Plague

LANARK, Ill.—The Fulton boys basketball team continues to be plagued by a shooting slump, that led them to a 64-50 loss to Stillman Valley on Friday, their second loss in the Eastland Holiday Tournament. The final score doesn’t indicate the true nature of the game. The Steamers were within reach of the lead the entire time. Shots just didn’t go through the net when they needed them to. “If we get those looks all year I’ll be happy,” head coach RJ Coffey said. “We just have to start knocking them down.” Two athletes carried the Steamers through the first offensice drought in the first quarter. Sophomore Kyler Pessman and senior Kyle Schipper kept the Steamers with Stillman for the first eight minutes, scoring the team’s first 13 points. In that time, Pessman had two threes and one offensive putback for eight points. “Kyler had 29 last night [Thursday], a career high and played really well. He came in and didn’t shoot the ball well tonight but was still attacking,” Coffey said. “...

At the end of every year, we tend to grumble about how terrible it was. Political upheavals, mass shootings, global warfare and environmental disasters all make us think that whatever year we just (barely) got through had to have been the worst. But historians would like to remind us that we have it pretty good, at least compared to those poor saps who had to live through A.D. 536 — the year they declared the worst in human history. What made A.D. 536 just so awful? For starters, we lost the sun. There goes the sun Sometime early in 536, a thick haze covered Europe, the Middle East and some of Asia. The sun was visible, but that good, life-giving warmth wasn't breaking through the fog. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," Byzantine historian Procopius observed . Other reports from this hazy time include a summertime snowfall in China, and Europe experienced "spring without mildness, summer without heat....