’re hurt.”

ON RELATIONSHIPS

“I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.”

ON HOLLYWOOD

“Acting engenders and harbors qualities that are best left way behind in adolescence.”

“You can’t find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.”

“It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.”

ON FEAR

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

ON LIFE

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.”

“No motive is pure. No one is good or bad-but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.”

“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”

“I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.”

“My life is like a lone, forgotten Q-Tip in the second-to-last drawer.”

ON DEATH

“You know what’s funny about death? I mean other than absolutely nothing at all? You’d think we could remember finding out we weren’t immortal. Sometimes I see children sobbing at airports and I think, ‘Aww. They’ve just been told.’”

You don’t need a special day to come up with goals, but New Year’s Day is as good a time as any to build better habits. The problem is, by the time February rolls around, our best laid plans have often gone awry. Don’t let it happen this year: Heed these three simple tips for fail-proof resolutions.

PROBLEM 1: THEY’RE TOO OVERWHELMING

Let’s say your goal is to pay off $5000 worth of credit card debt this year. Since you’re giving yourself a long timeframe (all year) to pay it down, you end up procrastinating or splurging, telling yourself you’ll make up for it later. But the longer you push it off, the bigger and more overwhelming your once-reasonable goal can feel.

Solution: Set Smaller Milestones

The big picture is important, but connecting your goal to the present makes it more digestible and easier to stick with. Instead of vowing to pay off $5000 by the end of next December, make it your resolution to put $96 toward your credit card debt every week, for example.

In a study from the University of Wollongong, researchers asked subjects to save using one of two methods: a linear model and a cyclical model. In the linear model,the researchers told subjects that saving for the future was important and asked them to set aside money accordingly. In contrast, they told the cyclical group:

This approach acknowledges that one’s life consists of many small and large cycles, that is, events that repeat themselves. We want you to think of the personal savings task as one part of such a cyclical life. Make your savings task a routinized one: just focus on saving the amount that you want to save now, not next month, not next year. Think about whether you saved enough money during your last paycheck cycle. If you saved as much as you wanted, continue with your persistence. If you did not save enough, make it up this time, with the current paycheck cycle.

When subjects used this cyclical model, focusing on the present, they saved more than subjects who focused on their long-term goal.

PROBLEM 2: THEY’RE TOO VAGUE

“Find a better job” is a worthy goal, but it’s a bit amorphous. It’s unclear what “better” means to you, and it’s difficult to plot the right course of action when you’re not sure what your desired outcome is. Many resolutions are vague in this way: get in shape, worry less, spend more time with loved ones.

Solution: Make Your Goal a SMART One

To make your goal actionable, it should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. When you set specific parameters and guidelines for your goal, it makes it easier to come up with an action plan. Under a bit more scrutiny, “spend more time with loved ones” might become “invite my best friends over for dinner every other Sunday night.” This new goal is specific, measurable, time-bound—it ticks all the boxes and tells you exactly what you want and how to get there.

PROBLEM 3: YOU FELL FOR THE “FALSE FIRST STEP”

“A false first step is when we try to buy a better version of ourselves instead of doing the actual work to accomplish it,” Anthony Ongaro of Break the Twitch tells mental_floss. “The general idea is that purchasing something like a heart rate monitor can feel a lot like we’re taking a step towards our fitness goals,” Ongaro says. “The purchase itself can give us a dopamine release and a feeling of satisfaction, but it hasn’t actually accomplished anything other than spending some money on a new gadget.”

Even worse, sometimes that dopamine is enough to lure you away from your goal altogether, Ongaro says. “That feeling of satisfaction that comes with the purchase often is good enough that we don’t feel the need to actually go out for a run and use it.”

Solution: Start With What You Already Have

You can avoid this trap by forcing yourself to start your goal with the resources you already have on hand. “Whether the goal is to learn a new language or improve physical fitness, the best way to get started and avoid the false first step is to do the best you can with what you already have,” Ongaro says. “Start really small, even learning one new word per day for 30 days straight, or just taking a quick walk around the block every day.”

This isn’t to say you should never buy anything related to your goal, though. As Ongaro points out, you just want to make sure you’ve already developed the habit a bit first. “Establish a habit and regular practice that will be enhanced by a product you may buy,” he says. “It’s likely that you won’t even need that gadget or that fancy language learning software once you actually get started … Basically, don’t let buying something be the first step you take towards meaningful change in your life.”

There are two types of travelers: those who want to hit up the most popular tourist attractions of their intended destination, and those who would rather avoid the crowds and long lines that usually come with a highly trafficked hotspot. In either case, the map above—courtesy of vouchercloud and Thomson Vacations, with travel data compiled from TripAdvisor’s most popular “Things to Do”—can help.

