Five Things to Know Today, March 9

Welcome to Friday and congratulations for making it to the finish of the workweek. Here are some things to know today.

The weather: Don't forget your umbrella this morning. The chance of rain is 80 percent, mainly before 10 a.m. The high will be about 64. It'll be cloudy tonight, with a low of around 39 degrees, the National Weather Service says.

Gas prices: Not moving. The lowest price in Lilburn for regular reported to www.georgiagasprices.com as of late Thursday was $3.64 (at Shell, 4032 Highway 78, and at Phillips 66, 5044 Lawrenceville Hwy). The highest was $3.69 (at Shell, 4088 Five Forks Trickum Road, and at eight other places). Take comfort: AAA reports the highest price nationwide was $4.425.

Resistance: The Amistad mutiny of African slaves aboard a Spanish ship reached its legal end on March 9, 1841, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they were in the right to revolt. The Africans fought back while being transported and seized the ship “Amistad” in a bid to return home from Cuba. But the ship landed in the U.S. instead, and the Africans were imprisoned. Abolitionists took the case to court, and federal courts ruled they were illegally taken into slavery and should be granted free passage back home. The Supreme Court, with one dissent, finally agreed and the Africans sailed home (one woman returned to the U.S.m studied at Oberlin College in Ohio and went back home again as a missionary).  

Reading: Looking for a book but lost in the sea of possibilities? The excellent staff have a blog of their best picks at the Gwinnett Public Library’s site. From mysteries to biographies to a true tale of spies falling in love, the librarians come through with interesting titles you might never have otherwise found.

Geysers. The instrument-packed Cassini spacecraft, a joint NASA mission with European partners, has been probing Saturn and its moons since 2004. On this day in 2006, it flew one of several passes by the moon Enceladus and discovered icy geysers of water erupting from the small, cold sphere. That makes the moon one of the few places in the solar system with liquid water near the surface, increasing what we know about the diversity of our neighboring planets.