"Diabolically" difficult clue about a current news story

August 14, 2017 1:15 PM

In my daughter's AP Government class over the summer, her instructor is posting little clues to help her class know which news stories they should be aware of. Most of them have been relatively simple, like "Oh Lordy," "Mooch," "Fire and Fury," etc But they have different levels, and the most difficult one, posted on 8/4, was simply "49 48 23"

I'm a pretty big news junkie, but I just can't figure this one out. I thought maybe it was referring to parallels. The 49th parallel is the US-Canadian border, for instance. But I don't see any news story associated with that, and it doesn't explain the other numbers.

HELP

posted by visual mechanic to Law & Government (8 answers total)

Best answer: Got it! The 49th state is Alaska, the 48th state is Arizona, and the 23rd state is Maine. So the clue denotes the states represented by the Republican senators who voted against the latest (and hopefully the last) version of Trumpcare.
posted by DrGail at 1:22 PM on August 14, 2017 [46 favorites]

7 minutes. Well done, DrGail.
posted by theora55 at 1:25 PM on August 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: You're awesome, DrGail – that's it!
posted by visual mechanic at 1:38 PM on August 14, 2017

Response by poster: Okay, if anyone wants to try another – "1696 rendezvous" posted for the time period June 29-July 18th. I was thinking it might somehow refer to the meeting between Don Jr and the Russians (thus the rendezvous) but I can't see how 1696 figures into it.
posted by visual mechanic at 2:11 PM on August 14, 2017

Best answer: This may be too easy to find since it is on the Wikipedia page for the year, but in 1696: "July 18 – The fleet of Tsar Peter The Great occupies Azov at the mouth of the Don River." Russians + Don
posted by soelo at 2:15 PM on August 14, 2017 [11 favorites]

I think soelo's got this one sewed up. Only chiming in to say your daughter's teacher sounds awesome.
posted by dr. boludo at 3:28 PM on August 14, 2017 [14 favorites]

Failing that, 1/6/96 was the end of the 1995-96 federal government shutdown.
posted by zamboni at 3:35 PM on August 14, 2017

Man, I would devour an entire book of these.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:38 AM on August 15, 2017 [4 favorites]