Good morning.

Our week begins with sunny and hot skies, a high of ninety, and southwest winds around 10 mph.

On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment went into effect, with no public, signing ceremony beforehand:

Washington, Aug. 26 — The half-century struggle for woman suffrage in the United States reached its climax at 8 o’clock this morning, when Bainbridge Colby, as Secretary of State, issued his proclamation announcing that the Nineteenth Amendment had become a part of the Constitution of the United States.

The signing of the proclamation took place at that hour at Secretary Colby’s residence, 1507 K Street Northwest, without ceremony of any kind, and the issuance of the proclamation was unaccompanied by the taking of movies or other pictures, despite the fact that the National Woman’s Party, or militant branch of the general suffrage movement, had been anxious to be represented by a delegation of women and to have the historic event filmed for public display and permanent record.

It’s more than funny that the New York Times account refers to the National Woman’s Party as a militant movement. Our definition of that term has changed.

We think of sharks as swimmers, but some of them look more like walkers:

For the week of August 26 to 30, Puzzability offers a back-to-school series entitled, Welcome, students:

Welcome, Students
For this week’s class act, we started each day with a word or phrase, added the seven letters in the word STUDENT, and rearranged all the letters to get a new phrase. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the shorter one first.
Example:
Skating venues; Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man love interest
Answer:
Rinks; Kirsten Dunst
What to Submit:
Submit both pieces, with the shorter one first (as “Rinks; Kirsten Dunst” in the example), for your answer.

Here’s today’s puzzle:

Monday, August 26
Pickled Korean specialty dish; wet blanket

Good morning.

Whitewater will have a sunny Sunday, with a high of eighty-eight. Sunrise was at 6:12 AM and sunset will be 7:41 PM. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase with 75% of its visible disk illuminated.

And of the moon, on this day in 1835, a Great Moon Hoax began:

On this day in 1835, the first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appears in the New York Sun newspaper.

Known collectively as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The byline was Dr. Andrew Grant, described as a colleague of Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer of the day. Herschel had in fact traveled to Capetown, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new telescope. As Grant described it, Herschel had found evidence of life forms on the moon, including such fantastic animals as unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats. The articles also offered vivid description of the moon’s geography, complete with massive craters, enormous amethyst crystals, rushing rivers and lush vegetation….

Readers were completely taken in by the story, however, and failed to recognize it as satire. The craze over Herschel’s supposed discoveries even fooled a committee of Yale University scientists, who traveled to New York in search of the Edinburgh Journal articles. After Sun employees sent them back and forth between the printing and editorial offices, hoping to discourage them, the scientists returned to New Haven without realizing they had been tricked.

On September 16, 1835, the Sun admitted the articles had been a hoax. People were generally amused by the whole thing, and sales of the paper didn’t suffer….

Good morning.

It’s a beautiful day in Whitewater, with sunny skies, a daytime high of eighty-two ahead, and light winds from the south at 5 to 10 mph.

Ever wonder about when to use who and whom? The Oatmeal.com has you covered:

Easily resolved! How and why to use whom in a sentence – The Oatmeal http://t.co/JLse7exeda

— John Adams (@DailyAdams) August 21, 2013

If you had been living in Pompeii on this day in the year 79, you would have experienced nature’s full fury:

At noon on August 24, 79 A.D., this pleasure and prosperity came to an end when the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city’s occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.

A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained. This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city.

The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead….

According to Pliny the Younger’s account, the eruption lasted 18 hours. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material. Some residents of Pompeii later returned to dig out their destroyed homes and salvage their valuables, but many treasures were left and then forgotten.