A survey conducted by an insurance and financial services group has shown that the majority of U. S. drivers do everything ranging from eating and reading to writing grocery lists and nursing babies when behind the wheel. Thirty-one percent of respondents admitted to day dreaming, and 14 percent of the surveyed drivers said they took advantage of time spent driving to discipline their children. The survey, conducted by Nationwide Mutual Insurance on more than 1,200 American drivers, showed that the majority of American drivers do all sorts of outlandish things while driving - including changing clothes, balancing a checkbook and even shaving.

Michael Perham, 14, has earned the distinction of being the youngest person to cross the Atlantic single-handedly. A student at Chancellor's School in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, he started his journey from Gibraltar on November 18 and spent 6˝ weeks alone on the open sea.

A 26-year-old man set a new Guinness World Record by making the largest rubber ball ever from more than 175,000 rubber bands. It weighs 4,594-pounds and stands 5 1/2 feet high and 19 feet round. "The rubber bands . . . sometimes they'll break. That hurts," said Steve Milton. "As long as you wear your safety goggles, you're good. "

An Illinois woman recently got her high school class ring back after more than two decades. Laura Durham of Belvidere, Ill. , remembers taking off the class ring, and several others, just before she got into a car accident in July 1984. The jewelry was later discovered by Bob Windsor, who worked at the salvage yard in South Beloit, Ill. , where Durham's car was taken after the crash. He added the rings to his coin collection, intending to find the owner someday.

British writer Lynne Truss has set up a Web site featuring a collection of funny examples of misplaced punctuation. The author of the popular 2003 book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance to Punctuation" delights in grammatical errors that completely change the intended meaning of written communication. For example, Truss publishes an item on a restaurant menu gone wrong. What was supposed to be "Goat Cheese Salad . . . tomato, onions, goat cheese" turned into something else entirely with a couple of extra s's and an erroneous additional comma: "Goats Cheese Salad . . . tomatoes, onions, goats, cheese. "