Britain's 2nd-most famous William Shakespeare passes away, a town raffles off live cows to encourage vaccination, and more.

Ben Palmer's reads

How shopping might change post-pandemic. As more Americans get Covid-19 vaccines, "shoppers are slowly emerging from behind their screens and returning to stores"—but what will shopping in a post-Covid-19 world look like? Writing for Vox, Hillary George-Parkin takes a look at how the pandemic changed shopping, and what the retail environment in the United States might look like in the wake of Covid-19.

Many of the scientists who study cicadas also like to eat them. Every time a new horde of cicadas emerges in the United States, there are plenty of headlines talking about how some people like to eat the insects—including, perhaps surprisingly, a not-insignificant number of the entomologists who study them. Writing for the Washington Post, John Kelly takes a look at the scientists who enjoy some cooked cicadas now and then, including one memorable meal in which Charles Valentine Riley, chief entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1885, was said to have called the insects "the quintessence of vegetable juices."

Marcelle Maginnis' reads

Britain's 2nd-most famous William Shakespeare passes away. William Shakespeare, the British man who made headlines in 2020 when he became the second person in the United Kingdom to get vaccinated against the new coronavirus, passed away earlier this week after suffering a stroke. He was 81. In a statement released via the hospital where he was vaccinated, Shakespeare’s wife, Joy, said her husband "was hugely proud of" being one of the first people vaccinated against the coronavirus and of "the positive difference" his vaccination made "to the lives of so many."

Get the vaccine, win a … cow? To boost the local Covid-19 vaccination rate, a district in northern Thailand has established a raffle enabling one vaccinated resident each week to win a live cow. The raffle—which will run for 24 weeks—has already boosted vaccine registration numbers "from hundreds to thousands in a couple of days," district chief Boonlue Thamtharanurak said. The town is scheduled to begin vaccinations on June 7, in accordance with the government's rollout across the nation.