Good morning. Ever look at an overripe banana and think, “that should be ketchup?”

Well that’s what FIlipino food scientist Maria Orosa said during World War II, when she invented the perfectly named “banana ketchup.”

Facing a shortage of tomatoes, Orosa created the staple of Filipino culture by combining banana, sugar, vinegar, spices, and a little red dye, hence the “ketchup” (the yellow-brown hue wasn’t appetizing, apparently).

Can you imagine? Knowing someone who invented a condiment? Like what if Marcus Mayo walked among us? He’d be a legend!

Oh life, you sweet and tangy treat.

And on that note, THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.96 minutes to read.

“Youth has no age.”

–Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Novak Djokovic is now tied with Rafael Nadal for the most Grand Slam titles in men’s history (22), not Roger Federer, who ranks third with 20.

This is the 38th correction out of the 268 newsletters we’ve published since January 2022.

After more than 50 years of production, the last Boeing 747 jet ever made has rolled out of the factory. The aviation and aerospace company will deliver it later today to Atlas Air for use as a cargo plane.

And the reason for its demise is pretty simple: the four-engine jet drinks more gas than Charlie Day – up to one gallon of fuel/second – and airliners and freighters are opting to use more efficient planes instead. But oh, what a life it’s led.

As legend has it, the Boeing 747 was first envisioned on a fishing trip. Pan Am Airlines founder Juan Tripp was seeking to cut costs and increase the number of seats, and challenged Boeing President William Allen to build a jet 2.5x bigger than the previous largest jet in service.

Allen said challenge accepted, and the first Pan Am flight using the Boeing 747 took off in 1970. The jet, dubbed the “Queen of the Skies,” had a fuselage measuring 225 feet long and a tail as tall as a six-story building. Its size enabled it to carry 350-400 passengers at a time, or more than double any plane before it – and reduced seat costs enough to bring airline travel to the masses.

• Prior to the 747’s use, the average family couldn’t afford to fly internationally. "This was THE airplane that introduced flying for the middle class in the US," Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith told Reuters.

✈️ Bottom line: Even though Boeing stopped making 747s, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still being used. There are 44 still active as passenger jets, and many more as cargo planes. So you can pocket that queen wave for the Queen of the Skies for another day.

🇦🇺☢️ Australian authorities are searching for a tiny cylinder of radioactive material that fell off a truck driving through the Outback. The capsule, which is about the size of a pea, was dislodged from a gauge used to measure radioactivity in oil and gas processing plants. Officials said close exposure to the radioactive device (within five meters) could cause skin damage in the short-term, and cancer-causing radiation sickness in the long-term. Despite the capsule being lost at an unknown point along an 870-mile stretch of desert highway, authorities say their odds of finding it are “pretty good,” thanks to radiation detectors and other specialized equipment. And even if they fail, the overall risk to the public is relatively low, per officials.

🏫 Children around the world lost over one-third of a school year’s worth of learning due to Covid, per a new peer-reviewed study. The research, published in Nature Human Behavior, analyzed data from 42 studies across 15 different countries. Scientists found the learning deficit arose “quite early in the pandemic,” and persisted throughout the two-and-a-half year time period that was studied. Researchers also found students in middle-income countries had greater learning deficits than students in higher-income countries, with no data included on any low-income countries.

🚢 A 15-year-old boy who chose a shipping container while playing hide-and-seek in Bangladesh ended up 1,600 miles from home earlier this month. When workers at Malaysia's Port Klang heard knocking from inside a shipping container that had just traveled from Bangladesh, they initially thought they had stumbled on a case of human trafficking, as the boy inside was emaciated and neither spoke nor understood the local language. But according to multiple reports, authorities later discovered the boy had been accidentally locked inside the container for six straight days without any food or water. He's currently recovering, and will be sent back home once better.

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Self-driving cars still need to pass driver’s ed, right? Because according to letters sent by San Francisco transportation officials to California regulators last week, they desperately need it.

🤔 Wait, but why?... First to set the stage: the main characters of this drama are the autonomous taxis run by GM-owned Cruise, which has been running a paid autonomous taxicab service in parts of San Francisco, and Alphabet-owned Waymo, which is still testing its paid self-driving service with an employee in the car.

And per city officials, things aren’t going too well.

• There have been two cases of Cruise vehicles holding up firefighters on active duty.
• 92 cases of Cruise self-driving cars making unexpected stops in travel lanes.
• A server outage caused ~60 Cruise vehicles to simultaneously freeze on public roads for a 90-minute period.
• A Waymo test vehicle drove into a construction site… and just hung out.
• There’s also been examples of cars driving on sidewalks, and doing a terrible job escaping from the police.

👀 Looking ahead… Given the above, city officials are asking state regulators to pump the brakes on (heh) or reverse a key December 2022 approval that allows Cruise to operate its robotaxis anywhere in San Francisco 24/7, a decision that could soon expand to LA and the rest of California.

Nearly two-thirds of American parents say the job of raising their kids is harder than they expected – but an overwhelming majority (80+%) also say parenting is rewarding and enjoyable all or most of the time.

That’s according to a new Pew Research report on parenting, which surveyed 3,700+ US adults with children under the age of 18. Here’s what else it found:

😟 Biggest parental fears: According to Pew, the No. 1 concern among parents is that their child may struggle with anxiety or depression, with 77% somewhat or extremely worried. That figure beat out all other parental fears, such as their child being bullied (75%), being abducted (59%), getting beaten up (57%), having problems with drugs/alcohol (53%), or getting pregnant/getting someone pregnant (46%).

