Author: USA Facts News

That’s because the place has a reputation for being pretty darn expensive and for giving you even more fries than you bargained for.

One of their receipts where someone’s meal cost £18.58 ended up going viral as people wanted to know just what the hell was going on.

The folks who run Five Guys have said that they ‘raise our prices to reflect whatever our food costs are’, so if their suppliers put their prices up then the price of your burger, hot dog, milkshake or whatever corresponding item you wanted will rise too.

Still, something’s going right because they keep getting customers willing to pay and they make a point of selling ‘boardwalk’ style fries which are blanched in cold water and then cooked twice.

I have to say, dear reader, that I was once invited into a Five Guys kitchen to learn how they did things and had marvellous fun working the potato slicer.

When I asked why they served out so many fries they gave the expected answer that it’s because they were ‘proud’ of them, but it seems there’s also a psychology behind it.

According to Food Republic, Chad Murrell, son of Five Guys founder Jerry Murrell (the chain is named for Jerry and his four sons) admitted that the extra scoop of fries made them look ‘pretty bad’ if someone tried to calorie count their portions, but thought other places didn’t shovel on enough scoops of fries.

He said: “I won’t name names, but other restaurants just don’t give a satisfying amount of fries.

“We always give an extra scoop. I say load ’em up and make sure they get their money’s worth.”

Chad Murrell (right) said he thought people not complaining about the fries meant the portions weren’t large enough (Katherine Frey/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Murrell also said that Five Guys got plenty of complaints about being given too many fries, but claimed that he was actually fine with the complaints and wanted more of them.

“People complain that they get too many fries,” Murrell said, before explaining that he thought it was a good thing.

“I just tell them to make hash browns with the leftovers. I teach my managers that if people aren’t complaining, then you’re not giving them enough.”

So there you have what one of the five guys from Five Guys says is the actual reason they give you so many fries.

Even if he said that he thinks complaints are a sign that customers are actually getting enough to eat, you probably shouldn’t take this as a sign to complain to the staff at your local branch, they’re pretty busy.

Among them are a devastating mid-air collision involving an American Airlines passenger plane and US army helicopter in January, resulting in a total loss of life.

There was also the February plane crash over Philadelphia where an air ambulance plummeted to the ground and exploded in a fireball on a city street just seconds after taking off.

A plane flying over the Alaskan coast went down with no survivors after contact was lost following take-off.

Incredibly, a disaster involving a Delta Air Lines plane which flipped over while landing in Toronto did not result in loss of life, as while there were some injuries, everyone on board survived the crash.

Earlier this month, at least 12 people were killed when their plane crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Honduras, including famous musician Aurelio Martinez Suazo, though a number of people had been recovered alive.

There have already been several vividly tragic disasters this year (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Speaking to the Daily Mail, aviation experts had different responses as to the high number of plane crashes.

We’re not yet a quarter of the way through 2025, yet the death toll from aviation disasters is already around a third what it was last year.

Aviation safety professional John Cox told the Mail that despite ‘a spike in the number of high profile accidents’ the spate of plane crashes were ‘not related’ and there was ‘not a degradation in aviation safety’.

MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett said it was unlikely that something ‘suddenly disappeared in late December 2024’, and said that the various crashes were all under very different conditions and thus ‘offer no evidence of a systematic problem’.

These are accidents, that they happen close together does not necessarily indicate a pattern or signal that something has changed.

It is not as though plane crashes are a uniquely 2025 phenomenon either, the tragic disasters can strike at any time without warning and when they do the death toll is often catastrophic.

There have been some disasters which people have thankfully managed to survive (GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)

The experts stressed that air travel was still the safest way to get around, statistically speaking, even if there seem to be many aviation disasters that could mean little more than terrible misfortune.

Not every expert agrees entirely, however.

Earlier this month former pilot and crash investigator Shawn Pruchnicki agreed that air travel was still the safest way to get around, but claimed people working in the aviation industry saw the problems coming.

He claimed that he’d seen ‘the safety buffer that took decades to build steadily eroded in recent years’, suggesting that ‘experts have been raising the alarm for years’.

The former pilot said he hadn’t been surprised by the horrific crash involving an American Airlines plane and US army helicopter, claiming he ‘long feared that it wasn’t a matter of if such a catastrophe would happen but where and when’.

He suggested there was a ‘chronic shortage of air traffic controllers’ which meant those doing the crucial job were ‘overworked and overstressed’.

Back in December 2024, Brazilian woman Jeniffer Castro went viral after refusing to give up her pre-booked seat for a crying child on a 50-minute flight from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte.

