A.M. ATL: We love a mystery

Morning, y’all! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t pinch anyone or over-imbibe. That wouldn’t be very saintly of you. (Plus, some people just don’t look good in green.)

Let’s get to it.

WHO BLEW UP THE GEORGIA GUIDESTONES?

Designed to lead humanity through major catastrophe. Gets blown up. This is how legends are made.

When I saw the title of the AJC’s newest podcast, I did a double take. Admittedly, I had never heard of the Georgia Guidestones, and within the span of a few seconds, I went from total ignorance to deeply obsessed.

What were the Guidestones?

• The Georgia Guidestones were a monument of six solid granite slabs erected in 1980, standing about 20 feet tall and weighing more than 200,000 pounds.
• Are you ready to get weird? The creator of the Stonehenge-like structure said he represented a group of people who thought a major catastrophe would soon strike Earth and wanted to provide guidance for humanity in the aftermath.
• The creator, who used a pseudonym, helpfully carved these guidelines on the stones in eight different languages.
• The very first one is a humdinger: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

What happened to the Guidestones?

• In short? Someone blew them up. The July 2022 explosion damaged some stones, and the rest were dismantled for safety reasons.
• Keep in mind: When you write esoteric things on stone, people get a little jumpy. Pretty sure there’s a story like that in every religion ever. Over the decades, the Guidestones attracted all kinds of conspiracy theories and, yes, some fear.

A double mystery

• We still don’t know who created the monument or what they and their group believed.
• We also don’t know who tried to destroy them.

Are you seated for this? I am so seated for this. Read more about the six-part audio investigation here.

The first two episodes drop today. Listen to them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or iHeart Radio. We will be discussing again.

Not signed up yet? What’re you waiting for? Get A.M. ATL in your inbox each weekday morning. And keep scrolling for more news.

A ONE-TWO PUNCH AT THE AIRPORT

Security checkpoint lines were long enough to snake into baggage claim at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday.

Hope everyone enjoyed the rain, sleet, thunder, wind and power outages yesterday. Typical Georgia springtime. Here’s how other regions in the South were affected.

Unfortunately, some of that cold is going to linger until midweek.

Another thing bound to linger? Delayed and canceled flights and long wait times at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Storms + shutdown = pain

• Travelers dealt with flight cancellations all through the weekend as storms hit the Midwest and East Coast.
• Yesterday, Delta canceled more than 10% of its flights and delayed more than 40% by midafternoon.
• The situation is made even worse because Transportation Security Administration officers have been working without pay for weeks due to a partial government shutdown.
• That always leads to staffing shortages because employees have to take on other jobs to pay bills.
• Airline CEOs sent an open letter to Congress on Sunday calling on them to resolve the shutdown.

Caught in a delay? The Food and Dining team has a list of the best food options in every Atlanta concourse — and bar options, too. Now that’s service journalism.

JONES v. JACKSON, ROUND 265

Rogue billionaire tycoon Rick Jackson keeps escalating his fight with Lt. Gov. Burt Jones as the two vie for the Republican nomination for Georgia governor. There was the surprise campaign. The lawsuit. Now, emails obtained by the AJC reveal a monthslong correspondence that resulted in Jackson’s latest attack ad.

What’s in the emails:

• In September, a Jackson aide asked Jones to help promote a foster care tax credit championed by Jackson.
• The back-and-forth included a draft script from the Jackson team for Jones to record. One line read: “We’re incredibly grateful for his heart and his leadership. Thank you, Rick, for all you do for Georgia.”

Jackson’s team is using the exchange to show Jones supported Jackson before the billionaire entered the gubernatorial field.

Jones’ team says Jackson’s use of a foster care initiative to promote his campaign is “abhorrent, disgusting and tells you everything you need to know about Rick Jackson’s character.”

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

💵 Gov. Brian Kemp’s plan to rebate $1.1 billion in taxes to Georgians is a go. The Georgia Senate approved the plan, which includes tax rebates up to $500 to be sent later this year. It will be the fourth rebate legislators have approved in recent years.

🫏 Democrats are also scrapping in the GA governor’s race. Here’s the twist: Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is the front-runner, so other contenders are targeting each other in hopes of landing a spot in a likely runoff against her.

🍻 Atlanta will soon allow open alcohol containers in historic South Downtown. The Atlanta City Council approved the change Monday, which is designed to bring more foot traffic to the area and improve visitor experiences for the World Cup. It will be the first open container neighborhood in Atlanta.

HAVE YOU GOTTEN WORLD CUP TIX YET?

Atlanta knows how to host a good event, and fans are going to have a good time, World Cup Host Committee members have promised.

Speaking of the World Cup, it’s a jungle out there for people hoping to buy tickets to this summer’s matches.

• FIFA says it expects matches to sell out.
• As always, buyers have to be on the alert for ticket scammers, who are getting very creative.

TELL US: We’re trying to suss out how people are faring with their ticket buying.

Are there any creative ways you’ve nabbed World Cup tickets? Any tips or methods we should know about? Did you have a nightmare experience or score a pair in a high-stakes poker game with the leader of a shady underground nightclub? Email us and tell us everything.

NEWS BITES

E. coli linked to cheese made with raw milk has sickened several in US

Louis Pasteur is somersaulting in his grave.

How to stretch your fuel mileage when gas prices go up

What? Drive slower?! This is Atlanta — we have a reputation to uphold.

These stair climbers like to do it the old-fashioned way: on actual stairs

It’s not the same on a machine, apparently.

Oldest known whale recording could unlock mysteries of the ocean

This is somehow connected to the Georgia Guidestones. I can feel it.

ON THIS DATE

March 17, 1983

Savannah goes green for St. Patrick’s Day. A quaint bastion of the Deep South may seem an unusual place to find the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in America, but so fervently do they celebrate the Irish saint’s day here that folks sometimes even dye their grits green.

This celebration took place two years before Savannah added a new St. Patrick’s Day tradition: the greening of the iconic Forsyth Park fountain.

ONE MORE THING

My friend group is very interested in the burgeoning trend of “sweatpant jeans,” which are, as the name suggests, pants made out of sweatpant material fashioned to look like jeans.

I personally rebuke this, but what should we call them? Jweatpants? Sweatjeans? It’s a tough one.