Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty. Sunrise today is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 01m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Prosthetics allow not only people, but animals, mobility they would otherwise not have. In the video below, a canine walks for the first time, with the help of 3D-printed prosthetics —

On this day in 1957, an American nuclear plant first began producing electricity for commercial use:

Washington, Dec. 18–The country’s first large-scale civilian atomic power plant started generating electricity for commercial use today.

This milestone of the atomic age was reached early this morning when the atomic power plant at Shippingport, Pa., began producing electricity for consumers in the Pittsburgh area.

At 12:39 A. M., the Atomic Energy Commission announced, the atomic-powered generator of the Shippingport plant was tied in with the electrical system of the Duquesne Light Company.

Gradually the fission heat from the large atomic reactor was increased. By 3 A. M. the plant was producing more than the 8,000 kilowatts it consumes and was sending electricity through the Duquesne Light transmission lines.

Google-a-Day asks a science question:

If you want to find the energy quantum of light, you multiply the frequency of the radiation (v) by “h”. What is “h”?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater arrives with partly cloudy skies and a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 02m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1903, the Wright Brothers accomplish a feat never before accomplished in all history, and in so doing deeply influence the course of future events:

The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft, designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as “…the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard.”[2] The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale described the 1903 flight during the 100th anniversary in 2003 as “the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.”[3]….

Upon returning to Kitty Hawk in 1903, the Wrights completed assembly of the Flyer while practicing on the 1902 Glider from the previous season. On December 14, 1903, they felt ready for their first attempt at powered flight. With the help of men from the nearby government life-saving station, the Wrights moved the Flyer and its launching rail to the incline of a nearby sand dune, Big Kill Devil Hill, intending to make a gravity-assisted takeoff. The brothers tossed a coin to decide who would get the first chance at piloting, and Wilbur won. The airplane left the rail, but Wilbur pulled up too sharply, stalled, and came down in about three seconds with minor damage.

Repairs after the abortive first flight took three days. When they were ready again on December 17, the wind was averaging more than 20 mph, so the brothers laid the launching rail on level ground, pointed into the wind, near their camp. This time the wind, instead of an inclined launch, helped provide the necessary airspeed for takeoff. Because Wilbur already had the first chance, Orville took his turn at the controls. His first flight lasted 12 seconds for a total distance of 120 ft (36.5 m) – shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747, as noted by observers in the 2003 commemoration of the first flight.[1][7]

Taking turns, the Wrights made four brief, low-altitude flights that day. The flight paths were all essentially straight; turns were not attempted. Each flight ended in a bumpy and unintended “landing”. The last flight, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds, much longer than each of the three previous flights of 120, 175 and 200 feet. The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again.

Google a Day asks a question about biology:

Which phylum of the gymnosperms includes only a single living species?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday brings showers in the morning to the Whippet City, on a day with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:19 AM & sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

At 4:30 PM today, there’s a scheduled meeting of Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission. Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Commission meets at 6:15 PM, and thereafter Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1773, patriots of New England throw Britain a party:

The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as “the Destruction of the Tea in Boston”[2]) was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event of American history, and other political protests such as the Tea Party movement after 2010 explicitly refer to it.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their rights as Englishmen to “No taxation without representation,” that is, be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a British parliament in which they were not represented. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston’s commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

Google-a-Day asks about an urban-dwelling animal:

As a testament to its adaptability in urban areas, what kind of animal strolled into a popular sandwich shop in the Chicago Loop area in the spring of 2007?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town begins with fog, giving way to afternoon showers and a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 45s of daytime. The moons is a waning crescent with 40.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

This is the time of year when meteor showers appearing in the sky near the constellation Gemini captivate skywatchers in both hemispheres. They Sydney observatory has photos of the event —

@ObservingSpace See this image taken from Australia by David Finlay #geminids #meteor pic.twitter.com/XjqTCfmrd2

— Sydney Observatory (@sydneyobs) December 15, 2014

On this day in 1791, after Virginia votes to ratify articles three to twelve of a proposed Bill of Rights, they become law as the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution:

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed to assuage the fears of Anti-Federalists who had opposed Constitutional ratification, these amendments guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. Originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, however, most were subsequently applied to the government of each state by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, through a process known as incorporation.

On June 8, 1789 Representative James Madison introduced a series of thirty-nine amendments to the constitution in the House of Representatives. Among his recommendations Madison proposed opening up the Constitution and inserting specific rights limiting the power of Congress in Article One, Section 9. Seven of these limitations would became part of the ten ratified Bill of Rights amendments. Ultimately, on September 25, 1789, Congress approved twelve articles of amendment to the Constitution and submitted them to the states for ratification. Contrary to Madison’s original proposal that the articles be incorporated into the main body of the Constitution, they were proposed as “supplemental” additions to it. On December 15, 1791, Articles Three–Twelve, having been ratified by the required number of states, became Amendments One–Ten of the Constitution.