Castro was then filmed by another passenger and posted online in an attempt to shame her behaviour, with the person recording the video heard saying (in Portuguese): “I’m recording your face, this is disgusting.”

The clip subsequently went viral online as people debated the finer details of plane etiquette and whether or not it was appropriate to film strangers in public.

The moment has also had a significant impact on Castro’s life, with the 29-year-old since revealing that she’d been forced to give up her entire career over the incident.

An argument onboard a GOL airlines flight about seating would go viral at the end of last year (GB Photo Library/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“Since that incident, my life has taken a turn I could never have imagined,” she said in an interview with MailOnline.

“Professionally, my life has changed a lot, so much so that today I am no longer in the field I worked in before. I was a banker.

“In my personal life, at the height of the repercussions, I practically didn’t leave the house.”

Castro has since leveraged her two million Instagram followers to pursue a career as an online influencer, however she added that this wasn’t something which she particularly wanted.

“What should have been just an ordinary flight turned into an extremely embarrassing situation, exposing me unfairly and causing consequences that affected both my personal and professional life,” Castro explained.

“I was the target of judgments, attacks and speculation from people who don’t even know the full story.”

Castro recently revealed that she was also in the process of suing airline company GOL due to the backlash she’d experienced in the weeks and months following the incident.

“I decided to sue the airline because what happened to me was a huge embarrassment, and this situation should never have reached this point,” she said.

Casto has now used her fame to become an influencer (Instagram/@jeniffercastro)

“This lawsuit is not just about reparations, but also about setting a limit on this type of behaviour.”

Castro had previously suggested that she was pursuing legal action, previously telling Portuguese language podcast Cola Mais that ‘measures are now being taken’.

She also confirmed that it was not the child’s mother who was filming her, as initially believed, but another passenger, adding that she was only focused on taking action against those who had ‘violated my privacy’.

The child star, 44, became pals with the music legend when he was just ten – and considering there’s a 22-year age gap between them, this raised more than a few eyebrows.

But Jackson was simply trying to offer some advice and mentorship to the youngster on how to navigate the showbiz world, according to Culkin.

However, as the ‘Thriller’ singer later revealed he routinely ‘slept in bed’ with the Home Alone star and his brother Kieran, this sparked some concerns about his conduct.

Jackson faced a lot of scrutiny throughout his life in regards to his close relationships with children, while sexual abuse allegations were levied against him by a number of youngsters.

Culkin clarified the nature of his relationship with the King of Pop after years of speculation (Kevin Kane/WireImage)

He was first accused in 1993 and settled out of court, before he was then tried and acquitted of child molestation in 2005 in a separate case.

Jackson maintained his innocence until his death in 2009 at the age of 50 and was never convicted.

In more recent years, Wade Robson and James Safechuck have accused The King of Pop of sexually abusing them during their childhoods.

The details of the allegations were aired to the world Leaving Neverland in 2019 and are now being revisited in the sequel to the documentary, which was released yesterday (18 March).

A lot of people expected Culkin to make an appearance in the show, as the actor has always been a staunch defender of Jackson and their friendship.

The 44-year-old, from New York, explained that he bonded with the late performer over their shared experiences of childhood fame.

During an appearance on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside Of You podcast in 2019, Culkin said, as per Entertainment Weekly: “He reached out to me because a lot of things were happening big and fast with me, and I think he identified with that. It’s almost easy to say it was weird or whatever, but it wasn’t because it made sense.

“Here’s the thing at the end of the day: We were friends. It’s one of my friendships that people question only because of the fact that he was the most famous person in the world.

“I know it’s a big deal to everyone else, but to me it was a normal friendship.”

Culkin, who was a regular visitor at Jackson’s notorious Neverland Ranch and starred in the singer’s ‘Black or White’ music video, clarified the nature of their relationship in 2020.

Speaking to Esquire, the Richie Rich star explained that he and Jackson would have a laugh when they spent time together and enjoyed prank calling people.

The actor met Jackson after starring in Home Alone at the age of 10 (20th Century Studios)

But Culkin insists his friend never made him feel uncomfortable and that the singer ‘never did anything’ inappropriate.

The actor said: “Look, I’m gonna begin with the line – it’s not a line, it’s the truth: He never did anything to me. I never saw him do anything.

“And especially at this flash point in time, I’d have no reason to hold anything back. The guy has passed on. If anything – I’m not gonna say it would be stylish or anything like that, but right now is a good time to speak up.

