Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday will bring a probability of rain and a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27, for 9h 02m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

California’s Venice Beach has never looked better than by drone’s eye view:

On this day in 1776, Washington is victorious at Trenton:

George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River, which occurred on the night of December 25–26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, was the first move in a surprise attack organized by George Washington against the Hessian forces in Trenton, New Jersey on the morning of December 26. Planned in partial secrecy, Washington led a column of Continental Army troops across the icy Delaware Riverin a logistically challenging and dangerous operation. Other planned crossings in support of the operation were either called off or ineffective, but this did not prevent Washington from surprising and defeating the troops of Johann Rall quartered in Trenton. The army crossed the river back to Pennsylvania, this time laden with prisoners and military stores taken as a result of the battle….

On the morning of December 26, as soon as the army was ready, Washington ordered it split into two columns, one under the command of himself and General Greene, the second under General Sullivan. The Sullivan column would take River Road from Bear Tavern to Trenton while Washington’s column would follow Pennington Road, a parallel route that lay a few miles inland from the river. Only three Americans were killed and six wounded, while 22 Hessians were killed with 98 wounded.^[34] The Americans captured 1,000 prisoners and seized muskets, powder, and artillery.^[34][35]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Christmas eve will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:25, for 9h 02m 04s of daytime.  We’ve a full moon, with 99% of he moon’s visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1923, Pres. Coolidge becomes the first chief executive to light a national Christmas tree:

The idea of a decorated, outdoor national Christmas tree originated with Frederick Morris Feiker. Feiker was a highly educated engineer who had been a technical journalist for General Electric from 1906-1907 and editor of Electrical World and Electrical Merchandising from 1915 to 1921.^[5][6] In 1921, Feiker joined the personal staff of United States Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as a press aide.^[5][7] The Society for Electrical Development (an electrical industry trade group) was looking for a way to encourage people to purchase more electric Christmas lights and use electricity,^[8] and Feiker suggested that President Calvin Coolidge personally light the tree as a way of giving Christmas lights prominence and social cachet.^[9] Vermont Republican Senator Frank L. Greene accompanied Feiker to the White House, where they successfully convinced Coolidge to light the tree.^[9]

Feiker arranged for Paul Moody, president of Middlebury College in Vermont to donate a 48-foot (15 m) tall balsam fir as the first National Christmas Tree.^[9][10][11] Middlebury College alumni paid to have it shipped via express to Washington.^[9] The branches on the lower 10 feet (3.0 m) of the tree were damaged in transit, so cut branches from a local evergreen were tied to the tree to restore its appearance.^[12]

Feiker put together a group of local civic organizations to erect the tree in the center of the Ellipse^[13][14] and decorate it, and the U.S. electrical industry donated $5,000 worth of electrical cables (which were buried under the Ellipse and provided the tree with electricity).^[9] The site for the tree was personally approved by Grace Coolidge.^[15] Arrangements were also made to have 3,000 city school children present to sing Christmas carols and the United States Marine Band to play music.^[16] The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) agreed to broadcast the event on radio.^[9] The tree was decorated with more than 2,500 electric bulbs in red, white, and green donated by the Electric League of Washington.^[10]

At 3:00 P.M. on December 24, 1923, a 100-voice choir from the First Congregational Church assembled on the South Portico of the White House and began a two-hour concert of Christmas carols.^[17] At 5:00 P.M. (dusk) on Christmas Eve,^[17] President Coolidge touched a button at the foot of the tree which lit the ornaments,^[17][18] but he did not speak.^[9]

On this day in 1814, the War of 1812 ends:

On this date the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the the War of 1812 which was fought between the United States and Great Britain from June 1812 to the spring of 1815 (news of the treaty took several months to reach the frontiers of No. America). The treaty provided for the cessation of hostilities, the restoration of conquests, and a commission to settle boundary disputes. John Quincy Adams served as the chief negotiator for the United States. The treaty formalized U.S. possession of land which included present-day Wisconsin. [Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in town will be warm, with a high of fifty-six, on a day of rain and scattered thundershowers. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:25, for 9h 01m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1783, America’s victory having been made formal under the Treaty of Paris, Gen. Washington resigns his command:

“Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task; which however was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven….

“Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take any leave of all the employments of public life.”

On this day in 1865, the 13th Wisconsin returns:

1865 – (Civil War) The 13th Wisconsin Infantry returns home

The 13th Wisconsin Infantry returned home to Madison to be discharged. During its service it had moved through Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee. The regiment lost 193 men during service. Five enlisted men were killed and 188 enlisted men died from disease..

Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s the first day of winter in the Whippet City, and this day arrives with a high of forty degrees, morning fog, and afternoon clouds. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset 4:24 for 9h 01m 43s of daytime.

Nine hours, one minute, and forty-three seconds of daytime isn’t much sunshine, but from the perspective of stargazers it’s an offering of plentiful evening skies.

Anyone thinking carefully about human history has reason to be confident in America and her future. Our best days lie ahead. One small but significant confirmation of that observation is to be found in SpaceX’s successful launch and return upright of an orbital rocket:

The third attempt at a historic reusable-rocket milestone was the charm for SpaceX.

The private spaceflight companybrought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a soft touchdown tonight (Dec. 21), pulling off history’s first-ever rocket landing during an orbital launch. (Blue Origin, the company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, landed its New Shepard booster successfully last month, but that occurred during a suborbital test.) The Falcon 9 mission also delivered 11 commercial satellites into orbit for SpaceX customer ORBCOMM.

“I do think it’s a revolutionary moment. No one has ever brought an orbital class booster back intact,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told reporters in a teleconference after the launch and landing success. “We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that also deployed 11 satellites. This is a fundamental step change compared to any other rocket that’s ever flown.” [SpaceX’s Epic Falcon 9 Rocket Landing in Pictures]

For more, see Wow! SpaceX Lands Orbital Rocket Successfully in Historic First @ Space.com.

On this day in 1862, the 17th Wisconsin deploys to protect Union supplies:

1862 – (Civil War) The 17th Wisconsin Infantry protects supplies in Tennessee

The 17th Wisconsin Infantry was ordered to protect Grand Junction, Tennessee, after the loss of Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday brings precipitation, but not snow: we’ll have a rainy Monday morning in Whitewater, with a cloudy afternoon, and a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset 4;24, for 9h 01m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1898, a nineteenth-century power couple makes a discovery:

Radium is a chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is almost colorless, but it readily combines with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) on exposure to air, forming a black surface layer of radium nitride (Ra₃N₂). All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226, which has a half-life of 1600 years and decays into radon gas (specifically the isotope radon-222). When radium decays, ionizing radiation is a product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radioluminescence…..

Radium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, in a uraninite sample.^[14] While studying the mineral earlier, the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. They separated out an element similar to bismuth from pitchblende in July 1898, that turned out to be polonium. They then separated out a radioactive mixture consisting mostly of two components: compounds of barium, which gave a brilliant green flame color, and unknown radioactive compounds which gave carmine spectral lines that had never been documented before. The Curies found the radioactive compounds to be very similar to the barium compounds, except that they were more insoluble. This made it possible for the Curies to separate out the radioactive compounds and discover a new element in them. The Curies announced their discovery to the French Academy of Sciences on 26 December 1898.^[15][16] The naming of radium dates to about 1899, from the French word radium, formed in Modern Latin from radius (ray): this was in recognition of radium’s power of emitting energy in the form of rays.^[17][18][19]

On 12.21.1879, brewing in Wisconsin experiences a setback:

1879 – Fire Destroys Phillip Brewing Company

On this date fire destroyed the Phillip Brewing Company’s malthouse, grain elevators and office building in Milwaukee. [Source: Pabst Brewery History]