You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
1 time in baseball history
For the first time in baseball history, a player has stolen first base. After an 0-1 pitch in a game on Saturday, Tony Thomas, an outfielder for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, took an advantage of a new rule adopted by the independent Atlantic League. The rule, which expands on the dropped-third-strike rule in place in the major leagues, lets batters steal first base if any pitch is not “caught in flight” by the catcher. Good hustle, Tony. [Deadspin]
12 colors
(Sponsored by Mott & Bow) Think about your favorite shirt. The one that’s not too slim and not too loose. The one you wish you could somehow wear over and over without repeating your look. The Driggs tee checks all of those boxes and more, and if it’s not already your favorite shirt, it will be once you try it on. Made from 100 percent combed cotton, the shirt is the perfect weight for summer and comes in 12 colors and two neck options, so you can stock up on a variety of different looks.
4 hours 57 minutes
Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer on Sunday fought an epic battle in England from which Djokovic emerged triumphant, 7-6 (5), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 13-12 (3), securing his fifth Wimbledon title. At four hours and 57 minutes, it was the longest Wimbledon final ever. The match saw 68 games and 422 points — 218 for Federer and 204 for Djokovic. [ESPN]
3 of 4 congresswomen
On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” ought to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Trump seems to have been referring to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar. All of them are American citizens, and three of the four congresswomen were born and raised in the United States. [CBS News]
More than 1,000 landscapes
For his television show, Bob Ross painted more than 1,000 landscapes, chockablock with happy trees and mountains. But try as you might, you can’t find them for sale — not at auctions, not in galleries, not online. So where are they? The Times set out to solve the mystery and — spoiler alert — they appear to be stacked in cardboard boxes in Herndon, Virginia, inside the nondescript offices of Bob Ross Inc. [The New York Times]
More than 550,000 people
More than 550,000 people — and counting — have RSVP’d to a Facebook event to “storm” Area 51. “Lets see them aliens,” the page’s description reads, along with a crude map and a “game plan.” Vox says, “This ridiculous ‘event’ is shitposting at its biggest and best.” [Vox]
30 blocks
If I was supposed to meet you on Saturday evening and never showed up, I’m very sorry — a power outage in New York City affected 73,000 customers in a 30-block stretch of Manhattan, and I was stuck in traffic-light-less traffic on the West Side Highway. The exact cause of the blackout, which came on the anniversary of the infamous 1977 outage, will reportedly not be known until an investigation is complete. What is known is that it took me 2.5 hours to get home. [The Associated Press]
From ABC News:
SigDigs: July 15, 2019
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