Good morning, Whitewater.

Independence Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 13m 24s of daytime. We’ve a new moon today.

On this day in 1863, Gen. Grant wins in the west:

The Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, UnionMaj. Gen.Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennesseecrossed the Mississippi River and drove the ConfederateArmy of Mississippi led by Lt. Gen.John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River; therefore, capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy, the Anaconda Plan. When two major assaults (May 19 and 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. With no reinforcement, supplies nearly gone, and after holding out for more than forty days, the garrison finally surrendered on July 4.

The successful ending of the Vicksburg Campaign significantly degraded the ability of the Confederacy to maintain its war effort, as described in the Aftermath section of the campaign article. Some historians—e.g., Ballard, p. 308—suggest that the decisive battle in the campaign was actually the Battle of Champion Hill, which, once won by Grant, made victory in the subsequent siege a foregone conclusion. This action (combined with the surrender of Port Hudson to Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks on July 9) yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict.

The Confederate surrender on July 4, 1863, following the siege at Vicksburg, is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Robert E. Lee‘s defeat at Gettysburg by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade and retreat beginning the same day, the turning point of the war. It cut off the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy, as well as communication with Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department for the remainder of the war.

On this day in 1836, a territorial governor takes his oath:

On this date in Mineral Point, Col. Henry Dodge took the oath of office to become the first Governor of the newly created Territory of Wisconsin. The Territory, previously attached to Michigan, encompassed what is now the states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and portions of North and South Dakota. [Source:History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset is 8:36 PM, for 15h 14m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Sometimes an ordinary dive turns into something more —

On this day in 1863, Union forces repulse Confederates on the third day of fighting at Gettybsurg:

Around 3 p.m., the cannon fire subsided, and 12,500 Southern soldiers stepped from the ridgeline and advanced the three-quarters of a mile (1,200 m) to Cemetery Ridge in what is known to history as “Pickett’s Charge“. As the Confederates approached, there was fierce flanking artillery fire from Union positions on Cemetery Hill and north of Little Round Top, and musket and canister fire from Hancock’s II Corps. In the Union center, the commander of artillery had held fire during the Confederate bombardment (in order to save it for the infantry assault, which Meade had correctly predicted the day before), leading Southern commanders to believe the Northern cannon batteries had been knocked out. However, they opened fire on the Confederate infantry during their approach with devastating results. Nearly one half of the attackers did not return to their own lines.

Although the U.S. line wavered and broke temporarily at a jog called the “Angle” in a low stone fence, just north of a patch of vegetation called the Copse of Trees, reinforcements rushed into the breach, and the Confederate attack was repulsed. The farthest advance of Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead‘s brigade of Maj. Gen. George Pickett‘s division at the Angle is referred to as the “High-water mark of the Confederacy“, arguably representing the closest the South ever came to its goal of achieving independence from the Union via military victory.^[69] Union and Confederate soldiers locked in hand-to-hand combat, attacking with their rifles, bayonets, rocks and even their bare hands. Armistead ordered his Confederates to turn two captured cannons against Union troops, but discovered that there was no ammunition left, the last double canister shots having been used against the charging Confederates. Armistead was shortly after wounded three times.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 15m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 5.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Yesterday I posted a photo of an aurora on Jupiter, but NASA and the European Space Agency have a video recording, too, of that phenomenon on the solar system’s largest world:

On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopts a resolution that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”:

On July 2, South Carolina reversed its position and voted for independence. In the Pennsylvania delegation, Dickinson and Robert Morris abstained, allowing the delegation to vote three-to-two in favor of independence. The tie in the Delaware delegation was broken by the timely arrival of Caesar Rodney, who voted for independence. The New York delegation abstained once again, since they were still not authorized to vote for independence, although they would be allowed to do so by the New York Provincial Congress a week later.^[74] The resolution of independence had been adopted with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention. With this, the colonies had officially severed political ties with Great Britain.^[75]

On this day in 1863, a lieutenant from Wisconsin records events from the second day of fighting at Gettysburg:

Fighting at Gettysburg began in the afternoon on July 2 and lasted until after dark as Union forces repulsed a series of attacks. That night, Union Major General George Meade held a council of leaders to decide what to do next. Lieutenant Frank Haskell, of Madison, was present when they voted to “allow the Rebel to come up and smash his head against [their position] to any reasonable extent he desired, as he had to-day. After some two hours the council dissolved, and the officers went their several ways.”

Good morning, Whitewater.

A new month begins, on a day with increasing sunshine and a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 15m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 12.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers from NASA and the European Space Agency saw and recorded astonishing auroras on Jupiter:

Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, is best known for its colourful storms, the most famous being the Great Red Spot. Now astronomers have focused on another beautiful feature of the planet, using the ultraviolet capabilities of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The extraordinary vivid glows shown in the new observations are known as auroras[1]. They are created when high energy particles enter a planet’s atmosphere near its magnetic poles and collide with atoms of gas. As well as producing beautiful images, this programme aims to determine how various components of Jupiter’s auroras respond to different conditions in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles ejected from the Sun.

This observation programme is perfectly timed as NASA’s Juno spacecraft is currently in the solar wind near Jupiter and will enter the orbit of the planet in early July 2016. While Hubble is observing and measuring the auroras on Jupiter, Juno is measuring the properties of the solar wind itself; a perfect collaboration between a telescope and a space probe [2].

On this day in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg begins:

After his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North—the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Prodded by PresidentAbraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.

Elements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brig. Gen. John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of town to the hills just to the south.

On this day in 1967, it becomes legal to sell margarine in Wisconsin:

1967 – Sale of Oleo Becomes Legal

On this date it became legal to purchase Oleomargarine in Wisconsin. For decades, margarine was considered a contraband spread. Sale of the butter impost0r resulted in fines or possible jail terms. Oleomargarine was sold legally in Illinois and frequently smuggled into Wisconsin.

A Google a Day asks a science question: “What is the atomic weight of the lightest element on the periodic table?”