Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 6:13 and sunset is 7:39, for 13h 25m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s University Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM this morning, and the Community Development Authority at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution takes effect:

Washington, Aug. 26 — The half-century struggle for woman suffrage in the United States reached its climax at 8 o’clock this morning, when Bainbridge Colby, as Secretary of State, issued his proclamation announcing that the Nineteenth Amendment had become a part of the Constitution of the United States.

The signing of the proclamation took place at that hour at Secretary Colby’s residence, 1507 K Street Northwest, without ceremony of any kind, and the issuance of the proclamation was unaccompanied by the taking of movies or other pictures, despite the fact that the National Woman’s Party, or militant branch of the general suffrage movement, had been anxious to be represented by a delegation of women and to have the historic event filmed for public display and permanent record.

Secretary Colby did not act with undue haste in signing the proclamation, but only after he had given careful study to the packet which arrived by mail during the early morning hours containing the certificate of the Governor of Tennessee that that State’s Legislature had ratified the Congressional resolution submitting the amendment to the States for action.

On this day in 1863, Wisconsin soldiers see action on behalf of the Union:

1863 – (Civil War) Assault at Perryville, Oklahoma
The 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry was among the Union forces who assaulted Perryville, Oklahoma.

A Google a Day asks a pop culture question:

Who is the mother of the mother of the first grandchild of the “Demon of Screamin'”?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our Tuesday will be cloudy with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset 7:40, for 13h 28m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 76.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets this afternoon at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1944, fewer than three months after Allied landings at Normandy, Paris is liberated:

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Aug. 25 — The Paris radio announced late tonight that the French capital had been liberated and that the German commander had signed a document ordering his troops to cease fire immediately.

The announcement followed entry of American and French troops into the capital during the day. There was no immediate confirmation here.

The latest word at headquarters was that American and French troops had joined Fighting French patriots on the Ile de la Cite in the heart of the capital after bitter fighting with Germans and French collaborationist militiamen.

On this day in 1835, Michigan’s actions prove preludes to the formation of the Wisconsin Territory:

1835 – Incorporation of the Wisconsin Internal Improvement Company

On this date the Michigan legislature incorporated the Wisconsin Internal Improvement Company to open communication between Green Bay and the Mississippi by land or water. It was also on this day that the Governor of the Michigan territory (the Wisconsin territory was not yet created), Stevens T. Mason, officially called for the creation of a western legislative council. Both actions were critical to the creation of the Wisconsin Territory.[Source: Card File in WHS Library]

A Google a Day asks about a description from a film:

What kind of parent does a dad describe himself as in the 2012 Academy Award-nominated movie set in Hawaii?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset 7:42, for 13h 30m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Around this day in AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing thousands:

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD was one of the most catastrophic and infamous volcanic eruptions in European history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet.^[1]

Mount Vesuvius spewed a deadly cloud of volcanic gas, stones, and ash to a height of 33 kilometres (21 mi), ejecting molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bombing.^[2] Several Roman settlements were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic surges and ashfall deposits, the most well known being Pompeii and Herculaneum.^[1][2]

The number of deaths is difficult to evaluate. The remains of about 1500 people have been found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, but it is not known whether they represent a small or a large part of the overall deaths….

The year of the eruption is pinned to AD 79 (that is, the corresponding year of the Roman ab urbe condita calendar era) by references in contemporary Roman writers, a number of them apart from Pliny the Younger, and has never been seriously questioned. It is determined by the well-known events of the reign of Titus. Vespasian died that year. When Titus visited Pompeii to give orders for the relief of the displaced population, he was the sole ruler. In the year after the eruption, AD 80, he faced another disaster, a great fire at Rome.