“And if I had something to speak up about, I would totally do it. But no, I never saw anything; he never did anything.”

He then went on to offer up a ‘good Michael Jackson story that doesn’t involve Michael Jackson at all’ – which began with Culkin running into James Franco on a plane.

After greeting each other while stuffing their bags into the overhead lockers, he recalled how the Pineapple Express star brought up the Leaving Neverland documentary during their brief chat.

Culkin continued: “He goes, ‘So, that documentary!’ And that was all he said. I was like, ‘Uh-huh.’ Silence. So then he goes, ‘So what do you think?’ And I turned to him and I go, ‘Do you wanna talk about your dead friend?’

“And he sheepishly went, ‘No, I don’t.’ So I said, ‘Cool, man, it was nice to see you’.”

I guess that’s one way to shutdown an awkward conversation, eh?

President Donald Trump promised to release about 80,000 pages worth of classified documents, but the actual figure didn’t end up being quite as many as that and it’s left a lot of people wondering why this wasn’t published sooner.

It’s all turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax, and the folks hoping that some scrap of paper would confirm the CIA assassinated JFK in conjunction with the KGB and then sold his body to aliens or something along this lines seem to have been let down.

A lot of the documents were safe to be declassified years ago and contain information that has already been known for years.

Theories that there was a second shooter on a grassy knoll, the CIA really did it or that it was actually the mafia who pulled off the hit have not received much new fuel.

The supposed ‘single bullet’, which has been argued to be in too good a condition to have passed through two bodies (Public Domain)

Among those who have discussed theories around the JFK assassination in the past is podcaster Joe Rogan, a man not short of opinions on all manner of matters.

He previously voiced his scepticism on the ‘single bullet theory’ – the idea that one bullet shot into JFK’s back exited through his throat and then hit Texas governor John Connally who was sitting in front of Kennedy in the car.

The Warren Commission, which was set up a week after Kennedy’s assassination to investigate his death, ruled that a total of three shots were fired, all of which came from the building Lee Harvey Oswald had taken a position in with his rifle.

One shot hit Kennedy in the back and exited through his throat, which would make it the shot from the ‘single bullet theory’, while the Warren Commission found that another shot hit JFK in the back of the head which would prove fatal.

A third bullet then hit Connally in the back.

Did one bullet do all that or not? Does it matter? (YouTube/JRE Clips)

They judged that there was ‘persuasive evidence’ that one bullet hit Kennedy’s throat and caused all of Connally’s wounds, but ultimately whether it was one bullet or multiple was unimportant as they were sure all shots were fired from the building Oswald was in.

Of course, those who think there’s more to the Kennedy assassination than the official record shows aren’t minded to take the commission’s findings at face value.

Those who disagree with the ‘single bullet theory’ have claimed that because the bullet removed from Connally was in fairly good condition it couldn’t have bounced through two bodies.

One of these people is Rogan, who said in a video that there were ‘more metallic particles from the bullet, more fragments from the bullet in Connally’s body than were missing from the bullet’.

Rogan and his guest Mick West also discussed the ‘additional shooter theory’, which posits that there was more than one gunman, which the podcaster said was ‘not proven’ and said the ‘chaos’ of a situation could affect people’s perception of events.

He said: “People claim to see things and hear things, they even believe themselves.

“If you tell someone you heard something in the bushes then you run away, that person will say ‘I heard something in the bushes’ and then other people repeat it, it becomes the narrative.”

While a thing of the past, it saw humanity land on the Moon for the very first time while significantly advancing technology back here on Earth, from scientific understanding of space to advancements in the world of GPS and satellites.

There was also elements of tragedy. And while the tragic tale of the USSR’s space dog called Laika is enough to pull at the heartstrings, humans have also died while in service to their country’s space agency.

One of the worst incidents to result in the loss of human life was the fate of the Soyuz 11 crew which headed in to space back in June 1971. Three Russian cosmonauts ventured in to space and returned in the most tragic of circumstances.

Voyage of the ill-fated Soyuz 11

The tragic tale of Soyuz 11’s cosmonauts and their journey back to Earth (STAFF/AFP via Getty Images)

Blasting off from modern day Kazakhstan, Soyuz 11 had a crew of three cosmonauts with Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev heading for the world’s first ever space station Salyut 1.

Arriving at Salyut 1 on 7 June, 1971, the trio of engineers spent a total of 23 days onboard the space station where they lived conducting a variety of experiments in the orbiting laboratory.

