Strange News & Space Exploration

One of the movies won by a huge margin. Alright, on today's episode, I'm going to start with a segment that is quickly becoming my favorite. It's a segment that talks about weird news stories from around the world. And of course I'm talking about strange news. And then I'm going to follow that with our Today in History segment where we take a look back in time to see what happened on a day like this, but many years ago. So let's start the show.

You are listening to the seventh episode of English with Dane. Hit it! Because today we have segments, apparently. And our first segment, as I mentioned in the intro, is Strange News. The woman accidentally closed the door and then discovered that she had left the keys inside. Her baby was in the back seat. Now, in Florida, it gets really, really hot and it's also really humid, so it's very easy to get dehydrated.

And unfortunately, every year there are several cases of babies being locked in cars like this. However, this one has a happy ending. Some of my students have made that mistake in the past. So again, Texas civil court judge accidentally resigns. So let's find out what happened.

It says a newly elected judge in Houston accidentally resigned on Monday, according to local media and a county official, after he shared plans online to run for the state Supreme Court, apparently unaware that the Texas Constitution considers such an announcement an automatic resignation. So he was a newly elected judge, a recently elected judge, Bill McCloyd, that's his name, and he declined to comment on the situation.

So in the state constitution, the Texas State Constitution, Article sixteen, section sixty five, it says, that a judge's announcement of candidacy for another office shall constitute an automatic resignation of the office then held. In other words, if you publicly announce that you are going after another job in office, another position in office, it means that you automatically resign, from your current position. So now this man is in a very strange situation.

So now if they decide to keep him, there has to be there has to be a special election. I'll follow up on that story, and if it gets resolved, I'll tell you about it. Next one. Again, from Reuters, they have some really good ones. The headline reads Lawsuit says TGI Friday's potato skins contain no potato skins. Remember on last week's show, we also had this word come up, right, Surchid, the word lawsuit.

So a lawsuit is a problem taken to a court of law by an ordinary person or an organization instead of to the police, right? In order to obtain a legal decision, right? Like I said, so again, lawsuit says TGI Fridays potato skins contain no potato skins. So the article is talking about the restaurant, TGI Fridays, El Fridays de Tolavida. Let's continue reading. So very quickly, to mislead means to cause someone to have a wrong idea or the wrong impression about something.

It continues and says, The lawsuit by Solange Troncoso Troncoso said that the Idaho Potato Commission and others inside and outside the industry have associated potato skins with healthy eating since they started appearing on restaurant menus half a century ago. So apparently, sailors used to eat potato skins to fight off diseases, right, to prevent diseases. And it became known as a healthy snack.

So this woman, Solange, is saying that the company is misleading consumers and presenting something different than what they advertised. They are advertising potato skins, but in fact, de hecho, they are not made from potato skins. She is claiming that the company defrauded her and other consumers into purchasing or buying an inferior product, either by mistake or at full price.

The complaint says the presence of potato skins imparts a further value, unbalor añadido, in the eyes of reasonable consumers. So again, I'll let you know how that story develops, or I'll forget all about it. Either way. Okay, we have one more before I move on. This one is my favorite. The headline reads UK prison guards smell a rat and find rodents stuffed with drugs. So very quickly, this is a figurative sentence in a way.

They did find rodents, right, roedores, stuffed with drugs, rellenos of drogas, but they didn't literally smell a rat. Okay, the expression to smell a rat is an expression that is used to say that you suspect that someone is talking to the police. It's a term that you might have heard in gangster movies or mafia movies, prison movies. So again, UK prison guards smell a rat and find rodents stuffed with drugs.

It says, suspected organized criminals have been stuffing the bodies of dead rats with drugs, phones, and cash and throwing them over the walls of a British prison to get contraband to the inmates, the government said on Monday. It says, guards at Guy's Marsh prison in Dorset, Southwest England grew suspicious when they found the bodies of three rats with long stitches along their stomachs, officials said. Stitches are puntos.

They discovered the animals had been disemboweled and filled with five mobile phones and chargers, three SIM cards, cigarette papers, and a large amount of drugs, including cannabis and a synthetic substitute, as well as tobacco, they added. This discovery shows the extraordinary lengths to which criminals will go to smuggle drugs into prison, and underlines why our work to improve security is so important.

The government did not say when the rats were found, which by the way makes me think that they've been doing this for a long time and they only recently discovered the problem. Criminals in the past have tried to use tennis balls, pigeons, palomas, and drones to bring contraband into prison. So I guess dead rats was just the next new thing, right? I guess where there is demand, somebody will find a way to supply.