The time of year is stated once in one historical document, the first letter of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus,^[25] as “nonum kal. Septembres”, which is not a regular syntactic unit and has no syntax (the grammarians say, indeclinable), but would seem to be an abbreviation of a standard date. By 79 the Julian Calendar was in use. The inscribing of dates was abbreviational and formulaic. Whether anyone knew exactly what the abbreviation stood for is questionable (compare English Mr. and Mrs.); certainly, literary representations such as Pliny’s left out or misinterpreted key elements that would be required for the understanding of a produced meaning. Pliny’s date (supposing that the date we now find in the text is the same one given by Pliny) would have been a.d. IX kal. sept., to be interpreted as “the ninth day before the Kalends of September”, which would have been eight days before September 1, or August 24 (the Romans counted September 1 as one of the nine)….

On this date in 1970, a bombing on the UW-Madison campus proves deadly:

1970 – Sterling Hall Bombing on UW-Madison Campus
On this date a car bomb exploded outside Sterling Hall, killing research scientist Richard Fassnacht. Sterling Hall was targeted for housing the Army Mathematics Research Center and was bombed in protest of the war in Vietnam. The homemade bomb (2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate soaked in aviation fuel) was detonated by the New Year’s Gang, aka Vanguard of the Revolution, who demanded that a Milwaukee Black Panther official be released from police custody, ROTC be expelled from the UW campus, and “women’s hours” be abolished on campus. The entire New Year’s Gang fled to Canada the evening of the explosion. Four men were charged with this crime: Karleton Armstrong, David Fine, Dwight Armstrong, and Leo Burt. All but Burt were captured and served time for their participation. Leo Burt remains at large.[Source: On Wisconsin Summer 2005]

A Google a Day asks a question about art:

Many of the cave paintings at Lascaux show the animals with heads in profile, but with horns facing forward. This is an example of what convention of representation?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:10 and sunset 7:44, for 13h 33m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Friday FW poll asked readers what they thought of a koala chasing a farmer’s ATV: was it a singular incident, or a harbinger of a koala war? A bit over sixty-three percent of respondents said that the incident was likely a harbinger of a koala war.

A commenter speculated that if koalas can’t swim, they’ll not be able to invade continents beyond Australia. Unfortunately for humanity, one reads that koalas can swim (but have difficulty climbing the sides of pools, for example, once they’re in). We’ll need a better defense than a water barrier, especially if these fanatical marsupials develop a fondness for swimming or floating on the open ocean.

On this day in 1784, for a brief time, North America is home to a would-be country called Franklin:

…four counties in western North Carolina declare their independence as the state of Franklin. The counties lay in what would eventually become Tennessee.

The previous April, the state of North Carolina had ceded its western land claims between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River to the United States Congress. The settlers in this area, known as the Cumberland River Valley, had formed their own independent government from 1772 to 1777 and were concerned that Congress would sell the territory to Spain or France as a means of paying off some of the government’s war debt. As a result, North Carolina retracted its cession and began to organize an administration for the territory.

Simultaneously, representatives from Washington, Sullivan, Spencer (modern-day Hawkins) and Greene counties declared their independence from North Carolina. The following May, the counties petitioned for statehood as “Frankland” to the United States Congress. A simple majority of states favored acceptance of the petition, but it fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass, even after the counties’ changed their proposed name to “Franklin” in an attempt to curry Benjamin Franklin’s and others’ favor.

In defiance of Congress, Franklin survived as an independent nation for four years with its own constitution, Indian treaties and legislated system of barter in lieu of currency, though after only two years, North Carolina set up its own parallel government in the region. Finally, Franklin’s weak economy forced its governor, John Sevier, to approach the Spanish for aid. North Carolina, terrified of having a Spanish client state on its border, arrested Sevier. When Cherokee, Chickamauga and Chickasaw began to attack settlements within Franklin’s borders in 1788, it quickly rejoined North Carolina to gain its militia’s protection from attack.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 6:09 and sunset 7:45, for 13h 36m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

What does sound look like?  It looks like this —

On his arrival at Hartford the President was welcomed by a committee of representative citizens, and then taken for a drive around the city, occupying, with Col. Jacob L. Greene, a handsome victoria automobile, in charge of two expert New York chauffeurs. He was enthusiastically cheered all along the route.

The President expressed his satisfaction at the substitution of drives, for conventional handshaking. this method of entertainment seems to have given the people the opportunity desired of seeing him.