Strange News Daily. It's a production of I heart Media. In a world full of bizarre events, unsolved mysteries, and a billion stories from all corners of the globe, some news gets lost in the shuffle. This is your gateway to the stories on the fringe of the mainstream map. These are your dispatches in the dark. I'm Ben Bolan, and this is the Strange News Daily, our first story today.
Hearkens back to an earlier report about a strange series of deaths and injuries in Russia, when multiple medical professionals died due to falling out of windows. Uh In many cases these were ruled accidents or suicides, but just this week, a police major in far eastern Russia fell to her death from a window after testifying against her boss in
a criminal extortion case. Security cameras captured the body of criminal investigation officer Yeka Tarina Mishkina, who was thirty seven, near a nine floor apartment building in the city of Kabarovsk, more than eight thousand kilometers east of Moscow. At this point, it was unclear what mis Kinna, who was dressed in plain clothes at the time, had been doing, and she'd been pursuing someone. What were her activities before she plunged to her death from what appears to be a window
on the fifth floor. Various domestic news websites reported that security cameras showed Miskena unsuccessfully trying to get access to the building's rooftop and then descending a few further flights. There are also anonymous sources in local law enforcement agencies who say that Maschino was a witness in a criminal case against her one time boss. This boss was suspected of extorting subordinates. Miskina was reported to have testified against
him at some point before her death. Authorities opened that criminal extortion case after Miskena's former boss retired. The regional police have launched an internal inspection into Michkena's death, and there's an interesting line here. The spokesperson for the police, Yaka Tarina Tarasova, told local news that the investigator assigned to the case was on quote yet another vacation at
the time. Another unnamed source close to the investigation claims that a shoals found a note in Miskin's purse listing a set of key tasks she had to complete until a certain point This note leads this anonymous source to believe there was pre meditation involved here, saying quote this indicates that what happened was not spontaneous. Mosquito was divorced
and she leaves behind a fourteen year old daughter. As we noted at the top of this story, this death follows at least five other separate incidents of Russian healthcare workers falling from windows at the height of the coronavirus pandemic this spring, as well as two young journalists back in two thousand eighteen to two thousand nineteen, before the pandemic began. Our second story today is a bit surreal, or some people it may be the stuff of nightmares.
Imagine you're like any other homeowner, and one day your walls start leaking. They're not leaking water, They're not leaking some kind of coolant from the air conditioning system. No, your walls are leaking honey. This is what happened to Andrea and Justin Isabelle, a Pennsylvania couple who did not know that unexpected house guest until they saw fresh honey
dripping down the walls of their home. The isabel family has lived in their one year old home in Pennsylvania for five years, and so far they haven't had any major issues, apart from the regular wear and tear that comes with owning an older home. Andrea reported that her neighborhood had received heavy rain from tropical Storm Fade, so at first she and her husband thought these streams coming down the wall of their mud room were from water storage.
That weekend, the couple took a closer look and realized the liquid was actually fresh honey. We've never heard any buzzing or anything, says Andrea, when we saw this stream coming down the wall, we just kind of worked our way up. Isabel has made it to their bedroom window and looked outside, and that's where they found honeybees entering and exiting and opening along the roof of the house.
In a video posted on social media, Justin Isabel offered a sketch comedy like homeowner tutorial called how to Tell if you have a b issue. The honey streams have traveled from the attic, through the second story, the main floor, and now down to the basement. Alan Lazani, who was a general contractor and has been an apiarist for eight years, looked at the home on weekend and estimated the bee colony was anywhere from twenty thousand to thirty thousand strong.
He continued saying, I think water got into the colony and washed the nectar out of the comb and made it more liquefied, and that's what was running down the wall. The isabel say their children think the stream is crazy, and the family dog certainly seems to be into the idea of fresh, free honey literally oozing from the walls. Zanni plans to extract the colony from the home and take it to a b yard on his own property.
The Isabel's say, we know bees are endangered. We want to be able to save the colony and re home them appropriately and carefully. But the damage done to the house to extract it was concerning. The repairs will cost an estimated three thousand dollars, and homeowners insurance, which is famously terrible at covering stuff like this, is probably not
going to cover the unwanted b squads. The Isabels are quick to add, by the way that no one has been stung, and when you consider the damage that insects living in the home could do to the structure, it's understandable why people would want them to leave. But still, a beehive is pretty cool. Maybe just move it to the backyard. Our third story today is inspiring. Maybe it's about humanities, constant exploration of our own limits. How far can we push ourselves? Well, it's sort of about that.
You see. Scientists may have just figured out how many hot dogs people can eat in ten minutes. This is a huge deal for part of the population, competitive eaters and fans of competitions like Nathan's famous Coney Island hot dog eating contest. Before we give you the answer, let's let's tell you a little bit about how we arrived at it. Our story starts with a physiologist named James Smoliga.
James works at the High Point University in North Carolina, and last year he was watching the Nathan's hot dog eating contests when an idea struck him like a bolt of competitive eating lightning. Could we, he thought, apply the mathematical equations used to estimate the limits of athletic performance to feats of competitive eating. This set him off on his journey. He analyzed nearly forty years of the hot
dog eating contests. The current record of seventy five hot dogs is an improvement over the competition's early days, where winners were crowned after eating as few as a dozen hot dogs. So, based on this data from a hundred and fifty two competitors over thirty nine years, Smolega calculated what he calls an upper hot dog limit of about
eighty three dogs in ten minutes. That translates to a consumption rate of about eight hundred and thirty two grams per minute and more than whenty three thousand calories total, at least according to his report published just yesterday in Biology Letters. Hey quick, note, this is producer Dylan fig In here. We just felt it was important to point out that this breaks down to almost nine packages of
hot dogs and eleven packages of buns. Eating anything above that would be, according to this superhuman otherworldly or perhaps a t rex in a human suit. But let us know if you break the record, dinosaurs will be disqualified. He goes on to write that whether or not competitive eat or has ever reached that limit, the scale of improvement completely dwarfs other athletic achievements. It sounds unbelievable, but keep in mind that record performances in sports like track
and field have improved approximately since record keeping began. In contrast, hot dog eating prowess has improved approximately seven hundred percent. In fact, human beings even hold our own pound for pound against other meat eating mammals when normalized for body mass. Competitive hot dog eaters have a consumption rate that's higher than that of grizzly bears and coyote, although to be fair,
wolves still have a higher consumption rate. And it makes sense when you think about it, eating large quantities of food very quickly can be a tremendously helpful strategy for carnivores when food is scarce, and Smiliga says human me's capacity for a relatively high consumption rate may have been crucial at some point in our evolutionary past. However, nowadays, inhaling six or seven hot dogs a minute for ten minutes mostly is just going to lead to pretty hilarious
digestive problems. And then maybe, of course, if you're lucky first prize in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest. But there you have it something to think about, especially if you're one of those people we mentioned earlier, the fans of both sports and gambling who can't wait to bet on competitive eating contest that's all for now. We've been asking you to chime in with suggestions for stories you
think your fellow listeners should learn more about. To hit us with your best or worst dad jokes, as well as your personal experience with strange stories going on in your neck of the global woods. Let us know by tagging hashtag Strange Daily on Twitter, or reach out to me directly. I'm at Ben Bullin hs W on Twitter or at Ben Bollin on Instagram. Thanks as always to our super producer Dylan Fagan, our research associate Sam T. Garden. Most importantly, thanks to you. I'm Ben Bollin. We'll see
you tomorrow. Until then, stay strange