12 Trivia Tidbits for Wednesday, July 17, 2024
One woman has maintained a friendship with a fish for longer than you were friends with your best buds from childhood.
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A Major Breakthrough in Pancreatic Cancer Treatment
Researchers have discovered that a specific gene gets switched off during early pancreatic cancer, paving the way for tumor growth. The gene produces the HNF4A molecule, which aids in the immune system’s response the disease.
Moon Caves
Scientists have discovered a cave on the moon for the first time, a 300-foot deep cavern that has moon terraforming enthusiasts licking their chops at its potential to unlock an “underground, undiscovered world” that could one day shelter humans.
The German Navy Is Still Out Here Swapping Out Floppy Disks
There are at least four German warships that rely on old-school floppy disks to compile data they acquire. The system still works perfectly fine, but the Navy is working on a more modern replacement that won’t gum up the works.
A Hundred-Million-Dollar Nepo Wedding
After months of celebrations, the wedding of Asia’s richest person’s son finally wrapped up. Anant Ambani’s Kardashian-studded waste of capital is estimated to have cost multiple hundreds of millions of dollars.
The World’s Rarest Whale
The spade-toothed whale was only first positively confirmed to exist in 2010, when two of them were beached in New Zealand. No one has ever witnessed a live one in the wild, which remains true to this day, despite a new specimen having just washed ashore again this week.
A Woman’s Nine-Year Friendship With a Sunfish
A Minnesota woman fell in (platonic?) love when she spotted a sunfish off a dock almost a decade ago, and “he looked at me like I’ve never had a fish look at me.” In the months when the lake isn’t frozen, she handfeeds it worms and scratches its chin.
Scientists Have GMO’d the Most Human-Like Mouse to Date
University of Texas researchers have developed a mouse that has a remarkably human-ish immune system and gut microbiome, making it extra useful for medical testing.
The World’s Only Green-Boned Dinosaur
A 150-million-year-old long-necked herbivore, nicknamed Gnatalie because researchers were swarmed with gnats while they were excavating it, is being installed in L.A.’s Natural History Museum. It’s the only known specimen of its species, and the only all-green dinosaur skeleton in the world.
Ancient Italy Had Exactly One Brewery
Archaeologists just discovered what is, as far as anyone knows, the only brewery in Roman-era Italy. During excavation of the Villamagna and Urbs Salvia sites in Macerata, researchers found a brewery from the fifth or sixth century that may have been developed based on even more ancient Celtic traditions.
A Trader Joe’s Seasoning Is Getting People Stopped in Customs
Trader Joe’s super popular Everything But the Bagel seasoning is banned in South Korea because of its poppy content, and travelers are getting the stuff confiscated when they try to return from America with even small bottles of it as a gift.
A Big Week for Hackers
A hacktivist group protesting Disney’s embrace of A.I. and disdain for workers and audiences is holding hostage a ton of private information it snagged from the company’s internal Slack servers. Meanwhile, AT&T just paid a hacker $300,000 to destroy the terabyte of data they had stolen.
The World’s Largest Pizza Party
Princess Cruises set a new record for the largest pizza party in history, handing out 60,000 slices across a whole fleet of its ships. Glutonous cruise hounds tore through over 6,000 pounds of dough, 3,000 pounds of flour, 1,000 pounds of pepperoni and 2,000 pounds of cheese.
