1. Election 2017 Results. Mainers overwhelmingly defeat proposal for York County Casino. Lewiston – Auburn residents reject merger. Portland Rent limits 64% voted no. Turnout at the polls was higher than expected. About 17,000 people voted in Portland, a turnout of 30 percent. (PressHerald)
2. Virginia voters made history on Tuesday by electing Danica Roem, the nation’s first openly transgender candidate, to the Virginia House of Delegates. Her opponent Republican Bob Marshall tried to leverage Roem’s gender identity in the race and previously said she “clearly is a male.” (BuzzFeed)
3. Former Major League Baseball star Roy Halladay died at the age of 40 on Tuesday when a plane he was piloting crashed in the Gulf of Mexico near a town (eerily) named Holiday, Florida. Halladay, who twice won the Cy Young Award while winning 203 games for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, recently received his pilot’s license and had been enthusiastically posting photos of his new ICON A5 plane on Twitter. (TampaBay)
4. Twitter has officially expanded its character count to 280 across the world, doubling the traditional 140-character count. The company announced back in September that it was testing the new limit “in languages impacted by cramming.” Japanese, Korean, and Chinese accounts, however, will continue to have 140 characters because cramming is not an issue in these languages. (ABCNews)
5. There’s a theory that “Stranger Things” actually exists in the Stephen King multiverse, where all of King’s works take place. While the creators of Stranger Things have denied this, there are some interesting comparisons. Emily Burnam from the Bangor Daily News wrote about several of them. The demodogs in Stranger Things behave similar to the creatures in Stephen King’s The Mist. People with telekinetic and telepathic abilities feature prominently in King’s stories — Carrie White (“Carrie”), Charlie McGee (“Firestarter”), Danny Torrance and Dick Halloran (“The Shining”), Johnny Smith (“The Dead Zone”). Eleven from Stranger Things has similar powers. The similarities between the Stranger Things kids and the Losers Club from Stephen King’s It are obvious. (BDN)
Watching STRANGER THINGS is looking watching Steve King's Greatest Hits. I mean that in a good way.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 17, 2016
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