While cooling inflation dominated headlines, there was lots of other good business news that flew under the radar this year. Here are a few of the biggest wins that may have been buried in your inbox:

Chili’s absolutely crushed. Unlike the motley crew of restaurant chains that declared bankruptcy, the inventor of the Triple Dipper had a banner year. Its parent company reported strong Q3 earnings fueled by promotions and deals that people love to love, like the Big Smasher (a Big Mac competitor) and $6 margaritas.

Robotaxis did…well? Despite how easy they are to hate, robotaxis had a year marked by love. Driverless taxi-maker Waymo opened its service in San Francisco to a 300,000-person waiting list and announced plans to expand to Miami.

Barnes & Noble had a resurgence. The place you met your math tutor in high school opened 60 new locations this year as its new strategy—operating like an indie bookstore, not a massive chain—continues to pay off.

Beers won the year. Guinness, Michelob Ultra, and Athletic Brewing came out from behind the bar and found a way into our hearts, apparently. Guinness sales increased, Michelob Ultra pushed ahead of Bud Light to take its spot as the No. 2 beer in the country (behind Modelo Especial), and nonalcoholic brand Athletic Brewing reeled in a valuation of $800 million.—CC

Sure, you remember Taylor Swift’s multibillion-dollar Eras Tour, Oppenheimer winning Best Picture, and Caitlin Clark’s record-setting WNBA rookie season. Here are some of the best cultural moments of 2024 that didn’t earn as many clicks.

Flavor Flav, Olympic water polo benefactor: The 65-year-old rapper became the “official hype man” of the US men’s and women’s national teams as part of a five-year sponsorship deal. Flav stepped up after an Instagram post from athlete Maggie Steffens detailed the financial difficulties of training for the Olympics.

The Wolf Spritzer: On what should have been his day off, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer posted a photo to social media of himself enjoying a “Wolf Spritzer,” an alcoholic beverage named in his honor at a DC restaurant. Not long after, Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from the presidential election, thrusting Blitzer into emergency work duty with a BAL above zero.

Moviegoers embraced the familiar: The total domestic box office for the year is expected to reach $8.5 billion, exceeding projections for 2024. That’s the good news. The meh news is that it’s mostly thanks to a lack of originality. Fourteen of the 15 highest-grossing movies of 2024 were sequels—only the Broadway-inspired Wicked was able to hold space in the Top 15.

It was the year of the lookalike contest: It started with Timothée Chalamet, who made an appearance at his own competition in New York in October. That was only the beginning—the trend inspired doppelgänger events for Paul Mescal, Dev Patel, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Heath Ledger, and Jason Kelce.—DL

The UK shut down its last coal plant. The Industrial Revolution’s ground zero stopped producing electricity by burning coal—the dirtiest fossil fuel—this year, 142 years after the world’s first coal plant opened in London. The UK is the first major economy to go coal-free, plugging gaps with more reliance on gas and renewables.

Surgeons pulled off the first pig-to-human kidney transplant. After decades of attempts to heal humans with nonhuman organs, Richard Slayman, a 62-year-old man with kidney disease, became the first person ever to undergo a successful pig kidney transplant. Slayman had a good recovery and was able to stop dialysis, doctors said, but he died from his late-stage condition two months later.

Lahaina’s 151-year-old banyan tree is recovering from the Maui wildfire. New leaves are sprouting from Hawaii’s historic tangle of branches more than a year after it was consumed by flames. Arborists and volunteers helped the tree recover by monitoring its internal health with 14 screwed-in sensors and cutting off dead branches to conserve energy.

New gene therapy restored a UK toddler’s hearing for the first time. Opal Sandy had lived all 18 months of her life without being able to hear anything, until a 16-minute surgery gave her a working copy of the gene thought to have caused her deafness. Now, she can hear almost perfectly. More deaf children in the UK, Spain, and the US will participate in this gene therapy trial over the next five years.

Birth control pills became available over the counter. Opill, the first FDA-approved, prescription-free pregnancy prevention pill, became available online and in-store this spring at CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and other major retailers. Nearly half of women face at least one barrier to getting reproductive health services in the US as of 2021, so this was hailed as a major achievement for accessibility.

Egypt was declared malaria-free. “The disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in October after certifying that almost 100 years of anti-mosquito efforts have finally rid Egypt of malaria. It’s the third country in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region to get a clean bill, following the UAE and Morocco.—ML

Flora. The Illinois state Legislature passed a law saying HOAs can’t ban native plants in yards, which is huge news for purple prairie clover heads. And in honor of the Peanuts comic’s 75th birthday, over 80 farms around the country created corn mazes based on the beloved cartoon.

Fauna. Punxsutawney Phil, the psychic groundhog that is always ruining our early spring plans, and his rodent wife Phyllis welcomed two beautiful babies who will surely continue the family business. Meanwhile, a third cat received security clearance at Downing Street when the British prime minister and his family adopted a Siberian kitten. And a goat named Joshua in Newfoundland escaped his pen and joined runners in a half marathon.

No fungi, but definitely some fun guys. Meteorologist Dan Leonard found the viral Project Skydrop bounty by locating a small gold trophy in the woods with temperature and cloud coverage data. A beekeeper named Matt Hilton was the real MVP at a baseball game in Arizona when a colony of bees commandeered the field. Elsewhere, Samy Lamrous and Pauline van Wymeersch were crowned the top servers in Paris’s Course Des Cafes, a race where servers have to quickly carry a tray with a croissant, espresso, and a glass of water without spilling. Freelance announcer Kwon So-a won South Korea’s legendary Space-out competition.—MM