Half of house fires happen between 11pm and 7am, a time in which most of us would not be conscious enough to know something’s going on. This is terrifying, but there’s an easy thing you can do to help you survive: Close your bedroom door before you go to bed.

If you're lucky, you'll never have to defend yourself through physical violence. But if that time ever comes, or if you're ever enrolled in a Fight Club against your will, would you know what to do? You've seen punches thrown on TV plenty of times, but do you actually know how to throw one correctly? We asked three elite martial artists and a boxer to share their best takedown tips.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to type in some stupid answer to a made-up question when creating an account on a new service. You know what I’m talking about: Forget your password, and you can regain access to your account by typing in the name of your first pet (Mr Mrglglrm), your favourite sports team (Saskatoon Sirens), or the street you grew up on (Third Street).

Spring is a great time to spend the day out on the lake. Leeches think so too. If you take a dip in your local lake and come out with a new gross friend, don't panic. Just follow the steps in this graphic to get rid of it.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband went through the childproofing checklists, making sure our home wouldn’t be a danger zone for a tot who believes the entire world is just waiting to be touched, climbed and licked. We crawled on the floor in a quest for potential hazards. We bid farewell to our sharp-edged glass coffee table. We bolted our chests of drawers to the wall, locked up our cleaning supply cabinet, and put safety covers on our electrical outlets. My daughter is five now, and still alive.

If the phrase “lift with your legs” never made any sense to you, you aren’t alone. Trying to follow this advice can feel awkward, unnatural and ineffective — even though it isn’t wrong, exactly. Here’s what you’re missing.

Hurricane Florence is expected to make landfall along the US Atlantic coast tonight or tomorrow. While coastal Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina are expected to be the hardest hit, anyone who lives along the US Eastern seaboard should be keeping a close eye on the storm’s progress.

The National Hurricane Center expects Hurricane Florence to cause “life-threatening, catastrophic flash flooding” when it makes landfall in the US later this week, and now there’s a tool that gives us an idea of just how catastrophic that impact will be.

It seems like everyone I know who had a trampoline as a kid also has a story about breaking their leg, or their arm, or personally witnessing some heinous injury. Trampolines have only gotten more popular in recent years, and they've gotten safer, too, with nets and spring covers — so are they still a broken leg waiting to happen?

Bushfire season is looming and now is a good time to make sure you're properly prepared should the worst happen.

If you’re old enough, you may remember carrying maps in your car and telling family the phone number of the place you’re going. But who does that these days, when you just have your phone on you at all times? Well, if you’re heading out for a hiking or camping trip, you may need to resurrect some old-school habits.

September is the peak of Australia's own version of "home-grown terrorism" (as memorably described to me by a distraught and bleeding school principal, valiantly attempting to protect his pupils), when a small but conspicuous proportion of magpies throughout the country begin to attack otherwise innocent passersby. It is certainly the most significant human-wildlife conflict in the towns and cities of this country. Here are some tips on how to survive.

When we mentioned last week that you should screenshot your boarding pass and other important travel documents, several readers chimed in with tips on real-world things to photograph as well.

Not long ago, a fire started close to my area. It moved fast, and through news reports, we watched it snake its way toward our sleepy, suburban neighbourhood. By evening, there were mandatory evacuations about 1km away from us.

For a car seat to work properly in the instance of an accident, your child must be, well, in the thing. The shoulder straps must be in the correct position and snug on their body.

Meeting dogs is fun, so we get why you might want to meet all of them, even service dogs. But it’s crucial — lifesaving — that you recognise the difference between a pet and a dog that’s doing a job. As the blog Mashable explains, if you distract a service dog, you could endanger the life of its owner.

At least one driver working for Uber has been livestreaming passengers without their consent, according to a recent story in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Viewers on Twitch have been rating the female passengers, speculating about incomes, and chatting about the marriages and personal lives of unsuspecting users of the ridesharing service.

Vaping is almost certainly less harmful to your health than smoking cigarettes, since it doesn’t contain bits of burned-up tobacco leaf (the cancer-causing “tar” in cigarettes). But if that fact leads smokers to start vaping, but then they don’t quit smoking, what good was the vaping?

Who knows where you ran last week? If you're privacy-minded, perhaps just you... and your running app. But our fitness apps often share more information than we realise. The Strava app, and now Polar Flow, have released maps that gave away potentially sensitive military locations.