Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

Al Gore Tipper GoreHaving friends who have divorced increases the likelihood a married couple will separate.

Using data from the famed longitudinal Framingham Heart Study, researchers were able to determine that when an immediate friend of a married person gets divorced, it increases the likelihood that the friend's marriage will also end in divorce by 75 percent. In fact, even just having a friend of a friend get un-hitched ups a married person's divorce rate by 33 percent.

The reason for this, according to the researcher's working paper: When someone gets divorced, he discusses with his married friends the benefits and drawbacks of the separation. And, apparently, the benefits are often more convincing.

Does this mean recent divorcee Al Gore is counseling Bill Clinton on what's good about finally losing the wife? We don't know. But since a single Bill Clinton equals a never-ending comedy gold mine, we certainly hope so.