FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 1.5.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:35, for 9h 10m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 20.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

An ad hoc group from the Urban Forestry Commission (Heritage Tree Committee) meets today at 4:30 PM.

 

On this day in 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge:

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km), three-mile-long (4.8 km) channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to Marin County, bridging both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.[7]

The Frommers travel guide considers the Golden Gate Bridge “possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world”.[8] It opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet (1,300 m)….

Construction began on January 5, 1933.[9] The project cost more than $35 million,[29] completing ahead of schedule and under budget.[30] The Golden Gate Bridge construction project was carried out by the McClintic-Marshall Construction Co., a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation founded by Howard H. McClintic and Charles D. Marshall, both of Lehigh University.

Today is the birthday of a socialist whose supposedly successful community proved – predictably – anything but successful:

1813 – Utopian Community Leader Warren Chase Born

On this date the founder of a Fourierite Utopian community in what is now Ripon was born. Their inspiration came from the writings of Charles Fourier, a French Socialist who urged the rebuilding of society from its foundation as the only cure for economic ills such as the depression of 1837. The idea was supported by Horace Greely in New York and caught the eye of Warren Chase. Chase and others built a successful, non-religious communal society in which everyone received wages according to their skill, need, and work ethic.

The community reached their greatest population (180) in 1845 but soon dissipated when members began moving toward agriculture as an economic tool. Families gradually left the community to live in their own houses and work their own land in the same area. In 1850, the community disbanded and $40,000 in assets was divided among the remaining members. Warren Chase moved around the country and finally settled in California, where he held many public offices. [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p. 94-104]

Here’s the Tuesday game in this week’s Sweet Sixteen series from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — January 4-8
Sweet Sixteen
Happy 2016! For each day this week, we’ll give an eight-letter word or phrase and a trivia question. The 16-letter answer to that question (a title, name, or place) uses only the eight letters given.
Example:
HISTOGEN: What Rod Stewart song was his first U.S. #1 after “Maggie May,” five years later?
Answer:
“Tonight’s the Night”
What to Submit:
Submit the 16-letter title, name, or place (as “Tonight’s the Night” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, January 5
TAIL ENDS: What was the title of the 1960s-1980s American editions of the Agatha Christie book also known as And Then There Were None?

 

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