There was a particular focus on experiments to study humanity’s ability to undergo long-duration spaceflights, with experiments including exercising on the space station’s treadmill and monitoring their state of health.

To maximise their output, they worked in three shift patterns so that there was always one person working at any one time.

Time onboard the Salyut 1 space station

An artist’s impression of the Russian Soyuz 11 spacecraft linking up with the Salyut 1 space station (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Dobrovolski, Volkov, and Patsayev became stars back home in Soviet Russia after treating citizens of the USSR to almost daily broadcasts of their activities in space while explaining what they were getting up to in their experiments.

“Soviet journalists dubbed the events Cosmovision,” NASA explained.

“They cast ballots from Salyut in Soviet elections, becoming the first people to vote from space.”

In journeying to the space station, they set a then-record for the time spent in space for one trip, breaking a previous record set by the Soyuz 9 crew in 1970.

Preparing for Earth and tragedy

The interior of the Salyut 1 space station with the hatchway leading to the Soyuz 11 spacecraft (Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

29 June was the final day that the trio spent on the Salyut space station, with them packing up the Soyuz 11 spacecraft with their samples and scientific research that they had worked on for more than three weeks in the void of space.

Getting ready to leave the space station, a warning light had indicated to the cosmonauts that the hatch pressurising the return spacecraft was not sealed.

After seemingly addressing the issue, both crew and ground control agreed the problem was fixed. This was despite the light remaining active up in space.

Slowing down for re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, tragedy occurred nine minutes after the end of the retrorocket’s backfire.

At around 80 miles high, explosive bolts separated the spacecraft in to its three components, with the crew inside the middle bell-shaped descent module. It was at this moment that tragedy struck, just 30 minutes from landing.

“The shock from the explosive bolts jarred open a pressure equalisation valve that normally opened only once the spacecraft was descending on its parachute, well inside the atmosphere. But in this case, the valve opened to the vacuum of space and the capsule’s air escaped in less than one minute,” NASA explained.

Soviets turned out in numbers to mourn the fallen cosmonauts (Getty Stock Images)

Evidence exists to show the cosmonauts tried to fix the issue by trying to manually close the valve. But with that processing taking minutes, they lost consciousness before they could save their own lives.

Soyuz 11 continued on its journey to Earth where it safely landed. Ground control had some concern after communication went quiet with the crew but it wasn’t until they opened the hatch and found the three cosmonauts that they realised just how tragic of a situation this was.

“They were not wearing pressure suits. The Soviet government honored the cosmonauts with a state funeral, with NASA astronaut Thomas P. Stafford representing the President of the United States,” NASA writes.

“As a result of the accident, the Soviets temporarily halted human spaceflights while engineers redesigned the Soyuz spacecraft. Since then, all cosmonauts have worn spacesuits during Soyuz launches and landings.”

Over on TikTok, a flight attendant named Cher Killough has took it upon herself to share three common habits that air passengers demonstrate whilst travelling – and they’re ones you might want to kick into touch if you’re a guilty reader.

Before you start theorising, no, it’s got nothing to do with booze consumption (phew!).

Killough, who’s worked in the business for five years, identified man-spreading; wearing a strong fragrance, and taking off your shoes and socks as these definite do-nots.

(Getty Stock Image)

She even goes as far as suggesting they deserve to be made illegal.

On the man-spread issue, she said in a clip: “Specifically man-spreading when you’re in a middle seat but any time of seat should be unacceptable.

“When I’ve been a passenger I have had that numerous times where men will spread their knees all the way into my seat section, or the other person on the other side of me. It’s just unacceptable.”

Then came her analysis of perfume-spraying, which is quite understandably a thing on flights as many flyers like to pay the duty free catalogue a visit.

Cher Killough has seen it all when it comes to bad airplane etiquette (TikTok/@cherdallas)

“I don’t care if [the smell] is good or bad,” the TikToker noted. “No one wants to smell whatever fragrance you decided to wear today. Whether it’s body odour or perfume or cologne.”

According to Killough, that’s because the cabin is “already an environment where people are prone to getting nauseous”, so dealing with extra fragrances “is just not a good mix.”

Which brings us to the flight attendant’s third and final bugbear: exposed human feet.

Rightly so, Killough explained there’s not a single moment of the journey when it’s acceptable to unleash your toes upon the rest of the travellers and onboard staff.

“You seriously deserve to go to jail if you have your bare toes out when you go to the bathroom,” she shared. “I see this all the time, and it should be against the law. I don’t want to see your toes at all.”

In less smelly news, travel experts have issued an airport luggage warning to anyone with a tag on their suitcase, and it could save you massive headaches in the future.

