Five Things to Know Today, April 23

Welcome to Monday and a new week. Here are some things to know today.

The weather: Mostly sunny, with a unseasonably cool high of 62 degrees. It'll be windy again today, with gusts up to 30 mph. The low tonight will be around 41 degrees with some wind.

Gas prices: Several Lilburn gas stations have regular for $3.66 a gallon (at Murphy USA and three other places) according to www.georgiagasprices.com. The highest price reported to the site was $3.74 (at Citgo, 4967 Lawrenceville Highway at Holly Ridge).

You have mail: It’s the birthday of the computer engineer who gave us email, way back in 1971. The Internet had just been born as a research project funded by the government at DARPA, the Defense Department agency for futuristic science. DARPA asked engineers to look for useful things to do with their new-found model for connecting computers in a network. Ray Tomlinson, at Boston company BBN Technologies, came up with a way to send messages between users on different computers on a network. His approach included the @ sign that became established as a part of email addresses. Tomlinson was born on April 23, 1941, in Amsterdam, New York .  

Independence: People say Key West is barely the United States anyway. So it’s no surprise the relaxed denizens declared secession back in the 1980s. Today is the annual “Independence Day” of the so-called Conch Republic, observed every year as the start of a week-long celebration. The event started as a serious citizen grievance, but continues as a humorous happening that has more than a little to do with drumming up tourism. Just to be sure they’re not seriously breaking away, let’s all go down there and check it out.  

A rose by another name… It’s the birthday of The Bard, so some folks are trying to make this into Talk Like Shakespeare Day. Practical tips include: say ‘thou’ or ‘thee’ instead of ‘you’ and if in doubt, add ‘-eth’ to the ends of verbs, like ‘runneth.’