Tidbits, April 26

How about those 80-plus degree temperatures here in April? Spring is a strange time, indeed.

During the last Pateros school board meeting, Mike Hull opened a discussion that led to the approval of starting a cross country team next year.

This is National Work Zone Awareness Week, and the Washington State Department of Transportation held a memorial Wednesday in Olympia for the 59 workers it has lost in roadside accidents since 1950.

Terry Linder, a 25-year WSDOT employee, shared his experience of being hit by a vehicle in August last year while he was working on a traffic signal on Camano Island.

"The DOT and other states across the nation 'Go Orange' each year to remind motorists of the importance of driving safely through work zones, because blaze orange vest and traffic cones aren't always enough," reads a press release.

Figures from WSDOT show "nearly 1,000 workers, drivers and passengers are injured in Washington's highway work zones each year, with rear-end collisions caused by inattentive driving cited as the most common cause."

This day in history

April 26

1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.

1607: Colonists land at Cape Henry, Va. They founded Jamestown the next month.

1865: John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, was surrounded by federal troops in a barn in Virginia. He was shot and killed, either by the soldiers or by his own hand.

1954: The Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, began at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Va.

1986: The worst nuclear power plant accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, near Kiev, USSR.

2000: Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

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