News organizations from around the world are reporting on the death of Cheetah-Mike, the chimp who purportedly played Cheeta, the companion to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan from the MGM and RKO film series of the 30s and 40s. If this is one of the original film Cheetas, it would make Cheetah-Mike, at 80, the longest-lived captive chimp on record. But there’s reason to doubt he’s both that old and was in the films with Weissmuller. First, because this is significantly longer than chimps usually live, and second because this has happened once before.
posted by Toekneesan on Dec 28, 2011 - 34 comments

"Despite the fact that the US spends more per capita than any other nation on health, eight out of every 10 counties are not keeping pace in terms of health outcomes. That's a staggering statistic."

According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, life expectancy for many US counties fell relative to the world between 2000 and 2007. This Science Daily article gives an overview, and the IHME website has a nice page with links to data and visualizations. Here's the UN's list of countries by life expectancy for 2005-2010 for comparison.
posted by sneebler on Jun 18, 2011 - 31 comments

Virtual Age and Life Expectancy Calculator "Your Virtual Age is a reflection of your health and vitality. The lower your Virtual Age the better shape you are in. It is used to calculate the Life Expectancy of someone of your current physical age." [more inside]
posted by paduasoy on May 4, 2008 - 69 comments

Fried Beyond Belief: You're disgusting. But why shouldn't you be? If Elvis were on the blue today, WWES?
posted by ewkpates on Dec 9, 2004 - 18 comments

How long til you buy the farm? • "The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator© was designed to translate what we have learned from studies of centenarians and other longevity research into a practical and empowering tool for individuals to estimate their longevity potential." Wasn't this on a Futurama episode?
posted by dhoyt on Sep 8, 2004 - 29 comments

Oscar winners live longer ...winning the coveted golden statuette can add four years to your life. BTW, the next article shows that half of heroin addicts die early.
Big surprise: "drugs = bad for ya" and "success = good for ya".
posted by nonharmful on May 15, 2001 - 9 comments

130 Years old! See! God may not exist, but technology will outpace religion and THEN I will live FOREVER!
posted by tiaka on Sep 29, 2000 - 14 comments

"Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries."

(Some of you might want to consider moving to Japan -- 74.5 average healthy life expentancy, not to mention cheap and yummy sushi every single day if you felt like it!)
posted by lia on Jun 8, 2000 - 3 comments