12 Current Events and Factual Oddities That One Day, God Willing, You’ll Forget

In 2022, Burger King unleashed the “Pride Whopper” with “two equal buns,” which people were quick to point out were specifically two bottoms.

Ukraine’s incredible drone infiltration of Russia over the weekend destroyed 41 warplanes using drones they snuck deep into the country. Russia has reported no deaths from the attacks, and Volodymyr Zelensky says that all Ukrainian operatives who pulled off the mission are already safely out of Russia.

The first words a baby tends to speak are “mama” and "dada,” usually in that order, because they’re the most phonetically natural things to gurgle. The proto-Indo-European word for “he who begets a child” was “pəter,” which is derived from mumblings like “dada,” “baba” and “papa.” That, in turn, became the Old English “fæder,” or “father.”

Many countries have a magical little mouse that collects children’s teeth, which predates any story about a tooth fairy. But they may both come from a 1697 French fable about a fairy who turns into a mouse and knocks out a king’s tooth.

The top five are milk, soft drinks, coffee, tea and, duh, water, which alone s for over half of the world’s drunken drinkables.

A study of 889 colon cancer patients between 2009 and 2024 found that, among the cohort who were assigned a personal coach to guide them through regular anaerobic exercise regimens, there was a 28-percent reduction in cancer recurrence and a 37 percent reduction in deaths.

Scientists found that rapamycin can extend mouse lifespans by around 18 percent, and trametinib extends them by up to 16 percent. The simple math of adding the two together checks out — mice treated with a mixture of the two had a lifespan extension of up to 35 percent.

Radboud University is opening a Tickling Lab to study the neuroscience behind the phenomenon: “It is a complex interplay of motor, social, neurological, developmental and evolutionary aspects.”

A truck carrying 70,000 pounds of honeybee hives overturned on a highway, unleashing hundreds of millions of bees into the countryside.

The National Hurricane Center created six lists of names in 1953, and have been cycling through them ever since, nearly unchanged. They’ll retire a name when a hurricane associated with it is so deadly or costly that it’ll be a huge bummer to hear it every six years, so there’s no more “Andrew,” "Sandy” or “Katrina” on the list. 

So far this year, that stock index has had its best month since 2023 and its best May since 1990, but it’s also had one of its worst starts since 1950 and hasn’t trailed global stocks this badly since 1993.

A study by booking site Thrifty Traveler found that airlines have begun charging more per ticket for a single traveler than for a group. For example, a flight from Chicago to Asheville would cost $223 for a single ticket, but buying two dropped the price to $207 per ticket. Airlines are playing dumb, but Delta and United did adjust their single ticket prices after the reporting came out.