On May 7, 1992, after an unprecedented period of 202 years, 225 days, Article Two crossed the Constitutional threshold for ratification and became the Twenty-seventh Amendment. As a result, Article One alone remains unratified and still pending before the states.

The Bill of Rights enumerates freedoms not explicitly indicated in the main body of the Constitution, such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, and free assembly; the right to keep and bear arms; freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, security in personal effects, and freedom from warrants issued without probable cause; indictment by a grand jury for any capital or “infamous crime”; guarantee of a speedy, public trial with an impartial jury; and prohibition of double jeopardy. In addition, the Bill of Rights reserves for the people any rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States. The Bill was influenced by George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights 1689, and earlier English political documents such as Magna Carta (1215).

In our state’s history on this day in 1846, Wisconsinites reject a drafted state constitution:

1847 – Wisconsin’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes in Madison
On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage. [Source: Attainment of Statehood by Milo M. Quaife]

Google-a-Day asks a question about a prominent political family:

At what school did the man who was the great grandson of one president and the grandson of another president become a history professor in the 1870s?

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ve a mild Sunday ahead, with cloudy skies but a high temperature of forty-six. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 11s of daytime.The moon is a waning gibbous with 49.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked if The Bold Bakery, a shop that offers cakes with insulting inscriptions, had a clever idea or was off the mark. A majority of respondents (55.56%) thought that it was a clever idea.

On this day in 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team reach the South Pole, becoming the first men to do so:

The first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four others arrived at the pole on 14 December 1911,[n 1] five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and later learned that Scott and his four companions had died on their return journey.

Amundsen’s plans had focused on the Arctic and the conquest of the North Pole by means of an extended drift in an icebound ship. He obtained the use of Fridtjof Nansen’s polar exploration ship Fram, and undertook extensive fundraising. Preparations for this expedition were disrupted when, in 1909, the rival American explorers Frederick Cook and Robert E. Peary each claimed to have reached the North Pole. Amundsen then changed his plan and began to prepare for a conquest of the South Pole; uncertain of the extent to which the public and his backers would support him, he kept this revised objective secret. When he set out in June 1910, even most of his crew believed they were embarking on an Arctic drift.

Amundsen made his Antarctic base, “Framheim”, in the Bay of Whales on the Great Ice Barrier. After months of preparation, depot-laying and a false start that ended in near-disaster, he and his party set out for the pole in October 1911. In the course of their journey they discovered the Axel Heiberg Glacier, which provided their route to the polar plateau and ultimately to the South Pole. The party’s mastery of the use of skis and their expertise with sledge dogs ensured rapid and relatively trouble-free travel. Other achievements of the expedition included the first exploration of King Edward VII Land and an extensive oceanographic cruise.

The expedition’s success was widely applauded. The story of Scott’s heroic failure overshadowed its achievement in the United Kingdom, unable to accept that a Norwegian had been the first person to set foot in the South Pole, but not in the rest of the world. Amundsen’s decision to keep his true plans secret until the last moment was criticised by some. Recent polar historians have more fully recognised the skill and courage of Amundsen’s party; the permanent scientific base at the pole bears his name, together with that of Scott.

On this day in 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivers an address on the American West:

1893 – Frederick Jackson Turner Delivers Frontier Address
On this date Frederick Jackson Turner delivered the “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. [Source: SHSW Proceedings, 1893, pg. 79-112]

See, at the National Humanities Center, The Significance of the Frontier in American History 1893.

Good morning, Whitewater.

This Saturday, we’ll have fog in the morning with cloudy skies thereafter. The high today will be forty-one. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 41s of daytime.

It’s 12.13.14, and as a close friend told me yesterday, one won’t again have the chance to write the day’s date as three sequential numbers until 2103.

There are some other interesting dates yet ahead, before then, if not sequential ones:

Although 12-13-14 will be the last sequential MM-DD-YY date for 89 years, we won’t have to wait until 2103 for similarly interesting dates to pop up. On Google+, John Judy points out a few: “Jan. 2, 2034 gives you something similar [1-2-34], while Jan. 23, 2045 lets you use all double-digit listing [1-23-45]. Feb. 2, 2022 is going to be the next one to get headlines, though [2-22-22].” I would argue that April 3, 2021 — 4-3-21 — might be worthy of note as well.

Fun stuff.

On this day in 2000, Al Gore concedes the presidential election to George W. Bush.

In our state’s history on this date, in 1864, Wisconsinites defending the Union push farther into Georgia:

1864 – (Civil War) 3rd Wisconsin Light Artillery Reaches Savannah, Georgia
The 3rd Wisconsin Light Artillery arrived at the front lines for the Battle of Savannah, Georgia.