"Lester D. Shubin, 84, a Justice Department researcher who turned a DuPont fabric intended for tires into the first truly effective bulletproof vests, saving the lives of more than 3,000 law enforcement officers, died after a heart attack at his Fairfax County home."

The Washington Post, via my parents' mention at Thanksgiving. Shubin was also among the troops that liberated Dachau, an early proponent of bomb-sniffing dogs and survived by his wife of 50 years. Cool life.

Also up there for me: Bob Twigg, 62, the USA TODAY reporter who won $9 million in the lottery. I'd somehow never heard his story around the office before. From the Post obit: "In January 1996, working a Sunday morning shift in the USA Today newsroom, he looked at a newswire story about the winning lottery numbers, 3-15-17-28-33-37."

The next day, a lawyer-friend verified the ticket with the state lottery office. Mr. Twigg begged off a news conference, wanting to break the news in his own paper.

Mr. Twigg wrote that he had been struggling with family medical bills, even though his company health insurance paid 80 percent of its cost. In addition to his journalism job, he had taken a part-time job at a hardware store and drove an eight-year-old Pontiac with 187,000 miles on the odometer that had just failed a state inspection. He had dropped out of the office Super Bowl pool because he had already lost $31.50 during the playoffs and didn't think he had the luck to pick the winner.

Can't find his story online anywhere, will keep looking.

Update: Found it in our internal archive. Will see if someone can pub it somewhere. Romenesko could like it. For now, an excerpt:

On the way home, I was over-the-edge careful. I barely reached 50 on the 55-mph highways. With the ticket tucked in my shirt pocket, I spent more than an hour driving the 38 miles from my office to home. And my wife, B.J., wasn't there.

I still had not told a soul. I felt ready to burst.

B.J. arrived about 30 minutes after I got home. When I told her we won, she shrieked and acted just like one of those people on the Publishers Clearing House commercials.

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