Given the fact that our lives are heavily regimented by a 24-hour cycle, living with the complete absence of time sounds pretty jarring — or even torturous. But for French explorer Michel Siffre, secluding himself underground in a cave wasn’t a nightmare scenario but instead a fun experiment.

So fun that after emerging from his two-month subterranean sabbatical in 1962 he decided to head on back down there for a whopping six months in 1972.

Here is what he was able to discover about the human body and it’s internal body clock.

In 1972 Siffre, then aged 33, made the decision to spend six months living in Midnight Cave, Texas. Like his previous 1962 experiment, the hypothesis was simple: what impact does time have on the body and it’s human circadian rhythms (our internal body-clock)? And, once deprived of an external indicator of time, would the body’s sleep-wake cycle be impacted?

And it was here that the field of human chronobiology was formed.

What were the aims of Siffre’s experiment?

Like his first experiment, Siffre would retreat into the cave with limited communication to the outside world, he was able to contact the team monitoring him but not vice versa, and conduct various experiments while being watched.

Daytime would be determined whenever Siffre woke-up and he slept whenever he felt the need to.

Explaining his decision to head back underground a decade after his initial experiment during an interview with a 2008 interview with Cabinet Magazine, the explorer said he wanted to understand if there were any changes in how his ‘brain perceives time’ since his first experiment and the ’48-hour sleep/wake cycle’.

“I decided I would stay underground for six months to try to catch the forty-eight-hour cycle,” he said.

Michel Siffre ahead of his 1999 isolation experiment (PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP via Getty Images)

What did Siffre discover during his six months underground?

Siffre would indeed succeed in catching the elusive 48-hour sleep wake cycle during his second underground excursion, although not regularly.

“There were two periods where I caught the forty-eight-hour cycle—but not regularly,” he said. “I would have thirty-six hours of continuous wakefulness, followed by twelve hours of sleep.”

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Siffre wasn’t able to tell the difference between the longer and shorter days he experienced in the cave.

“There was no evidence that I perceived those days any differently. Sometimes I would sleep two hours or eighteen hours, and I couldn’t tell the difference,” he added.

Siffre recovering after one of his underground experiments (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The experiment would also have negative impacts on Siffre’s mental wellbeing, which began to deteriorate during his time in the cave.

During a 1975 recollection of his experience, Siffre the Frenchman explained feeling a sense of overwhelming ‘lethargy and bitterness’ due to isolation.

The moral of the story? Humans cannot understand time without external stimuli and that being alone underground is very boring.

US President Donald Trump has been promising to declassify tens of thousands of secret papers since he first term in the White House, and the moment finally arrived on Tuesday (18 March).

JFK, the US’ 35th president, was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 while on a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

His death triggered many conspiracy theories in the decades to follow, which is why the release of the assassination files this week has been such a huge talking point around the world – but Schlossberg isn’t happy about it.

Former POTUS John F Kennedy pictured moments before his assassination in Dallas, Texas, 1963 (Getty Images)

Now working as a political correspondent for Vogue magazine, Schlossberg – whose mother is the only surviving child of JFK and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy – royally kicked off on social media once the documents were released.

But maybe he’s yet to realise that they barely provide any earth-shaking information?

He wrote via the site formerly known as Twitter on Wednesday (19 March): “No — THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DID NOT GIVE ANYONE IN PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S FAMILY ‘A HEADS UP’ ABOUT THE RELEASE. a total surprise, and not shocker!!

Schlossberg was, of course, referring to JFK’s son here, whose mother Ethel Kennedy sadly passed away just five months ago.

sers took umbrage with the journalist’s apparent frustration though, highlighting the fact the family knew this day would eventually come.

“I mean, they’ve only been saying it for how long now? If you didn’t know it was coming then that’s on you,” read one of the strong reactions.

“He’s been talking about it for ten years Jack,” was another point.

A third person went on to ask: “He’s been saying he was going to release those files for years. how you could not possibly know seems like a lie. or maybe you thought he was joking and would never do it. but how did I know it was coming yet you, a Kennedy, didn’t.”

This didn’t stop Schlossberg from reinforcing his annoyance on Instagram a little bit later on.

Directing his phone camera towards an on-screen CNN broadcast, which was covering the declassification story, he said: “You’re better than this. This is so f**king stupid, there’s so much actual news going on, why are you covering this?

“At least report that something happened, why are you guys covering this? Stop. This is why this s**t takes hold, because you guys f**king cover it over and over and over again.”