Human Race

Infected

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Aug. 23 reported five new Zika cases, including one in the Tampa Bay area 265 miles northwest of the previous danger zones in Miami. The stricken woman had no recent travel history, so she apparently caught Zika from mosquitoes in her area. The four other new cases showed up in a Miami suburb already sprayed down with pesticides.

Died

D.A. Henderson, who led the battle to defeat smallpox, died Aug. 19 at age 87. At the beginning of his medical career, Henderson wrote about the frustration of working in a Bangladesh hospital without any medicine to help ease the suffering of smallpox patients. At the time, doctors treated smallpox by mass vaccinations—often painful and expensive—in threatened areas. Henderson and his team experimented until they found a quicker, easier, and cheaper option, then founded a network to alert doctors to outbreaks so they could vaccinate quickly and prevent an epidemic. After 11 years of this type of work, the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated.

Faked

Talent agent Roland Scahill allegedly conned seven investors into handing him $165,000 to produce a Broadway play that never came off, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Scahill allegedly told the seven he was producing a play about famed opera singer Kathleen Battle and had landed an Academy Award–winning actress for the leading role. There was no play.

Died

Harry Briggs Jr., a catalyst of the Supreme Court case desegregating public schools, died Aug. 9 in New York at age 75. In 1949 Briggs and other African-American children in his South Carolina community had to walk 9 miles each way to a segregated school while buses took white children to their own segregated school. That led to a lawsuit attacking segregation that folded into the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation.

Appealed

Pakistan’s Supreme Court in October will hear the appeal of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five who allegedly insulted Muhammad by saying, “Christ died for me, what did Muhammad do for you?”—or words to that effect. If her appeal fails, officials plan to make her the first Pakistani woman hanged for blasphemy. Christian groups across America are circulating a petition seeking her release that has more than 400,000 signatures.

Died

Gene Wilder, known for playing the charming candy man in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and hilariously neurotic characters in several Mel Brooks comedies, including Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, died Aug. 28 at his home in Stamford, Conn., due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83. Wilder is survived by his fourth wife, Karen Boyer.

Florida: Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP • Henderson: Kaveh Sardari/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center via AP

Briggs: Jerry Engel/New York Post Archives/© NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images • Wilder: John Stillwell/PA/ap

Pinellas County Mosquito Control sprays biopesticide to kill mosquito larvae near Tampa.

Dr. Donald "D.A" Henderson is seen in an undated photo provided by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. American epidemiologist Henderson ,who led the successful international effort to eradicate smallpox died Friday, Aug. 20, 2016, at a hospice facility in Towson, Maryland, from complications following a hip fracture, Johns Hopkins University said in a statement. He was 87. (Kaveh Sardari/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center via AP)

FILE - In this Nov. 20, 2010, file photo, Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi listens to Governor of Pakistani Punjab Province Salman Taseer at a prison in Sheikhupura near Lahore, Pakistan. Pakistan's president will not immediately pardon the Christian woman sentenced to die for insulting Islam but may do so later if an appeals court delays her case too long, an official said Thursday Nov. 25, 2010. (AP Photo)

Aaron Anderson, a spray technician with Pinellas County Mosquito Control, uses a fogger to distribute VectoBac, a biopesticide engineered to kill mosquito larvae, into plants behind a home in the East Lake Woodlands neighborhood in Oldsmar, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)L-R: Harry Briggs Jr. Linda Brown: Spottswood Bolling and Ethel Loiuse Belton at press conference at Americana hotel. May 27, 1984. (Photo by Jerry Engel/New York Post Archives / (c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images)