What notable things happened today?

It would be easy to answer this question by simply opening Google or Wikipedia and looking up serious news sources about current political or economic issues. They are notable events in the sense of having a macro impact, influencing world events. On the other hand, I am not so egotistical as to think anyone would be interested in the minutiae of my daily life.

Getting up and enjoying a sunshiny day, plus a cup of coffee, is more than enough achievement for me. In this day and age of social media sensationalism, everyone wants to accrue attention to themselves. Indeed, attention has become a commodity to be monetised. The attentional oligarchy is now a fact of life for most of us in Australia, and throughout the Anglophone world.

However, asking about notable happenings is quite interesting, and opens up a huge range of possibilities.

In my last article, I wrote about a particularly important notable happening – the FIFA World Cup tournament. It is ongoing at the time of writing. I made the point that while the atmosphere of the football cup is celebratory, encouraging crossnational sentiment of solidarity, the tournament is being hit by numerous obstacles.

Extortionate pricing of tickets, travel and visa restrictions on non-American teams, the decline in tourism to the US due to the overheated bombast from the Trump administration – all these factors are making FIFA 2026 a notable event, though not for the reasons intended by the World Cup organisers.

For instance, a notable event directly related to the FIFA World Cup was the denial of entry to the United States of Somali referee Omar Artan. A soccer referee since 2018, his rejection and subsequent deportation is a highlight (if you can call it that) of the vitriolic anti-immigration climate whipped up by the Trump-MAGA cult.

It is funny, in a way, to juxtapose that to a notable event from another time and era, involving a major sporting event. It was easier for Jesse Owens, African American athlete, to enter Nazi Germany for the 1936 Berlin Olympics than for soccer referee Omar Artan to enter the United States for FIFA 2026.

The old saying ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same,’ has never been more applicable.