OZY Daily Dose

One wintry lunch break in 2002, graphic designer Joe Roques and his then-business partner Richard Armstrong were enjoying much-needed ham and cheese toasties. "I'm sick of spending all my time building other people's brands," said Roques in between mouthfuls. They'd soon resolved to create their own edgy, irreverent brand but were hamstrung by their location in rural Swaziland ... and missing a product. Then the penny dropped. "This toastie could really use some chili sauce," they agreed.

The country’s soccer stars are taller than theircompatriots— but will it bring success in the World Cup? When the 32 qualifying teams competing in the 2018 FIFA World Cup take to the pitch in Russia on June 14, they will showcase the best of the world’s soccer talent — highlighted by the diversity of the players that compose those teams. More than ever, athletes are quantified by metrics — height, weight, 40-yard-dash speed.

At 22, Melissa Blitgen's life was upended by blood cancer. Being an adult at a regular hospital meant she would receive the standard adult regimen. But after her first month in remission, her doctor realized the treatment she was getting might not be the best. "My oncologist had gone to a conference and decided he wanted to switch treatment plans" after he learned that pediatric regimens had better outcomes for her type of leukemia, she says.

When supermarket owner Baba Acheme first bought a Point of Sale (POS) machine in 2014, the entrepreneur in Mubi — the commercial hub of the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa — thought it would help him collect payments for the groceries he sold. Now, four years later, Acheme finds that he’s using the machine in a new way — turning himself into a human ATM with it and doling out cash in exchange for card payments in exchange for a commission.

Three years after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947, the world of tennis saw its own segregated traditionalism under siege. Thanks to a young woman from Harlem - a fierce competitor with a forehand forged on the Police Athletic League playgrounds - delaying integration was no longer feasible. Althea Gibson had arrived, ready to shake up the world of tennis.

I knew I was in trouble from the outset.I'd just spent eight years at the couldn't-be-more progressive Montessori Academy in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. Staffed by educators who had studied with Maria Montessori herself and steeped in the British education system, the Montessori Academy was where I cut my wise-guy teeth. And when my teacher, Mrs.

It was just after midnight. We left Vegas an hour and a half earlier, zeroing in on Baker, California, a shithole town, the shittiest of shitholes.We were still hours away from our home in Northern California, and I was tired. I was nervous about my girlfriend, Amy, driving. She was a fine driver, but she had an outstanding warrant in Colorado. It put me on edge, but she insisted.The flashing red lights caught me off guard. I saw them in the rearview mirror. My heart sank.

The tables at the Jaycees Community Center are worn, the faded bingo stand left out from some event other than this Democratic gubernatorial forum in Waldorf, Maryland. For an hour and a half, a moderator pulls questions from the audience of maybe 50 people, who fill the folding chairs with their nods, stares and half-hearted applause. Krish Vignarajah, tries to inject some enthusiasm into the quiet crowd on a Sunday in April.

The pitchers are ready to dig a moat around the mound. They feel under siege. There are limits on mound visits. There are limits on time between pitches in the minor leagues. There are limits on warm-up tosses between innings. The strike zone has tightened up. The baseballs have wings. Sean Doolittle, a Washington Nationals relief pitcher, once heard a proposal limiting how many relievers can pitch in one inning, just to make sure the game moves along at a brisk pace.

As if the city itself weren't so damn romantic. As if its First Friday Art Walks didn't include paintings of lush wine bottles and mysterious women. As if its sweaty love for its own historical claims of being the oldest European settlement in America weren't already enticing. Finding myself on the self-obsessed beaches of St. Augustine, Florida, it was enough to make a young writer wax poetic - even after having been dumped recently.