This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for March 15–March 21, 2026

A War of the Worlds remake won big at the 46th Annual Golden Raspberries. The movie took home Razzie awards for worst screenplay, actor, director, and remake, as well as the top (or bottom) prize for worst picture. The film, which stars Ice Cube as a DHS analyst, was almost universally panned by critics as abysmal and described as "a 90-minute Zoom call" with an illogical plot. A voting body of 1,200 movie lovers and industry experts bestowed the dubious honors.

At the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win an Oscar for best cinematography. Arkapaw had already made history before the ceremony, having shot Sinners on IMAX film, something no female cinematographer had done before. Cinematographer is from the French cinématographe, "device for projecting a series of photographs to produce the illusion of movement," from a Greek root meaning "to move."

Experiments by Spanish researchers suggest that chimpanzees are just as captivated by crystals as humans are. Scientists have long been aware that shiny stones seem to enthrall chimps. A small study of nine chimpanzees involved observing their interactions with quartz crystals, which they examined "with extreme curiosity, holding them up to eye level" and sorted according to transparency and luster. Initial results point toward an evolutionary cause for this fascination.

In the U.S. and Canada, Great Lakes otters that were declared locally extinct decades ago have begun to flourish. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reintroduced the semiaquatic mammals to the Great Lakes watershed in 1986, six years after they had entirely vanished from the region. Today, the otters are thriving in Ohio rivers, Ontario's north shore of Lake Erie, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The Latin root of flourish is florere, "to bloom."

Meteorites damaged several buildings in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate last week. Skywatchers in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands observed a fireball moving across the evening sky, and astronomers rapidly calculated the object's trajectory. Soon after the meteor was spotted, German news agencies reported damage caused by rocky debris falling from the sky, including a hole in the roof of a house in the town of Koblenz apparently caused by a meteorite.

A diamond ring that was stolen from the actress Lily Collins three years ago reappeared at a jewelry store in Chicago. Collins, who is best known for playing Emily in Emily in Paris, had stowed her engagement ring in a locker at a Los Angeles spa in May 2023 when it was purloined by an unknown thief. A Chicago jeweler who bought the ring at a trade show this month shipped it to Collins once he realized it had been taken from her.

Mardi Gras Indians celebrated Super Sunday in elaborate regalia on March 15. The annual event brought crowds out to New Orleans' Uptown area to watch the "battle" of beauty, when tribes of the Black Masking Indians, an African American subculture in New Orleans, parade in their magnificent finery. Costumes include hand-beaded and feathered suits worn to honor Native Americans who sheltered enslaved runaways. In Latin, regalia means "royal things," from rex, "king."

A judge dismissed a case brought by a German tourist who sued a New York City taqueria for $100,000 because their salsa was too spicy. When Faycal Manz visited the Times Square location of Los Tacos No 1 in 2024, he ordered three tacos and generously added salsa from a self-serve bar. The unpleasant symptoms Manz experienced included stomach cramps and a burning mouth and tongue. His admission that he hadn't asked how spicy the salsa was before eating it led to the lawsuit's dismissal.

Chinese virologists have developed vaccine-carrying mosquitoes that can immunize bats against deadly viruses. Since bats can carry pathogens like coronavirus, Ebola, and rabies, vaccinating them in the wild could slow the spread of these infectious diseases from bats to people. Researchers also used a saline solution containing an oral vaccine, which bats in the lab readily slurped up. Results showed that both methods helped protect the bats from infection.

Astronomers identified a new planet about 35 light years from Earth that is composed entirely of molten lava. They described the planet, called L98-59d, as being mushy or viscous, "like molasses," with a surface covered in rolling waves of thick, 3,500-degree Fahrenheit magma. The discovery created an entirely new category of "liquid planet." Viscous is derived from the Latin viscum, "anything sticky."