Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday will be foggy in the morning, giving way too afternoon sun and a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 04m 16s of daytime. The mooning is a waning gibbous with 68.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1901, a communications triumph —

Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. The message–simply the Morse-code signal for the letter “s”–traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada….

In 1909, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics with the German radio innovator Ferdinand Braun. After successfully sending radio transmissions from points as far away as England and Australia, Marconi turned his energy to experimenting with shorter, more powerful radio waves. He died in 1937, and on the day of his funeral all British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stations were silent for two minutes in tribute to his contributions to the development of radio.

Google-a-Day has a question about literature:

What city is the setting of the first of two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by the man who introduced us to Blanche and Brick?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be sunny with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 04m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 77% of its visible disk illuminated.

If you’re not yet sure about what you’ll have for lunch today, PES Films helpfully shows the proper technique for making a submarine sandwich —

Google has a doodle today to commemorate the birthday of pioneering American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon:

In 1896, Cannon became a member of “Pickering’s Women”,[10] the women hired by Harvard Observatory director Edward C. Pickering to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue, mapping and defining every star in the sky to photographic magnitude of about 9. Cannon started her work right away, and discovered SS Cygni, a “dwarf nova” that repeats its outbursts about every 60 days.[11]

Anna Draper, the widow of wealthy physician and amateur astronomer Henry Draper, set up a fund to support the work. Men at the laboratory did the labor of operating the telescopes and taking photographs while the women examined the data, carried out astronomical calculations, and cataloged those photographs during the day.[8] Pickering made the Catalogue a long-term project to obtain the optical spectra of as many stars as possible and to index and classify stars by spectra. If making measurements was hard, the development of a reasonable classification was at least as difficult.

Not long after work began on the Draper Catalogue, a disagreement developed as to how to classify the stars. The analysis was first started by Nettie Farrar, who left a few months later to be married. This left the problem to the ideas of Antonia Maury, Henry Draper’s niece, who insisted on a complex classification system and Williamina Fleming, who was overseeing the project for Pickering,[10] and wanted a much more simple, straightforward approach.[6] Cannon negotiated a compromise: she started by examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. To these stars she applied a third system, a division of stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M. Her scheme was based on the strength of the Balmer absorption lines. After absorption lines were understood in terms of stellar temperatures, her initial classification system was rearranged to avoid having to update star catalogues. Cannon published her first catalog of stellar spectra in 1901.

Cannon and the other women at the Observatory were criticized at first for being “out of their place” and not being housewives. In fact, women could only get as high as assistants in this line of work and were only paid 25 cents an hour for seven hours a day, six days a week.[4] Cannon dominated this field because of her “tidiness” and patience for the tedious work, and even helped the men in the observatory gain popularity. Cannon helped broker partnerships and exchanges of equipment between men in the international community and assumed an ambassador-like role outside of it. She wrote books and articles to increase astronomy’s status, and in 1933, she represented professional women at the Worlds Fair in Chicago.[12]

Cannon’s determination and hard work paid off. She classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a total of around 500,000 stars. She also discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references.[11] Cannon could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns and, if using a magnifying glass, could classify stars down to the ninth magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see.[4]

On May 9, 1922, the International Astronomical Union passed the resolution to formally adopt Cannon’s stellar classification system, and with only minor changes, it is still being used for classification today.[8]

Google-a-Day also poses a geography question:

Due to its vast territory, in 2009 a bill was proposed in Russia to reduce “what,” down from eleven?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater brings a high of thirty-one, with clouds in the morning giving way to sunshine this afternoon. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset is 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority Seed Capital Committee meets at 4 PM today, and the CDA Board at 5 PM.

On this day in 1967, Otis Redding and members of his band die in a Madison plane crash:

A plane crash in Madison, Wisconsin, kills soul singer Otis Redding and members of the Bar-Kays band on this day in 1967. The plane crashed into Lake Monona, several miles from the Madison airport.

One survivor, Ben Cauley of the Bar-Kays, later reported that he had been asleep until just before the crash. He saw his friend in the band, Phalon Jones, look out the window of the small plane and exclaim “Oh no!” and, before he knew it, he was in a frigid lake holding onto a seat cushion. The following day, the lake was dragged and the bodies of the victims were recovered. A storm in Madison that day was a factor in the crash but the exact cause was never determined.

Redding was not the only well-known singer to die in a plane crash. In 1959, Buddy Holly, along with the lesser known J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens, were killed in a crash that is thought to have inspired Don McLean’s well-known song “American Pie.” Country singer Patsy Cline died in a 1963 crash. Ten years later, Jim Croce perished in one in Louisiana. Key members of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd died in an accident 1977. Singer John Denver was killed piloting his own plane in 1997.

Four months after his death at the age of 26, Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay,” the last song he ever recorded, reached the top spot on the pop music charts. It was his first No. 1 hit.

Google-a-Day asks a question about geography:

Of the Maya ruins on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, which is the most remote and best known for its series of huge stucco masks?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 06m 27s. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM this afternoon.

On this day in 2000, a 5-4 vote in Bush v. Gore halts vote counting, and likely dooms Vice President Al Gore’s election hopes:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — In a sudden and devastating blow to Vice President Al Gore’s presidential hopes, the United States Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 today to stop the vote counting that had begun hours earlier in Florida. The court set Monday morning for arguments on Gov. George W. Bush’s appeal of the Florida Supreme Court ruling that ordered manual recounts across the state of ballots that initially showed no vote for president.

With the clock ticking inexorably toward a Dec. 12 deadline for certifying electors, the Supreme Court’s order, issued shortly before 3 p.m., could have the effect of erasing the Democrat’s chances that the Florida Supreme Court had so dramatically revived barely 24 hours earlier with its 4-to-3 ruling.

Even if by some chance the United States Supreme Court eventually rules in the vice president’s favor, the ruling could come too late. While not conceding ultimate defeat, David Boies, Mr. Gore’s chief lawyer, said today that “if we had world enough and time,” a short-term stay would make little difference, but that there was now a “very serious issue” as to whether the vote counting could be finished in time even if the court’s eventual ruling allowed it to resume.

On this day in 1844, Milwaukee gets a daily:

1844 – Milwaukee’s First Daily Newspaper Published
On this date Milwaukee’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, was published. David M. Keeler served and manager and C.L. MacArthur was the editor. [Source: History of Milwaukee, Vol. II, p.49]

Google-a-Day asks about football:

What NFL player (Redskins and Vikings) held onto his record as the all-time interception leader until he retired?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Icy road conditions have led to a two-hour delay for Whitewater’s schools. We’ll have a high of thirty-five today, with snow showers (but accumulation of less than one inch). Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM. The moon is waning gibbous with 95.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM. (Update: this meeting has been canceled.)

The Earth’s not flat, but what would life on the planet be like if it were flat? That is, as a thought-experiment, what would it be like if we did live on a giant disk rather than a sphere (assuming a giant disk would retain that shape under gravity’s pressure)?

Vsauce has the answer:

On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt asks Congress for a declaration of war against Japan:

Google-a-Day asks a question about British history:

What was the title of the father of the first child born to the sister of the British monarch who ascended the throne in February 1952?