Jul 05, 2024

Good morning, I hope you had a restful and restorative July 4th.

It's a holiday week and Ike Morgan is off, so I sure appreciate you reading and listening.

John Hammontree

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We spent a good chunk of June talking about baseball’s history in Birmingham. But let’s not forget that Mobile has its own proud baseball history too. And now, local legends Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige have arrived back home.

Two, 9-foot-tall bronze statues of the Major League Baseball Hall of Famers and Mobile natives will anchor downtown Mobile’s newest feature dedicated to its professional sports legends. The completed statues arrived on Tuesday and were immediately placed into a city storage.

The city is still on pace to unveil the statues and the completed park – now called the “Hall of Fame Walk” – sometime later this year.

In Mobile, some officials are hopeful the city will consider investing to restore Hank Aaron’s childhood home into a tourist attraction or investing money into creating a sports Hall of Fame inside the RSA Tower that is a short walk to the Hall of Fame Walk.

Meanwhile, AL.com’s Roy S. Johnson reports that Willie Mays childhood home in Fairfield has fallen into disrepair. It is now in the possession of the Fairfield Land Bank and they are currently considering a proposal to restore the home and turn it into a museum.

The Alabama State Department of Education experienced a data breach in June that may have compromised some student and employee data, officials announced Wednesday.

On June 17, information system staff interrupted and stopped an attack on the department’s computer system before hackers could fully access the system or lock it, according to State Superintendent Eric Mackey. He said staff were able to restore all system data with backups, but there is a possibility that some data was compromised.

Officials have launched an ongoing criminal investigation and are working with federal and state law enforcement, the Alabama Attorney General, the Alabama Office of Information Technology and an independent anti-hacking expert to assess the scope of the attack.

Mackey said the department could not specify which data was breached in June, but encourages students and state and local education employees to be on alert. The state department does not collect direct deposit information, but may house Social Security numbers or other identifiable information.

“To all parents and to all local and state education employees out there, they should monitor their credit and they should assume that there’s a possibility that some of their data were compromised,” Mackey said.

A Wednesday night fireworks performance at an Alabama festival was canceled after a technician had to be flown to UAB Hospital when they were injured by a shell that “unexpectedly detonated.”

“A firework shell unexpectedly detonated while being prepared; no power source was connected to the device, which is normally detonated via electric-match technology activated by computer,” the City of Jacksonville said on its Facebook page announcing that the fireworks performance at Jax Fest has been canceled.”

The technician was flown by helicopter to UAB Hospital in stable condition, the city said. No other people were injured in the incident.

The Jacksonville Fire Department described the incident as an “accidental discharge.”

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