Noteworthy '19 news that didn’t make headlines
- Bruce Stambaugh: The Rural View
- December 26, 2019
- 1014
Well, we made it. You and I have traveled yet one more year around the sun. True to form, 2019 was full of wonder, mistakes, successes, and a smorgasbord of conundrums and craziness.
As usual I kept track of a few of the lesser but still extraordinary events and findings during the year.
Jan. 22: According to a report from nonprofit Oxfam, the world’s 26 wealthiest people are worth the same amount of money as the world’s poorest 3.8 billion.
Jan. 30: The temperature dropped to minus-48 F with a wind chill of minus-65 F in Norris Camp, Minnesota, making it the coldest place in the lower 48 states.
Feb. 1: The BBC reported January was the hottest month on record in Australia and that five days were among the top 10 on record for the warmest.
Feb. 13: NASA announced it had declared the Mars rover dead after being unable to communicate with it following a massive dust storm on the red planet.
March 25: A British Airways flight bound for Dusseldorf, Germany instead accidentally landed in Edinburgh, Scotland because the company filed the wrong flight papers.
March 27: Airbnb, the online home-sharing site, surpassed Hilton Hotels in annual sales.
April 22: The BBC reported 23 million people use 123456 as their password for private online accounts with 123456789 as the second-most popular password.
May 22: The last-known ship to bring slaves to the U.S., the schooner Clotilda, was discovered in a remote branch of Alabama’s Mobile River.
May 31: After 20 rounds and running out of hard words, the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. crowned an unprecedented eight co-champions.
June 5: Tom Rice, 97, of Coronado, California re-enacted his pre-D-Day 1944 jump into Carentan, France as part of the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion at Normandy.
June 11: Kraft announced it was selling salad frosting, which was French dressing disguised in a colorful bottle to get kids to like it.
July 22: Officials near Sandpoint, Idaho removed turtle-crossing signs because thieves kept stealing them as soon as the unique warning signs were replaced.
Aug. 14: A 12-year-old boy attending a family reunion found a rare Ice Age wooly mammoth tooth by a creek near the Inn at Honey Run near Millersburg.
Sept. 6: A new international study showed 90 percent of the time eyewitnesses would assist someone assaulted in public.
Sept. 7: Miami Marlins pitcher Brian Moran struck out his younger brother, Colin, pinch-hitting for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Oct. 7: After falling at his home in Plains, Georgia the previous day, former President Jimmy Carter, 95, with a bandage above his left eye and a visible welt below, still helped build a Habitat for Humanity home in Nashville, Tennessee.
Oct. 18: NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir performed the first all-female spacewalk when they ventured outside the International Space Station for five and a half hours to replace a faulty battery charger.
Nov. 8: The last survivor of the Hindenburg Disaster, Werner Gustav Doehner, died in Laconia, New Hampshire at age 90.
Nov. 18: Police in Goddard, Kansas discovered a camel, cow and donkey wandering along a rural road.
Dec. 9: A New York City man removed and ate a banana from a Miami, Florida art exhibit that had sold for $120,000.
Dec. 10: A 43-year-old Monroe County, Louisiana man was arrested for fixing the bingo game he was calling so his relatives could win.
Here’s hoping 2020 will give us both a better year and better eyesight in all that is happening around us.
Happy New Year!
Bruce Stambaugh writes about nature, weather, hobbies and people, often using personal experiences. Much to their dismay, he also writes about his family. He uses humor and pathos when he can’t think of anything else to include. To read more The Rural View, visit Stambaugh at www.thebargainhunter.com.