In addition to citing the most popular tourist attraction in each country, the map is color-coded in order to easily highlight the type of attraction it is—be it a historic spot (like China’s Great Wall), a natural wonder (like Niagara Falls in Canada), a religious destination (like Russia’s Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood), or a regular old tourist spot (like New York City’s Central Park, which is America’s most popular attraction). How many of them have you visited?

[h/t: Thrillist]

The Afternoon Map is a semi-regular feature in which we post maps and infographics. In the afternoon. Semi-regularly.

Snowbirds, take note: If a winter season completely devoid of snow sounds like your idea of heaven, these 12 places are calling your name. Though they do get the occasional dusting, once every few decades is definitely more novelty than nuisance.

1. ROME, ITALY

Rome gets a dusting every few years, but heavy snow that sticks happens only once every 25 years or so. When it happened in 2012, the snow did some damage to the Colosseum, forcing officials to close the historic monument for inspection.

2. MIAMI, FLORIDA

In 1977, a cold wave swept through Florida, causing snow flurries for the first and only time in the recorded history of many towns, including Miami. The only time it had happened before was in 1899, and that was in Fort Pierce—130 miles north. While Miamians were charmed by the snow, workers in the state’s citrus and vegetable industry weren’t so thrilled; the snow and cold weather wiped them out, costing at least 150,000 people their jobs.

3. THE SAHARA DESERT

The Sahara isn’t always dry—the desert experiences snow storms on extremely rare occasions, including December 19, 2016, when snow stuck to the sand dunes in Ain Sefra, Algeria, for about a day.

The white stuff ended a 37-year snowless spell for the region; the last time the Sahara saw snow that stuck was February 1979, and it only lasted for 30 minutes.

4. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Though the only recorded snowfall in Sydney’s history happened close to 200 years ago, there was a close call in 2007. However, the tiny white precipitation turned out to be “soft hail,” not snow. In fact, some historians think the 1836 event may also have been hail. “Two hundred years ago they may not have been that well trained and it was probably small hail,” said Peter Zmijewsk, senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology.

5. BAGHDAD, IRAQ

Although it’s not uncommon to see snow in Northern Iraq, snow took a 100-year hiatus from Baghdad before deciding to show itself again in 2008. Most of it melted as soon as it hit the ground, but citizens were still pleasantly surprised.

6. LISBON, PORTUGAL

Prior to January 2006, it had been more than a half-century since Lisbon had last seen snowfall. Many highways and roads were closed in central and south Portugal during the storm of 2006; one town even lost power.

7. MALIBU, CALIFORNIA

Snow in the mountains of California is expected, but snow in Malibu is pretty rare. The last measurable amount was during a cold snap at the end of 2008 that also hit Las Vegas.

8. LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

It used to be a rarity to see snow falling on the Palms or the Bellagio, but it seems to be happening about once a year now. The snow is brief and often melts as fast as it falls, but in December 2008, enough stuck around to make it a pretty newsworthy event.

9. BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

If you could happily go 89 years without seeing snow, Buenos Aires might be the place for you; snow was a stranger to the city from June 22, 1918, through July 9, 2007.

10. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

The mountains in San Diego county see snow every year, but San Diego proper hasn’t had measurable snowfall since 1967. Flakes have floated through the air on occasion, even on a memorable Christmas Eve in 1987—but nothing like the amount they got in ’67. It was so much, one resident reported, that some kids managed to go sledding.

11. HAWAII

It snows pretty much annually in Hawaii—even enough to go skiing. To see the rare event, however, you’ll have to go up: The white stuff only sticks around at the top of Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Haleakala. In fact, Mauna Kea was recently blanketed in snow.

12. NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Just 17 “snow events” have been recorded in Nola from 1853 to 2008. Nothing compares to the snow of 1895; residents were flummoxed to find themselves snowed in with more than eight inches of snow on the ground.

by Jeva Lange

Singer George Michael had “wanted to be a pop star since I was about 7 years old,” but you have to be careful what you wish for. Michael rocketed to fame at 21 when Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” flew up the charts and he publicly balked at the cost of celebrity. “I’m … sure that most people find it hard to believe that stardom can make you miserable,” Michael told the Los Angeles Times in 1990, giving similar statements to several other publications. “After all, everybody wants to be a star. I certainly did, and I worked hard to get it. But I was miserable, and I don’t want to feel that way again.”

Frank Sinatra—who himself once tried to wave off fame—set Michael straight in a humbling letter. “Come on, George,” Sinatra wrote. “Loosen up. Swing, man. Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments.”

Frank Sinatra’s letter to George Michael pic.twitter.com/LXDpjiXqdD

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) December 26, 2016

Michael died at his home in Goring, England, on Christmas, at the age of 53.

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