Going into the World Series, the Houston Astros were heavy favourites over the Philadelphia Phillies. They had the best record in American League, and the second best in the entire MLB. They breezed through the playoffs beating Seattle and the New York Yankees without losing a single game. They had incredible pitching, with maybe their hitting being a bit of a weakness.

The Phillies, on the other hand, barely made it into the playoffs as the last Wild Card team in the National League. They had to run through a murderer’s row of teams to reach the World Series. They beat the Cardinals, the Braves and the Padres while only losing 2 games.

They got there because of good enough pitching, but also Bryce Harper started mashing everything. He’s hitting .400/.434/.820 with 6 doubles and 5 home runs in 13 games. In fact, going into game two, Harper’s slugging percentage (.820) was almost as high as his next closest teammate has in total OPS (.832) in the playoffs.

When Houston took an early 5-0 lead in the first game, it looked like it was gonna be business as usual for the Astros and the Phillies magic ran into an unbreakable wall. But then their magic broke through and they won 6-5 in extra innings.

Winning one of the first games in Houston was important, but taking both with the series going back to Philadelphia would have been huge. But game two went more like the first few innings of game one. The Astros built a 5-0 lead, and while the Phillies eventually got one run late in the game — and even had a two run home run get called back for juuuuuuust being foul — the Astros bullpen was too much to overcome two games in a row.

Do you like science, space, or just black holes in general? Then good news!

Trail of candy wrappers leads Ga. deputies to 9 people accused of leading burglary ring | by WSB TV

A victim, who did not want to be identified, told Mims that he came home and “everything was basically turned upside down.”

He says the burglars made off with his clothes, four guns, ammo, a chainsaw, anxiety pills. They even stole the bag of Milky Ways from his refrigerator.

“During our walk on trails through the woods, he was able to point out some of the wrappers. And when he found one wrapper, we were able to walk a little bit further and find another wrapper. And so on and so forth. And it just formed a trail, and it showed us exactly where the individuals had walked,” investigator Christian Spinks said.

The trail led them to the Shady Oaks Mobile Home Park where the suspects lived.

There is a lake in Finland, that looks like Finland. But it is NOT called “Lake Finland” and that’s disappointing.

Longevity of Okinawans and Healthy Aging in Blue Zones

You might already be familiar with Blue Zones: five specific places in the world where people are living considerably longer, healthier and happier lives. In 2004 National Geographic Fellow and New York Times bestselling author Dan Buettner teamed up with National Geographic and some of the world’s top longevity researchers to identify the parts of the world where people are living significantly longer lives.

The five Blue Zones are: The Italian island of Sardinia; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; The Nicoya Peninsula, an isolated part of Costa Rica; and Ikaria, an isolated Greek island

Through their research, Buettner and his colleagues found that people living in Blue Zones all shared similar lifestyle characteristics.

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

From The Branches