5 Things to Know Today: July 19, 2012

1. The weather

The National Weather Service says we can expect a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Skies will be mostly cloudy, with a high near 81. Thursday night there will be a chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2 a.m. Skies will be mostly cloudy, with a low around 63.

2. Gas prices

According to DetroitGasPrices.com, the lowest reported gasoline price in the White Lake area as of Wednesday night was $3.49 per gallon at the gas station. In Highland, the Citgo station on Milford Road had the lowest gas price, $3.47.

3. On this day in history

According to History.com, in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been "dead" for nearly 2,000 years.

4. In the news

5. Add Your Events to Patch

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