Jul 09 2020 9 mins
It is Thursday July 9th. Let’s start the podcast!
IT HAPPENED TODAY
• 1892: The first concrete road in America was completed in Bellefontaine, Ohio. The first asphalt road was laid down in July 1870 in Newark, New Jersey.
• 1910: The first airplane to fly a mile in the air did so this day with W.R. Brookins of Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the controls.
• 1985: Football great Joe Namath signed a five-year pact with ABC-TV to provide commentary for Monday Night Football. The former New York Jets quarterback reportedly earned one million dollars a year for the job.
• 1997: Boxer Mike Tyson was banned from the ring and fined $3 million for biting opponent Evander Holyfield’s ear.
• 2008: Prosecutors cleared JonBenet Ramsey’s parents and brother in the 1996 killing of the 6-year-old beauty queen in Boulder, Colorado.
SPECIAL EVENTS
• No Bra Day
• World Body Painting Day
• Sugar Cookie Day
NUMBER FOR THE DAY
1804: Year the world’s population is thought to have reached one billion.
NEWS ATTACK!
PANDEMIC DELIVERS ROADKILL REPRIEVE _ A new report finds the pandemic has apparently spared one form of life — the animal kind, in the form of less roadkill. The report comes from the Road Ecology Center at the University of California at Davis. Data was taken from the departments of transportation in California, Idaho, and Maine dating to 2015 to determine that road traffic sagged by roughly 70 percent in those states from early March to mid-April due to pandemic-related shutdowns. Using roadkill data in those states, researchers reported that in the same period, Maine saw a 44% decrease in roadkill and Idaho saw a 38% drop. California saw a 21% drop, with a much bigger decrease — 58% — for mountain lions specifically.
- A 6-year-old girl fishing in a Maryland river reeled in a cellphone that was dropped into the water nearly a year ago — and it still works. Reagan Votaw’s mother, Emily, said they took the phone home and let it rest for a while in rice to absorb any moisture. They then plugged the phone in and were surprised to see it still functioned perfectly. The phone belonged to Preston Shapiro, an eighth-grader who said he dropped the phone into the water while kayaking nearly a year earlier. Luckily Preston had the phone in a waterproof case.
- A Canadian man who won a lottery jackpot of nearly $75,000 said the winning ticket sat forgotten for months in the pocket of a jacket he had loaned to a friend. Jose Lima told Ontario Lottery officials he got his jacket back after loaning it out to a friend and discovered the pocket contained a forgotten ticket for the September 28, 2019, drawing. Lima took the ticket to a store and found he won $74,045.50
- A new survey finds women are spending the equivalent of almost an entire month of the year worrying. The survey found women spend an average of almost two hours a day feeling worried or stressed, with two thirds of this time spent feeling anxious about other people rather than themselves. In comparison, men spend about one-and-half hours worrying each day. Almost two thirds of women have periods where they feel constantly worried, with their biggest concerns being the pandemic, protests, and fears about the economy. The health of loved ones, their family’s safety, and needing to care for older parents is also causing women to feel stressed.
WACKY-BUT-TRUE: MAN DRUGS GIRLFRIEND TO KEEP PLAYING VIDEO GAMES _ A court fined a man in Germany after he admitted to giving his girlfriend a sedative so that he could keep playing video games with a friend. After ten hours at work, the girlfriend had been planning on a quiet evening rather than one interrupted by video game noises. After drinking some drugged tea the woman slept until midday the following day.
WACKY-BUT-TRUE: LAWYER CENSURED AFTER SHOWING UP DRUNK TO REPRESENT DUI SUSPECT _ Tennessee has taken action against a lawyer accused of showing up to court drunk to represent a DUI suspect. The incident happened back in 2017 but the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility censured the lawyer this week. The board says on that day back in September 2017, Kent Thomas Jones was late to court, smelled like alcohol, and acted erratic. He was removed from the courthouse and later charged with public intoxication, but that was later dropped.
WACKY-BUT-TRUE: BRITISH POLICE: DO NOT CALL US FOR WRONG-ADDRESS DELIVERY _ A British police department took to social media with an important reminder: an appliance delivery to the wrong address is not a police emergency. The West Yorkshire Police said someone recently called their emergency number to report their new appliance — a freezer — had been delivered to the wrong address. The police department shared on Twitter: “If your freezer has been delivered to another address by accident, then this isn’t a police issue.”
Water Cooler Question
Nearly one in four airline passengers never does this.