Good morning.

Whitewater will see a mostly cloudy Monday, with a high of fifty-seven.

On this day in 1961, Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American in space. Here’s how the New York Times reported that event:

Cape Canaveral, Fla. — A slim, cool Navy test pilot was rocketed 115 miles into space today.

Thirty-seven-year-old Comdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. thus became the first American space explorer.

Commander Shepard landed safely 302 miles out at sea fifteen minutes after the launching. He was quickly lifted aboard a Marine Corps helicopter.

“Boy, what a ride!” he said, as he was flown to the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain four miles away.

Extensive physical examinations were begun immediately.

Tonight doctors reported Commander Shepard in “excellent” condition, suffering no ill effects.

The near-perfect flight represented the United States’ first major step in the race to explore space with manned space craft.

True, it was only a modest leap compared with the once-around-the-earth orbital flight of Maj. Yuri A. Gagarin of the Soviet Union.

The Russian’s speed of more than 17,000 miles an hour was almost four times Commander Shepard’s 4,500. The distance the Russian traveled was almost 100 times as great.

But Commander Shepard maneuvered his craft in space–something the Russians have not claimed for Major Gagarin.

Puzzability begins a new series, entitled Cine-Ma, this week.  Here’s Monday’s game:

This Week’s Game — May 5-9

Cine-Ma

It’s a Mom-and-Popcorn operation this Mother’s Day week. For each day, we started with the title of a movie and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out the word MOTHER. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)

Example:

***M**  O*  T**  HE*R*

Answer:

Crimes of the Heart

What to Submit:

Submit the movie title (as “Crimes of the Heart” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, May 5

*’M  *OT  *HER*

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a high of fifty-seven.

The Friday FW poll asked if we were Slaves to Our Devices? Responses were almost evenly split between yes and no, with 52.63% of respondents believing that we’re free, but 46.37% believing that our smartphones ands tablets have enslaved us.

It’s getting warmer, but perhaps a video of skiing will make you miss winter.

Perhaps, just a bit?

On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites participate as the Union’s Wilderness Campaign begins:

1864 – (Civil War) Wilderness Campaign Opens in Virginia
Union forces crossed the Rapidan River in Virginia and prepared to fight at the Wilderness the next day. The resulting series of battles between May 5 and June 12, 1864, is called the Wilderness Campaign, or Grant’s Overland Campaign. The 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th and 38th  Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 4th Wisconsin Light Artillery participated in this series of bloody battles. The initial Battle of the Wilderness on May 5-7, 1864, produced nearly 30,000 casualties without giving either side a clear victory.

Good morning.

Sunshine returns to Whitewater, with a partly sunny day and a high of sixty-three. Sunrise today is 5:56 AM and sunset 7:58 PM. The moon is a waxing crescent with twenty percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Training makes a difference, sometimes a critical one:

It’s Machiavelli’s birthday:

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (Italian: [nikko?l? makja?v?lli]; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He was a founder of modern political science, and more specifically political ethics. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, after the Medici had recovered power and he no longer held a position of responsibility in Florence.

I’ll contend that Machiavelli’s greatest work wasn’t The Prince, but his Discourses.  The full-text of that greater work is available online and at Amazon.

It’s also, from 1898, Golda Meir’s birthday:

1898 – Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir Born
On this date, Golda Meir (nee Mabovitch) was born in Kiev, Russia. Economic hardship forced her family to emigrate to the United States in 1906, where they settled in Milwaukee. She graduated from the Milwaukee Normal School (now University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and joined the Poalei Zion, the Milwaukee Labor Zionist Party, in 1915. In 1921, she emigrated to Palestine with her husband, Morris Myerson, where they worked for the establishment of the State of Israel. Meir served as Israel’s Minister of Labor and National Insurance from 1949 through 1956 and as the Foreign Minister until January of 1966. When Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died suddenly in 1969, Meir assumed the post, becoming the world’s third female Prime Minister. She died in Jerusalem on December 8, 1978. [Source: Picturing Golda Meier]

Good morning.

Friday will be cloudy with an even chance of showers, and a high of fifty-four.

On this day in 1933, someone publishes an account of something in Loch Ness that he describes as a monster:

The term “monster” was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1933 by Alex Campbell, the water bailiff for Loch Ness and a part-time journalist, in a report in the Inverness Courier.^[8][9][10] On 4 August 1933, the Courierpublished as a full news item the assertion of a London man, George Spicer, that a few weeks earlier while motoring around the Loch, he and his wife had seen “the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life”, trundling across the road toward the Loch carrying “an animal” in its mouth.^[11] Other letters began appearing in the Courier, often anonymously, with claims of land or water sightings, either on the writer’s part or on the parts of family, acquaintances or stories they remembered being told.^[12]

These stories soon reached the national (and later the international) press, which described a “monster fish”, “sea serpent”, or “dragon”,^[13] eventually settling on “Loch Ness Monster”.^[14]On 6 December 1933 the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published in the Daily Express,^[15] and shortly after the creature received official notice when the Secretary of State for Scotland ordered the police to prevent any attacks on it.^[16] In 1934, interest was further sparked by what is known as The Surgeon’s Photograph. In the same year R. T. Gould published a book,^[17] the first of many that describe the author’s personal investigation and collected record of additional reports pre-dating 1933. Other authors have claimed that sightings of the monster go as far back as the 6th century….

On this day in 1957, Sen. Joe McCarthy dies of liver failure:

1957 – Sen. Joseph McCarthy Dies
On this date, Sen. Joseph McCarthy died of liver failure at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Born in 1908 in Outagamie County, McCarthy studied law at Marquette University. After graduation, he set up practice in Waupaca until WWII broke out; he spent most of the war at a desk as an intelligence officer in the Pacific Theater. Following the war, McCarthy used false and exaggerated statements about his military record to create a public image of “Tail-Gunner Joe” and launch his career in politics. On February 9, 1950, Sen. McCarthy gave his first public speech against communism. and for the next three years he and his staff investigated government departments and questioned a large number of prominent people about their political pasts.

Being accused of possible communist beliefs by his highly publicized committee ruined the careers of hundreds of individuals in government, industry, and the arts. On December 2, 1954, after he had terrorized American public figures for several years, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure McCarthy for “conduct contrary to Senatorial tradition.” He died less then 3 years later, spurned by his party and ignored by the media.  More than 100 picturesfrom all phases of McCarthy’s career are online at our Wisconsin Historical Images site, and relevant documents are provided at Turning Points in Wisconsin History. [Source: Oddball Wisconsin, Jerome Pohlen, 2001, pg. 33]

Here’s the final game in Puzzability‘s Lone Rangers series:

This Week’s Game — April 28-May 2

Lone Rangers

Welcome to the Daily Hitching Post. For each day this week, we started with the name of a well-known person from the days of the Old West and removed all the letters that appear more than once, leaving just the singly occurring letters. Each day’s clue gives the unique letters in order (with any spaces removed), along with the lengths of the name components in parentheses.

Example:

CHIAY (3,8)

Answer:

Doc Holliday

What to Submit:

Submit the full name (as “Doc Holliday” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, May 2

AM (5,5)