THE WORLD'S LARGEST POTATO

Most important of all for some (except Hawaii and most of Arizona in the USA) is that daylight savings time ends tonight. At 2AM most of the U.S. will gain back an hour, so you will have an extra hour of sleep. Perhaps there could be some energy savings, but I think this is an inconvenience that needs to be disposed. 32 states have proposed bills to end this practice. Half the world has gone ahead to do this (the light purple color).

A new world's largest potato, but not from Idaho:

Just this week in New Zealand, Colin and Donna Craig-Brown dug up in their backyard a 17.4 pound potato and named him Doug:

They take him for walks and are getting a lot of attention. Below was the previous largest, as recognized by Guinness, only 10 pounds and 14 ounces, from the UK:

On this note, the next time it heavily rains, go to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Here is where in 1924 was found the largest diamond ever discovered in the U.S: Uncle Sam, 40.23 carats, which was emerald-cut into a 12.42 gem and in 1971 sold to an anonymous collector for $150,000. CoDST is the only public diamond mine in the world, and 33,000 diamonds have been found since opening of the park in 1972.

One of 9.07 carats was picked up in 2020, then soon after, a 4.49-carat canary yellow diamond. Then less than two months ago Noreen and Michael Wredberg spotted a 4.38-carat yellow diamond sparkling on the ground in the morning sunlight. People are allowed to keep what they find. Noreen named theirs Lucy's Diamond after Michael's kitten.

Surely you've heard of Lucy, a 3.2 million-year old Australopithecine found in Ethiopia by Donald Johnson, Mary Leakey and their team. Back in their camp when they were celebrating the discovery, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was being repeatedly played on a tape recorder. So they named her Lucy. The set of bones was brought to Cleveland, Ohio, but in 2013 returned to Ethiopia.

To close, here is the fabulous story of 52- year Saniniu Laizer of Tanzania, a farmer with 2,000 cows, four wives and 30 children, who last year found the two largest pieces of Tanzanite ever (20.43 and 11.26 pounds) and was paid $3.35 million by the government. Soon thereafter, he unearthed a third of 14 pounds, and received another $2 million. All of the tanzanite in the world is mined under an 8 square mile plot of land near Mount Kilimanjaro.

But if you think tanzanite is only blue to purple in color...nope, these are all tanzanite below:

And so is this green one:

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A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

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HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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