I mean, drugs in prison must be super expensive, and it's one of the few things that sell themselves, I guess, right? No marketing required. Also, that sounds like the worst way to spend your day. Catching rats and killing them and taking out their organs and filling them up with phones and drugs. Not for me, but hey, where there's a will, there's a way. Okay, quick music break, and I'll be back in a second to talk about other stuff.

I don't need a damn change. I got gold in my soul, on me flying like a plane.

And we have a bit of a theme, okay? And the theme is space. So those of you so those of you who know me know that I'm a big fan of space, right? Del espacio. Space. We don't say the space, by the way, unless we're talking about a specific space. Like the space between the sofas is too small. But when we're talking about outer space, it's just space. So I don't know if you're aware, but a few days ago, the first real photographs of a black hole, when aguero negro, were taken.

This is according to the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. And when you look at the photo, you think, oh, is that it? But when you think about what it is, it's incredible. We have seen what we thought was unseeable, is what Shepard Doldman said on the 10th of April, so two days ago. Shepard Doldman, by the way, is an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that I just mentioned.

So in honor of this incredible feat, the Asanya feat spelled F-E-A-T, not F-E-E-T, like the feat that you use to walk. In honor of this feat, today's history segment is about space. Today is Friday, the twelfth of April, or April twelfth. For the first one, we go back to the year 1961. And if that year rings a bell, Citaswina, it should. The headline reads Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space.

On April twelfth, nineteen sixty one, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the twenty-seven-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. So Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles, and was guided Fuegada entirely by an automatic control system.

The only statement attributed to Gagarin during this one hour and forty eight minutes in space was flight is proceeding normally, I am well. So that's the only record of something that he said during the flight. After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. So everybody knew him. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of hero of the Soviet Union.

Then monuments were raised or built in his honor across the Soviet Union, and streets were named after him. So he became a hero. And I think more importantly, for that time, the USSR, the Soviet Union, beat the United States. And this was the time when the space race was really heating up, calentando se. And eight years after this, the United States would put the first man on the moon. And I know there are people who don't believe in that, but that's a topic for another day.

For this next one, we go back to the year 1981, so 20 years after Gagarin became the first man in space. And the headline reads The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched for the first time. So on this day, April 12th, in 1981, the space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first reusable spacecraft to travel into space.

Piloted by astronauts Robert Crippen and John Young, the Columbia undertook a 54-hour spaceflight of 36 orbits before successfully touching down or landing at California's Edwards Air Force Base on April 14th. Regular flights of the Space Shuttle began after April 12th, right after the launching of Colombia.

However, sin embargo, five years later, on January 28th, 1986, NASA and the Space Shuttle program suffered a major setback when the Challenger exploded 74 seconds after takeoff, después del despegue, and all seven people aboard were killed. If you haven't seen the footage, the video is pretty shocking. And if you have seen the footage, then you definitely remember it. By the way, a setback is something that happens that stops or reverses your progress.

In following years, the space shuttle carried out or completed several important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction and manning of the International Space Station. That's an interesting verb, by the way, manning from the verb to man, like hombre, which means to operate, to run. And it can also mean to defend, like man the base. So after this, in 2003, a tragedy in space again shook the world.

On February 1st, Columbia, on its 28th mission, disintegrated during re-entry as it was coming back into Earth's atmosphere. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. And in the aftermath, the space shuttle program was grounded, was stopped, until Discovery returned to space in July 2005, amid con Amid concerns that problems that had downed Colombia had not been fully solved. So even though, a pesar de even though there were still concerns about safety, they began to operate again.

Risky, arries, but I guess it worked out. So several astronauts have died over the years. Trying to achieve new feats, trying to push the boundaries. And that's one of the reasons that it bothers people, molesta algunos, when people claim that the moon landing never happened. It's kind of disregarding the work of tens of thousands of people and the lives of many as well. But again, that's a topic for another day. I might have a guest on the show to talk about it, but we'll see.

By the way, the results are in the results from the polls on Instagram and Twitter for the movie of the week. And it was an overwhelming victory. Una victoria abrumadora for Green Book, which won the Oscar, so I get it. I understand. I haven't seen it yet, so I'll watch it. And on Wednesday's show, I'll break it down. Okay, I'll talk about it. I'll give you my thoughts, I'll tell you about things I liked, things I didn't like, etc. And I'll try to analyze it a little bit.

Alright, that's the show for today. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, iVox, YouTube, etc. And remember, the best way to support the show is to leave a five-star rating and a quick review. English with Dane will be back on Wednesday, 17th of April. So, yeah, talk to you later. Bye bye.