Failure to Deliver: Domino's Has Shuttered Its Last Remaining Store in Italy

Domino’s operates restaurants in dozens of countries around the world, but Italy is no longer one of them. The chain has closed its last Italian location after facing rejection in the birthplace of pizza. Domino’s had big plans when it first infiltrated the Italian market in 2015. Though their pies aren’t exactly authentic, the company believed its delivery options would give them an edge over artisan pizza makers. They also tailored their recipe to Italian tastes, featuring a fermented sourdough crust and local ingredients like Grana Padano cheese and prosciutto di parma. Despite skepticism from pizza connoisseurs, the chain’s Italian rollout wasn’t disastrous. Domino’s had opened 28 locations in the country by early 2020, and it aimed to bring an additional 850 stores into the market by 2030. These goals were quickly curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many businesses in the food industry, Domino’s in Italy was hurt by social distancing measures. The chain had delivery to fall back on, but ironically, that became less of an advantage during the pandemic because many competing restaurants began offering delivery options for the first time. Suddenly, Domino’s straight-to-your door pies were no longer a novelty. According to the company, increased delivery competition is what did them in — not Italy’s distaste for American pizza. In the end, Domino's was unable to take over the world’s pizza capital, but its mission could have gone much worse. Taco Bell has twice tried to establish a presence in Mexico, and failed miserably each time.

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Discovery of the World’s First Poisonous Bird

The hooded pitohui — a small bird native to Papua, New Guinea — is the first and only scientifically-confirmed poisonous bird in the world. The people of New Guinea have long known to keep their hands off the harmless-looking bird after it was discovered in 1990. Ornithologist Jack Dumbacher was on the Pacific island looking for birds of paradise when he encountered the hooded pitohui. After inadvertently capturing some of the birds in a net, he tried to pull them out. They scratched and bit his fingers, and he instinctively put his hands in his mouth to soothe the pain. Almost immediately, Dumbacher felt his lips and tongue go numb, and then they started to burn, and continued to burn for hours. Later, suspecting the symptoms were caused by the birds, Dumbacher took one of their feathers and put it in his mouth. The numbness and ensuing pain quickly returned. He had unknowingly discovered the world’s first poisonous bird. The natives of New Guinea call them “garbage birds”, as they gave a foul odor when cooked, and were only consumed as a last resort, when no other food source was available. Dumbacher’s research identified the poison as batrachotoxin, the same toxin in the poison dart frogs of Colombia. Subsequent research showed that the hooded pitohui stores toxins both in its skin and feathers, as well as in its bones and internal organs, although in significantly lower concentrations. So, the next time you think about poisonous animals, snakes, frogs, spiders and fish won’t be the only ones that come to mind.

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Googly-Eyed Trash Eaters May Soon Clean a Harbor Near You

Baltimore’s harbor is cleaner than it has been in decades, thanks to an anthropomorphic trash wheel pulling debris from its waters. Mr. Trash Wheel is a solar-powered trash interceptor based in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, cleaning debris before it enters the Chesapeake Bay. Over a million pounds of trash has been pulled out of the water by Mr. Trash Wheel since its inception. The contraption works by drawing power from solar panels and the current of Jones Falls River to turn a waterwheel, which in turn powers a conveyor belt. Containment booms direct the trash towards the conveyor belt, which then drops the debris into a waiting dumpster. The dumpster sits on its own platform and can be floated out when it’s time to change it. Other states are now looking into the use of solar-powered trash interceptors as well.

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What Elevator Dings Really Mean

In new and existing buildings, elevators must conform to the guidelines set for by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law in 1990 and ensures that people with disabilities receive reasonable accommodations in order to participate in society, which includes access to public and commercial buildings. Some of the requirements are that the doors must remain fully open for at least three seconds, call buttons are a minimum of an inch in diameter and centered 42 inches from the floor, the door width must be at least three feet wide, and emergency controls must be available at the bottom of the elevator control panel. What many people don’t know is that elevators going up ding once and elevators going down ding twice to help those who have visual impairment.

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