Paralympic athletes are in Tokyo to compete and maybe to win a gold medal, if they can. The benchmark for Paralympic gold, by the way: 55 medals by a single athlete, swimmer Trischa Zorn. Plus: today in 1936, a newspaper ran a short piece about inventor Isabella Gilbert and her dimple-making machine.
Sometimes the Olympic athletes who don’t win are the ones who make big impressions. That includes swimmer Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea, who was a hit at the 2000 Summer Games despite finishing well behind the rest of the competitors in his event. Plus: Canadian high jumper Derek Drouin won a gold medal in 2016 when his doctors might have preferred that he rest at home!
A team of German developers may have just made the pool safer, by developing a water-based lifeguard robot that can rescue swimmers in distress. Plus: today in 1969, musical history, as "Happy Birthday To You" becomes the first song ever performed in outer space.
44 years ago today, Shavarsh Karapetyan, a finswimming champion in Armenia did something extraordinary, saving at least 20 passengers who were trapped in a trolleybus that had gone into a lake. Has anybody done a biopic about this guy yet? Plus: meet Mieko Nagaoka, who in April 2015 became the first 100-year old swimmer to finish the 1,500 meter freestyle.
A long cold winter is behind us - unfortunately potholes are underneath us.
