Hoping to survive the 2018 midterms, GOP incumbents seek issues to differentiate themselves from Trump.

The elderly constituent in a white blouse would pose a thorny political problem for many Republicans nationwide. Not so for Rep. Brian Mast, who, talking at a senior center in his Palm Beach district, gamely takes on her question: Should semiautomatic weapons be outlawed?

The Florida congressman starts by establishing his firearm bona fides, from hunting with his grandpa and becoming an NRA member as a preteen to touting the 9 mm pistol he often carries today. Then, he suddenly pivots to the left: “There are some absolutely incredible holes in the system of how we sell firearms,” the veteran says, including inadequate criminal and mental health background checks and unfettered gun sales in the streets. Recently, he led bills to address those concerns. And if any conservative constituent wants to question his gun competency? Just take one look at his Purple Heart — and the prosthetics this former Army bomb technician walks on, made necessary after he lost both legs to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan (Mast also lost one finger).

Mast’s tack toward stricter gun control is just one way many Republican incumbents in competitive U.S. House districts are seeking issues to differentiate themselves from President Donald Trump ahead of November elections that are trending toward a blue wave.

University standings based on job prospects or faculty members tell us nothing about the climate they create for women.

Best college town? Best dining hall? Best job prospects? Check, check and check. These are the types of rankings that Dana Bolger, and most prospective female college students, pore over when deciding where to apply to school. But there’s one question they probably didn’t consider: How the institution would treat them if they experienced sexual assault.

If Bolger had wanted a resource that consolidated data like this, she would’ve been out of luck. Today, the graduate of Amherst College advises students and parents to ask questions about a university’s sexual assault trainings, rates of sexual violence and the percentage of students who are suspended for misconduct. As a co-founder of Know Your IX, a political advocacy group that educates students about their federal Title IX rights, Bolger understands which questions reveal the nuances of a climate.

A devastating earthquake 263 years ago caused a lot of soul-searching and inspired some remarkable data collection.

Most of the population of Lisbon was in church when the first quake hit. It was the morning of All Saints Day, 1755, and this was the most prominent city in one of the world’s most powerful countries. None of that mattered, of course, when the shaking started.

The Lisbon quake is still a defining moment in the city’s history. Estimated to be an 8.5 magnitude or higher on the modern-day Richter scale, it was followed by two smaller quakes and a tsunami, as high as 15 meters, then by days of fires that engulfed the city. Hundreds of aftershocks happened over subsequent months. No official death count exists, but sources both contemporary and modern estimate somewhere between 10,000 and 60,000 people died (the population numbered about 1 million at the time). About 82 percent of the city’s buildings were destroyed, among them churches, cathedrals, royal palaces and the opera house.