Random News: July 23, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s July 23, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. I awoke with a shitty headache, so let’s see how much news I can do before my brain decides it can’t look at screens for awhile…

• Florida Governor and weak presidential candidate Ron DeSantis doubled down on his message of Black people benefitting form having been slaves.
• “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” he said on Friday in front of a nearly all-White crowd of supporters.
• I don’t know why I bother covering that guy. He’s going to be as historically meaningful as Walter Mondale.
• Moving on…
• Tens of thousands of protesters marched into Jerusalem yesterday evening and hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities in a last-ditch show of force aimed at blocking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's contentious judicial overhaul.
• The same day, more than 100 of Israel's former security chiefs signed a letter pleading with Bibi to halt the legislation. Thousands of additional military reservists said they would no longer report for duty in protest against the plan.
• Meanwhile, Netanyahu is recovering in a hospital after an emergency heart procedure. His doctors said the heart pacemaker implantation went smoothly.
• Hmm. Moving on…
• President Joe Biden will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi.
• Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi. Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till's birth in 1941.
• Cool. I like that.
• I normally cover anything sports/entertainment-related further down, but this is pretty newsworthy.
• For the first time in history, a weekend has seen one movie open to $100 million or more and another to $50 million or more.
• The premieres of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ collectively made it the fourth-biggest weekend of all time at the domestic box office. Pretty cool.
• It’s Sunday Gunday, so let’s see how many people’s weekend were ruined by those celebrating their Second Amendment rights…
• Chicago had six dead and 20 more wounded. A pregnant woman is dead and four others shot in Houston. Two dead in D.C. A security guard at a Portland hospital. Four people shot, two with critical injuries, at an illegal street race in Seattle. One dead in Columbus. One dead and another gravely injured in Minneapolis. One dead, one injured in Lodi, CA. One dead, two more shot in Gardena, CA. Two dead in Allendale, SC. One shot in Fort Wayne, IN. Three critically injured in Memphis. One shot in Rochester. 
• Just remember: every country in the world has a portion of the populace with mental health issues. Only one country has a “light” weekend of gun violence (I’m serious, this was one of the better weekends of the year so far) with dozens of instances of shootings and mass shootings.
• It’s the guns.
• Moving on to other ways to get hurt or killed…
• At least 33 people were injured after a deck collapsed at Montana’s Briarwood country club last night.
• No fatalities reported, but at least 25 adults were taken to local hospitals, eight people were treated at the scene and later released, and an unknown number "walked away without treatment."
• Yikes.
• And now, The Weather: “Underdogs” by His His
• A music festival in Malaysia has been canceled after Matty Healy of The 1975 slammed the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws and the kissed bass player Ross MacDonald on stage.
• That prompted the country’s Ministry of Communications to cancel the rest of the three-day event. Homosexual acts are illegal in Malaysia and punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison.
• While I support Healy’s outlook, here’s an idea: don’t perform in countries with horribly discriminatory laws. Don’t take their money. Play elsewhere. It worked pretty well with South Africa during the apartheid era.
• Let’s do some charts. The date? July 1970. Me? A 13-month-old baby. I’m not sure if we were living in Cleveland or Detroit then, but here’s what was on the radio…
• 1. (They Long To Be) Close To You (Carpenters). 2. Mama Told Me (Not To Come) (Three Dog Night). 3. Band Of Gold (Freda Payne). 4. The Love You Save/I Found That Girl (Jackson 5). 5. Make It With You (Bread). 6. Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today) (The Temptations). 7. Ride Captain Ride (Blues Image). 8. O-o-h Child/Dear Prudence (The 5 Stairsteps). 9. Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder). 10. Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) (Melanie With The Edwin Hawkins Singers). 11. Tighter, Tighter (Alive & Kicking). 12. Hitchin' A Ride (Vanity Fare). 13. Gimme Dat Ding (The Pipkins) 14. Spill The Wine (Eric Burdon And War). 15. Are You Ready? (Pacific Gas And Electric). 16. Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). 17. The Wonder Of You/Mama Liked The Roses (Elvis Presley). 18. Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). 19. A Song Of Joy (Himno A La Alegria) (Miguel Rios). 20. I Just Can't Help Believing (B.J. Thomas).
• From the Sports Desk… yesterday, for the second consecutive round, play was disrupted at the Open Championship, but not by protestors this time. On Saturday, trespassing tasks were taken up by a tiny toad.
• Measuring just six to eight centimeters, weighing between four and 19 grams, and only found at a select few coastal spots in England and Scotland, the natterjack toad is a European protected species.
• They delayed the tourney while the one trained member of the club’s staff handled the safe passage of Mr. Toad.
• I should note that the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club was won by American Brian Harman today.Hhe takes the Claret Jug with a 72-hole total of 271, a 6-stroke margin of victory that matches the second largest in Open Championship history.
• It’s Harman’s first major championship. Congrats.
• Today in history… William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter (1829). Canada closes its doors to paupers and criminal immigrants (1900). The Ford Motor Company sells its first car (1903). The Chinese Communist Party is established (1921). Fox Film buys the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film (1926). The United States' Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles issues a declaration on the U.S. non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (1940). Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite (1962). Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (1962). In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city, ultimately killing 43 people, injuring 342 and burning about 1,400 buildings (1967). The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite (1972). Actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed when a helicopter crashes onto them while shooting a scene from ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ (1982). Comet Hale–Bopp is discovered; it becomes visible to the naked eye on Earth nearly a year later (1995). Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-93, with Eileen Collins becoming the first female space shuttle commander (1999). NASA announces discovery of Kepler-452b by Kepler (2015). 
• July 23 is the birthday of philosopher Luís António Verney (1713), novelist Raymond Chandler (1888), Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (1892), brothel owner Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer (1901), activist Chandra Shekhar Azad (1906), MLB player Pee Wee Reese (1918), astronomer Vera Rubin (1928), actor Bert Convy (1933), MLB player Don Drysdale (1936), actor/singer-songwriter Ronny Cox (1938), murderer Charles Harrelson (1938), radio host Don Imus (1940), singer David Essex (1947), singer-songwriter/guitarist Martin Gore (1961), actor Woody Harrelson (1961), guitarist/songwriter Slash (1965), actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967), NBA player Gary Payton (1968), singer-songwriter Alison Krauss (1971), MLB player Nomar Garciaparra (1973), activist Monica Lewinsky (1973), and actor Daniel Radcliffe (1989).

Well, since I started this news, I ate, drank a ton of water, had coffee, showered, took ibuprofen, and magically I feel better than before. Enjoy your day.