Sri Lanka suicide rate pesticide restrictions decline

Restricting pesticides helped reduce suicides in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka experienced a major decline in suicide rates after restricting access to highly hazardous pesticides beginning in the 1990s. The change illustrates an important public-health principle: making a particularly lethal means less accessible can save lives, even without eliminating the underlying causes of suicidal distress.

Waiting for harvests helped create credit

Farmers have to plant long before they can harvest. In early Mesopotamia, this delay helped create a need for credit and records. Temples stored grain, wrote deposits on clay tablets, and issued tokens that people could use to pay fees or debts.

A royal wedding helped create Spain without immediately uniting its kingdoms

The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon linked two powerful Iberian crowns in the fifteenth century. But their kingdoms retained separate laws, institutions and political traditions. Spain developed through a long process of dynastic and administrative integration rather than becoming one unified state on the wedding day.

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Sri Lanka suicide rate pesticide restrictions decline

Restricting pesticides helped reduce suicides in Sri Lanka

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