Good morning, Whitewater.
Good Friday in Whitewater will see a high of forty-eight and gradually clearer skies. Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 7:14 PM, for 12h 27m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1911, America experiences an industrial tragedy:
In one of the darkest moments of America’s industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers, on this day in 1911….
The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. At the time of the fire, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and it could hold only 12 people at a time. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent theft by the workers and the other opened inward only. The fire escape, as all would come to see, was shoddily constructed, and could not support the weight of more than a few women at a time….
On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. The manager turned the fire hose on it, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic ensued as the workers fled to every exit. The elevator broke down after only four trips, and women began jumping down the shaft to their deaths. Those who fled down the wrong set of stairs were trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth floor began jumping out the windows, which created a problem for the firefighters whose hoses were crushed by falling bodies. Also, the firefighters’ ladders stretched only as high as the seventh floor, and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who were jumping three at a time.
On this day in 1865, the 36th and 38th engage Confederates in Virginia:
1865 – (Civil War) Battle of Fort Stedman, Virginia
The 36th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in the Battle of Fort Stedman, Virginia, during the Siege of Petersburg. Confederate troops temporarily broke through the Union lines and captured the fort but soon lost it to superior numbers.