 You're welcome back to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa and it's now time for Today in History. Today in history, the 16th of July, 2013, something very saddening occurred in Southeast Asia and that's in India. On this day in history, about 22 school children who are below the age of 12 all died and that's because they had, you know, they were suffering from food poisoning. So in India they have this, you know, a policy where they serve midday meals to children in schools and that's basically, sorry? Yeah, school feeding problem. Yes, it was called midday meals, you know, that's to boost enrollment in schools and to tackle the issue of poverty and hunger. It's great, it's a policy that's been in practice since about 1925 and in 2013, when children came home, you know, their parents started to notice that they were vomitting and about 22 of them, you know, died while about 44 others, you know, were hospitalized because of that food poisoning. The principal of the school immediately fled and investigations began into what exactly was the cause of this particular incident on the 16th of July, 2013. So the stories then began, you know, people began to give hypothesis and say, oh, the food wasn't washed, that it's possible that a particular insecticide called organophosphorus that was used as an insecticide, that is used as an insecticide for grains, you know, on rice and things like that, you know, was on that rice and that rice wasn't washed. So the rice was simply cooked directly without being washed and, you know, properly cleaned and because of that, you know, that the presence of that organophosphorus that insecticide affected the system of the children and they began to suffer the effect. While others said, you know, it couldn't have been the rice, that their children ate the rice but they didn't eat the soy beans and the potatoes because it was a meal that consists of rice, soy beans, potatoes and others. So the children who didn't eat the soy beans and the potatoes didn't suffer any effect. So they said it must have been the soy beans and the potatoes and another postulation that possibly the oil was where the contamination was, that residue of some substance in the oil at the bottom of the oil was what caused this. So it was a very big issue back in 2013 because this school feeding program was successful, it's one of the world's largest school feeding program feeding about 120 million children in India but the question or the issue was the hygiene because, you know, hygiene issues that now led to food poisoning like this on a scale that had never been seen before in the country but was in this day in history that this very unfortunate incident occurred 22 children died more than two dozen others became sick and officials saying the food may have not been properly washed and, you know, also questions about why exactly did this happen? Was this intentional? Was this was this intentional or was this just an accident, you know, because of poor hygiene but that's what happened today in history. Very sad but of course resting piece of those kids and we hope that it never repeats itself, you know, it just for me was just a reminder of what we're doing here in Nigeria, the same school feeding program, you know, with the hope that I will encourage more people to go to school and all of that. But anyway let's move to 1935 where there's something called the Pac-O-Mita and was the very first one was installed today so was a brainchild of a guy called Carl Magie who of course initially had gone to jail because he shot at George apparently, you know, in Mexico, I think somewhere in Mexico in Las Vegas apparently. So the first parking meter was installed today in the southeast corner of the first street on the Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma July 16th 1935. Carl Magie wrote a series of articles exposing corruption in the New Mexico court system and was tried and acquitted of manslaughter after he shot one of the judges targeted in the series during an altercation in the Las Vegas hotel. Of course all of this, you know, then led to him getting to notice the lack of parking sufficient parking space across Las Vegas at that time and then he went on to invent the Pac-O-Mita. It is the very first, you know, time that coins were used to pay for parking spaces and then of course people were allowed to park which of course increased government revenue and by the early 1940s there were more than 140,000 parking meters operating in the United States. The very first one was installed by the Dual Parking Meter Company beginning in July 1935 and they cost a nickel an hour and were placed at 20 foot intervals along the curb that corresponded to spaces painted on the pavement. So there is that, you know, and this for me is just to, you know, showing how far back, you know, places, you know, in the United States they had started to look out for ways that they can, you know, use systems, they can use, you know, technology, you know, to improve on the lives of people, you know, in 1935. We of course here don't have things like that yet. We have different ways that, you know, people get to park, you know, we can pay $290 to park in the, you know, in a little parking garage, you know, different places across Las Vegas for example. But, you know, if we had to go back to using the Pac-O-Mita I don't think that would work because we don't have coins here in Nigeria anymore. Well, we used to have coins. Regardless of the payments that have been adopted, the system of the pay-by-pack or pack-by-pay is something that we need to adopt here because people pack indiscriminately in Nigeria. People just pack on the road and you deprive other road users, you know, the freedom to use the road like you had, you know, people just go to, you know, how it is in Nigeria where pavements have become and sidewalks have become mini markets. So people just pack there to just get one or two things and you cause a gridlock for the rest of the way. So I think when we're talking about Nigeria's own systems regarding our road service and all that, these are the things, these are things we need to begin to institute. We need to have proper places to park. It was just recently, we decided to have all these bus stops here and there in Lagos specifically, you know, but still how many drivers obey that they still pack indiscriminately on the road cause traffic jams. But we need to adopt things like this in the U.S. And just, you know, meet up to the standards. When you invest in things like this, it doesn't have to be exactly with the pakomita, but when you invest in things like this, it also gives the government, you know, an extra income source. So instead of paying touts 100 nair or 200 nair to park, you know, wherever they direct you to, you can instead create a system where people can pay, you know, and it goes straight to the government. And that's the reason for the pakomita, because not any, you know, regular agree is going to collect those nickels from you. The money goes straight to the government. And you realize how much money the government is making every day from just parking. But it also wouldn't happen by sending what's this Lagos task force, you know, to do that tow vehicles. That's also not the way it's going to happen. You need to, first of all, create that system and let people understand how this works. And of course, people will fall in line. You don't force people into, into, you know, system when you haven't created an alternative that actually works. So yeah, 1935, the pakomita was very first one was installed and she said something in 2016, a poison 2013, but unfortunately poisoning food poisoning in a school in India. Let's take a break here and return to discuss our first big topic. COVID-19 Delta variant is in Lagos. How is the city preparing for that? Let's take a break and we'll be right back.