BLIZZARD of JJ

PHOENIX—A 26,000-pound box truck loaded with Doritos and Frito-Lay chips rolls out of a distribution center, bound for a Walmart store about 4 miles away. It looks like any other truck, but there is no one at the wheel.

This is one of the 35 driverless trucks PepsiCo is running on Arizona roads, marking it as the first major U.S. consumer-goods company to disclose the real-life, large-scale use of autonomous trucks on public roads. They’re traversing busy highways and local streets as they transport PepsiCo products between bottling plants, storage facilities and stores like Walmart and Dollar General.

At least nine autonomous-truck companies are operating in Southern and South-Central states, especially Texas, but many still have human monitors at the wheel, or are being used only in limited tests. PepsiCo’s operation, using trucks outfitted with sensors and computers from an autonomous-truck company called Gatik, is a step beyond, on par with the technical hurdles being cleared by much smaller, lighter driverless passenger taxis from Waymo, Tesla and other companies.

On June 10, 1692, Bridget Bishop, a colonial American woman from Salem, Massachusetts, was executed by hanging after being accused of witchcraft. She became the first person to be put to death during the Salem witch trials, a wave of mass hysteria and legal persecution that would soon engulf the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Bishop, who was around 60 years old at the time of her death, had previously faced accusations of witchcraft but had been acquitted years earlier. However, during the heightened fear and religious fervor of 1692, she was arrested again and brought before the special Court of Oyer and Terminer. She was convicted largely on spectral evidence and questionable testimony.

June 10, 1845 - Andrew Jackson's African Grey parrot "Poll" is removed from his funeral for swearing and yelling profanities...