👪 Gender differences in parenting: Across all parental fears, mothers were consistently more worried than fathers. Mothers were also more likely to say parenting is tiring (47% vs. 34%) or stressful (33% vs. 24%) most or all of the time – which makes sense, as mothers were consistently rated by both genders as doing more work than fathers across a wide range of child-care tasks.

📅 Hopes for the future: Parents very clearly prioritized financial independence and career satisfaction above all other future goals for their children, with around 9 in 10 saying both are extremely important. On the flip side, only about 1 in 5 parents said it’s extremely important that their children get married and/or have children of their own.

💬 Quoted…​​ “He said, 'Boris, I don't want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute' or something like that."

• In a new BBC documentary that aired in the UK yesterday, former British PM Boris Johnson said Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly threatened to kill him during a “most extraordinary” phone call between the two world leaders, which occurred in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine last February. A Kremlin spokesperson called Johnson’s claim a “lie.”

📰📱 Stat of the Day: Women are 59% more likely than men to rely on TikTok as a news source, per a Pew Research report (via Harper’s Index); at the same time, men are 217% more likely than women to rely on Reddit as a news source.

🤯 Did You Know?... Only eight countries have ever won the Men’s World Cup; there have been 22 total tournaments.

📖 Worth a Read: A Happy Memory Can Help You Fall Asleep, if You Know How to Use It → (WSJ)

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners of the Underwater Photography Guide’s 2022 Ocean Art Images of the Year, which handed out more than $100,000 in total prize money.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🖥️🐛 A Meta security risk was identified by a Nepalese hacker yesterday, per a TechCrunch report; the bug let anyone get past FB’s two-factor authentication via brute force hacking, since no upper limit on attempts was set.
• ⚡ BP’s annual global energy outlook predicted the use of fossil fuels as a primary energy share will drop from 80% in 2019 to between 20% and 55% by 2050; renewables are projected to rise from 10% to between 35% and 65% during the same period.
• 📱 Apple may release a foldable iPad as early as 2024, supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said yesterday.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎮👨‍🎤 Kid Laroi and Fortnite launched an in-game interactive music experience last Friday. | Michael Jackson’s nephew, 26-year-old Jaafar Jackson, will play the singer in an upcoming biopic, the film’s director announced yesterday.
• 🎧 The Ambies, an annual award show for podcasts, announced its 2023 list of nominees yesterday.
• 🏒 Bobby Hull, the Canadian Hall-of-Fame hockey great, died yesterday; he was 84.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖🔍 Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, is developing a ChatGPT rival the company plans to integrate into its search products, similar to Microsoft’s plans for Bing, according to Bloomberg.
• 🥛☕ Adding milk to coffee can have an anti-inflammatory effect on the human body, per a new peer-reviewed study from the University of Copenhagen.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🌬️ Ukraine’s military recently accused Russia of posting rubber “dummy tanks” near the country's embattled Zaporizhzhia region that have since deflated.
• 🚨 Three Memphis Fire Department employees were fired and two other police officers were relieved of duty yesterday in relation to their roles in Tyre Nichols’ deadly beating earlier this month. (Background)
• 🏛️🦠 President Biden told Congress yesterday that he plans to end the ongoing national emergency and public health emergency declarations for addressing Covid on May 11, more than three years after they were first declared. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

*😓 Had enough doom and gloom? Us, too… that’s why we like The Progress Network: a newsletter with a constructive outlook, highlighting progress on today’s most pressing issues. Take a break from the negativity and subscribe for free.

CLICKBAIT

• 🦾 The case for a third robotic arm.

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Yesterday we covered the death of 29-year-old Black motorist Tyre Nichols at the hands of five Memphis Police Officers, who have since been arrested on charges including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, and kidnapping.

❓ Our question to you (long-form): In your opinion, what can be done to reduce instances of police brutality in America?

• “New police recruits spend about 4 months in training. They should add an additional month focusing on special needs and mental health training. Also, there needs to be very stiff penalties for any officer who engages in such behavior, as well as stiff penalties for those officers who just stand by and don’t help the victim.”
• “In order to reduce police brutality, we first need to evaluate the issues with inequality. A police officer viewing someone as more dangerous or untrustworthy because of lifestyle, appearance, or culture could lead to an innocent person dying.”
• “A shift in training needs to happen, and also in the culture that has been established within law enforcement as a whole. The need to control and have "power over" is more obvious than ever. It needs to shift to "power with." It begins with each individual and it's an inside job.”
• “Police should never be the first to swing a punch or throw a kick. Their job is to detain and protect, not abuse or hurt. If a civilian were to throw a punch at an office, it would be a crime. So it should be a crime for the police to initiate the assault as well. The legal system should prosecute them the same. People can’t trust police if they are held to a double standard.”

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 502 longform responses.

⛄️🤯There's snow way... Minnesotan snow-sculpting team House of Thune just won the world championship with their piece entitled Journey.

• The second annual World Snow Sculpting Championship was held in Stillwater, Minnesota, and featured teams from countries like Germany, Finland, Argentina, Ecuador, and Turkey, to name a few.

❄️ Labor of love: Journey was completed over the course of five days, and is made up of around 10 tons of snow. 

• "It felt pretty surreal being up there on the stage," said snow sculptor Kelly Thune. "There were so many pieces this year that I thought deserved to win it, that I didn’t expect it."

❓ Trivia: What famous novel begins with the line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?

🧱 True or False?... The Great Wall of China is visible from space without any magnification.

🤔 Riddle Me This: I can be cracked, made, told, and played. What am I?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

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❓ Trivia: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

🧱 T/F: False

🤔 Riddle: A joke