I’m 50 years old, which means I’m roughly two-and-a-half years removed from the unhappiest point in my life.

That number isn’t arbitrary. It comes from new research by Dartmouth economist David Blanchflower. After examining data from 500,000 people in 132 countries, he’s pinpointed the exact age when the majority of people in developed parts of the world feel the most miserable: 47.2.

Every lifetime has a U-shaped “happiness curve,” he concludes in the study, which was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The average bottom of that curve, where we’re at our most forlorn, is the same regardless of whether we’re rich or poor, healthy or ill, married or single. Across the board, 47.2 …

The holidays can be emotionally taxing for many people, but especially so for Sarah Montana.

It’s been more than a decade since her brother and mother were murdered in her childhood home in Dale City, Va.

“I have all of my mom’s ornaments and decorations, and every year I have to unpack the trauma all over again,” she says.

It was on Dec. 19, 2008, just six days before Christmas, that her mother Jean, 39, and younger brother James, 19, were shot by a 17-year-old neighbor, Xavier Pinckney, who’d broken into their house looking for valuables to steal.

Montana, who was 21 at the time of the murders, says she’s forgiven Pinckney. She hasn’t said it to his face — he’s serving a life sentence in a Virginia prison with no possibility of parole — but she’s sent him a letter. …

There have been many famous babies throughout history: The Lindbergh Baby. The Gerber Baby. Baby Jessica. Rosemary’s Baby. But has there ever been a baby as universally loved and fawned over as Baby Yoda?

For all the joy that Baby Yoda brings us, he can also be confusing. And not because of the obvious questions, like whether Baby Yoda is the real Yoda. Obviously he’s not. The Mandalorian — the Disney+ original series that’s given us our favorite non-English-speaking Star Wars character since BB-8 — is set between Return of the Jedi (when the O.G. …

A remarkable thing happened during game two of the 2016 World Series.

Chicago Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber hit a RBI single in the third inning. That’s not the remarkable part. What made it remarkable was that I witnessed Schwarber make his hit in person, while sitting in the crowd at Cleveland’s Progressive Field, and I didn’t burst into tears like a wheezing man-baby.

This was not typical behavior for me. I’d been crying, or at least welling up, after even the most routine plays by the Cubs during that particular postseason. …

Like many people who grew up on the Leelanau Peninsula — sometimes called the “little finger” of the Michigan mitten — I didn’t realize until well into my mid-20s that Petoskey stones aren’t a precious metal.

A Petoskey stone is a fossilized coral that can only be found on the coast of northwestern Michigan. Its distinctive honeycomb pattern is one of the most aesthetically perfect designs ever created by nature, or so I was led to believe as a child.

What other explanation could there be for the excitement these stones gave our parents? When I found my first Petoskey and presented it to my mother, she reacted as if I’d just plucked a water-logged Ivy League college acceptance letter out of the lake. …

For most of the last decade, my brother Mark and his family lived in a house with a moat.

The house — a four-bedroom French villa in Bel Air previously owned by Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony — is pretty impressive even without the moat, but that unnecessary protective trench gives the house a certain surreal charm. It’s nice to know that when you visit your family for the holidays, you don’t have to worry about Spanish conquistadors.

When I tell people about my brother’s moat house, they usually ask, “Is he rich or something?” …

It’s exhilarating to get an email from Forrest Fenn, the 89-year-old retired antique dealer from New Mexico who’s responsible for one of the biggest and most controversial treasure hunts of the 21st century.

He doesn’t do phone calls anymore — he’s been losing his hearing in old age, he says — and he’s long since stopped inviting strangers to his house. Too many loonies looking for answers. But he’ll gladly correspond by email. And if you’re lucky, you might get a missive where it seems like he let a crucial detail slip.

“Please don’t say I buried it,” he says, referring to the treasure chest he put somewhere in the Rocky Mountains almost eight years ago. …

On a warm New York summer day at Yankee Stadium, July 22nd, 1979, the Yankees first and only mascot made his world debut.

His name was Dandy, although he wouldn’t officially get that moniker for another month. (Dandy was the winning entry in a “Name the Mascot” contest for fans. It may’ve been an allusion to “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” but no one is sure anymore.) He was seven foot tall, with a rotund physique, a spinning baseball hat, a pinstripe Yankees outfit, and a ginger walrus-style mustache

Inside the costume was Rick Ford, a 22-year-old Ithaca College grad from Greenwich, Connecticut. He’d been practicing for his big moment for months, ready to wow the crowd and become for the East Coast what the San Diego Chicken was for the West. …