Good morning.

We’ll have a day of light snow or flurries today, with only a slight accumulation of less than half and inch, and a high of seventeen.

On this day in 1917, Congress overrides Pres. Wilson’s veto, and passes immigration restrictions:

With more than a two-thirds majority, Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passes the Immigration Act. The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asiatic laborers, except for those from countries with special treaties or agreements with the United States, such as the Philippines.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States received a majority of the world’s immigrants, with 1.3 million immigrants passing through New York’s Ellis Island in 1907 alone. Various restrictions had been applied against immigrants since the 1890s, but most of those seeking entrance into the United States were accepted.

However, in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston and subsequently petitioned the U.S. government to legislate that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language before being accepted. The organization hoped to quell the recent surge of lower-class immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Congress passed a literacy bill in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. In early 1917, with America’s entrance into World War I three months away, xenophobia was at a new high, and a bill restricting immigration was passed over President Wilson’s veto.

On February 5, 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens:

1849 – University of Wisconsin opens
On this day in 1849 the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts. The university was initially housed at the Madison Female Academy building, which had been provided free of charge by the city. The course of study was English grammar; arithmetic; ancient and modern geography; elements of history; algebra; Caesar’s Commentaries; the Aeneid of Virgil (six books); Sallust; select orations of Cicero; Greek; the Anabasis of Xenophon; antiquities of Greece and Rome; penmanship, reading, composition and declamation. Also offered were book-keeping, geometry, and surveying. Tuition was “twenty dollars per scholar, per annum.” For a detailed recollection of early UW-Madison life, see the memoirs of Mrs. W.F. Allen [Source: History of the University of Wisconsin, Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1900]

Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — February 3-7

Horizontal Holds

Everything is edited for television this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known TV series and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out a word that’s a clue to the series title. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)

Example:

******,  SH*  **OT*

Answer:

Murder, She Wrote

What to Submit:

Submit the series title (as “Murder, She Wrote” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, February 5

***D  *ING*O*

Good morning.

We’ll have about an even chance of snow during the day, and a probability of snow this evening, with a daytime high temperature of twenty-one.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1789, the Electoral College makes its pick: “George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by all 69 presidential electors who cast their votes.”

Puzzability‘s Tuesday game inits Horizontal Holds series is out:

This Week’s Game — February 3-7

Horizontal Holds

Everything is edited for television this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known TV series and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out a word that’s a clue to the series title. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)

Example:

******,  SH*  **OT*

Answer:

Murder, She Wrote

What to Submit:

Submit the series title (as “Murder, She Wrote” in the example) for your answer.

Tuesday, February 4

*H*  **UNG  ***  **E  R*****S*

Good morning.

Our week begins with sunny skies and a high of nineteen. Sunrise today is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:11 PM.

The Super Bowl now over, those of us who thought that Denver would win can at least console ourselves that there’s no second-guessing to afflict us; the outcome wasn’t close enough to inspire alternative theories of the result.

On this day in 1865, Union and Confederate leaders discuss peace:

In January, Union troops captured Fort Fisher and effectively closed Wilmington, North Carolina, the last major port open to blockade runners. Davis conferred with his vice president, Alexander Stephens, who recommended that a peace commission be appointed to explore a possible armistice. Davis sent Stephens and two others to meet with Lincoln at Hampton Roads.

The meeting convened on February 3. Stephens asked if there was any way to stop the war and Lincoln replied that the only way was “for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.” The delegation underestimated Lincoln’s resolve to make the end of slavery a necessary condition for any peace. The president also insisted on immediate reunification and the laying down of Confederate arms before anything else was discussed. In short, the Union was in such an advantageous position that Lincoln did not need to concede any issues to the Confederates. Robert M.T. Hunter, a member of the delegation, commented that Lincoln was offering little except the unconditional surrender of the South.

After less than five hours, the conference ended and the delegation left with no concessions. The war continued for more than two months.

This day in 1959 is the day the music died:

Bad winter weather and a bus breakdown prompted rock-and-roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper to rent a plane to continue on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Icy roads and treacherous weather had nearly undermined their performances in Green Bay and Appleton that weekend, so after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, they boarded a four-seat airplane. The three performers and pilot Roger Peterson perished when the plane crashed about 1:00 AM on Monday, February 3rd (“The Day the Music Died,” according to singer Don McLean in his song “American Pie”) . [Source: Mark Steuer; Wikipedia]

Puzzability‘s new game is about television show titles:

This Week’s Game — February 3-7

Horizontal Holds

Everything is edited for television this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known TV series and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out a word that’s a clue to the series title. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)

Example:

******,  SH*  **OT*

Answer:

Murder, She Wrote

What to Submit:

Submit the series title (as “Murder, She Wrote” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, February 3

**STE*  ED

Good morning.

Earlier today, prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, and so predicted six more weeks of winter. In the USA Today story linked above, reporter Doyle Rice connects Groundhog Day to the celebration of Candlemas:

Groundhog Day has its origins in an ancient celebration of Candlemas, a point midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, according to the climate center.

Superstition has it that fair weather was seen as a prediction of a stormy and cold second half to winter, as noted in this Old English saying:

“If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Winter has another flight.

If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,

Winter will not come again.”

National Geographic’s published 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Groundhogs (of the ordinary kind.)

Meanwhile, in Whitewater, we can expect a Sunday of sunshine and a thirteen-degree high temperature.

Friday’s FW poll results are in, and 54.55% of respondents picked Denver to win the Super Bowl, with 45.45% selecting Seattle.

On this day in 1905, professional baseball makes its debut in the Badger State:

1905 – Professional Baseball Arrives in Wisconsin
On this date the Wisconsin State League was formed, bringing professional baseball to five Wisconsin cities. The six-team league began play the following summer with franchises in Beloit, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Wausau, and Freeport, Illinois. The league lasted through 1914, although its named was changed to Wisconsin-Illinois in 1908.

Good morning.

Whitewater’s month begins with a high of twenty-four, and snow throughout the day amounting to one to three inches.

Google has a doodle on its search page today celebrating the life of Harriet Tubman.

Born a slave in 1820, living until 1913, and for that time a life of accomplishment:

As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a severe head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream experiences, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or “Moses”, as she was called) “never lost a passenger”.[2] Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1834.

When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women’s suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped found years earlier.