1. A 70-year-old woman ran the Boston Marathon and I can’t even get out of bed.
On Monday, Kathrine Switzer ran the marathon for her ninth and final time, exactly 50 years after running it for the first time. Switzer registered under “K.V. Switzer” in 1967, so the marathon director had no idea a woman was registered to run the race. When she started running the race, director Jock Semple appeared behind her and attempted to shove her out of the race (to allegedly “maintain the seriousness of the race,” because I’m sure a trained marathon runner just hopped into a 26.2 mile race on a whim). Switzer became the first woman to officially run the race—Bobbi Gibb ran it a year earlier but without a registered bib. Her bib number, 261, has now been retired.
2. Prince Harry opened up about grief and mental health.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, Prince Harry spoke about how the loss of his mother, Princess Diana, affected him. He said he felt angry, “on the verge of punching someone,” but it was only after talking to friends, family, and therapists that this was bottled-up grief from his mother’s death. Prince Harry has been commended by mental health experts for speaking up, especially as a man in a position of power, for whom toxic masculinity dictates that they should bottle up emotions.
3. Bill O’Reilly was let go and it was kind of a bittersweet win.
Bill O’Reilly, long-time Fox News host, was finally, finally let go by Fox News. Under pressure from the public after news broke that O’Reilly and the company had paid off five women who came forward with sexual harassment allegations against O’Reilly totalling up to $13 million in settlements, Fox News forced him out after a “careful review of the allegations.” Many commentators were careful to note that O’Reilly wasn’t being fired because of the harassment—he was being fired because Fox News got caught covering it up.
Unsurprisingly, O’Reilly got a hefty $25 million payout from the company, and on top of that, as much as $65 million of the $85 million total payouts related to the sexual harassment allegations are going towards the men who were fired as a result of them. You can always count on Fox News to finally do the right thing after extensive public pressure but then screw it up anyway!
4. Serena Williams, literal queen of tennis, is pregnant!
Announcing her pregnancy through a Snapchat photo of her baby bump with the caption “20 weeks,” Williams delighted and inspired the world with her announcement.
As news traveled, sports fans realized that meant she would have been eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open in January.
Though Williams is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest athletes of all time, one Twitter user detailed exactly why Williams doing what she does best, winning a tournament, wouldn’t have been impacted by her pregnancy.
Regardless, Williams is a world-class-athlete-soon-to-be-mother-all-round-star and we’re all in awe, as usual.
5. YouTube videos spread of frankly abusive “pranks.”
YouTube user DaddyOFive made a series of videos of pranks on their children, but the pranks were frankly horrifying. In one video, the mother spreads invisible ink over her son’s room’s carpet, then yells at him and drives him to tears. In another, the father forces his son to hit his daughter for the video. As the videos spread, people shared their outrage.
The video creators maintained they were “false accusations,” but issued a video apology later on.
6. Andrew Sullivan perpetuated the model-minority myth but thought he was being innovative.
News columnist Andrew Sullivan wrote a column this week about what he called “why Democrats feel sorry for Hillary Clinton” but what ended up being a thinly-disguised attempt at promoting his own racist agenda. He rhetorically wonders in the column how Asian Americans have done so economically well in a “profoundly racist society” and ultimately concludes that it’s because America isn’t actually that racist after all and that it’s possible to achieve through hard work. Criticisms of Sullivan’s work included the fact that his idea of the Asian American is lacking some context, and that Asian Americans were actually sold as the model minority to denigrate African Americans.
The persistence of news outlets to publish overwhelmingly white and male op-eds on, of all topics, race relations clearly has to end.
7. People marched for science everywhere.
Some were there because they love science, some were there to protest Trump’s environmental and climate change policies, but all were there to have their voices heard. Held in over 600 places across the world, people came together to celebrate and promote the importance of science.
8. A lot of people were making playlists for their loved ones.
In this week’s strange-meme-of-the-season news, people began making playlists imitating popular memes, T.V. or movie moments, or quotes by putting together song titles.
That’s all for now!! Check back in next week for more fun and even more ridiculousness.