FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 4.10.16

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be rainy with a high of fifty-one. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:32 PM, for 13h 13m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether a video of an object in the Thames was of a sea monster, an ordinary animal, or a man-made object. Respondents were divided between a man-made object (36.73%), a sea monster (34.69%), and an ordinary animal (28.57%).

Today is the anniversary of the ASPCA‘s founding:

…the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by philanthropist and diplomat Henry Bergh, 54.

In 1863, Bergh had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic post at the Russian court of Czar Alexander II. It was there that he was horrified to witness work horses beaten by their peasant drivers. En route back to America, a June 1865 visit to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in London awakened his determination to secure a charter not only to incorporate the ASPCA but to exercise the power to arrest and prosecute violators of the law.

Back in New York, Bergh pleaded on behalf of “these mute servants of mankind” at a February 8, 1866, meeting at Clinton Hall. He argued that protecting animals was an issue that crossed party lines and class boundaries. “This is a matter purely of conscience; it has no perplexing side issues,” he said. “It is a moral question in all its aspects.” The speech prompted a number of dignitaries to sign his “Declaration of the Rights of Animals.”
Bergh’s impassioned accounts of the horrors inflicted on animals convinced the New York State legislature to pass the charter incorporating the ASPCA on April 10, 1866. Nine days later, the first effective anti-cruelty law in the United States was passed, allowing the ASPCA to investigate complaints of animal cruelty and to make arrests….

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