Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-seven. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset 7:37, for 13h 22m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Downtown Whitewater’s Board meets this morning at 8 AM.

Owing to the decades-long embargo, Cubans have kept older American cars running as best they could. Here are some of the classic cars still running on the streets of Havana:

On this day in 1883, a devastating volcanic explosion takes places:

The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau (also called Krakatoa), a small, uninhabited volcanic island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia, on this day in 1883. Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people.

Krakatau exhibited its first stirrings in more than 200 years on May 20, 1883. A German warship passing by reported a seven-mile high cloud of ash and dust over Krakatau. For the next two months, similar explosions would be witnessed by commercial liners and natives on nearby Java and Sumatra. With little to no idea of the impending catastrophe, the local inhabitants greeted the volcanic activity with festive excitement.

On August 26 and August 27, excitement turned to horror as Krakatau literally blew itself apart, setting off a chain of natural disasters that would be felt around the world for years to come. An enormous blast on the afternoon of August 26 destroyed the northern two-thirds of the island; as it plunged into the Sunda Strait, between the Java Sea and Indian Ocean, the gushing mountain generated a series of pyroclastic flows (fast-moving fluid bodies of molten gas, ash and rock) and monstrous tsunamis that swept over nearby coastlines. Four more eruptions beginning at 5:30 a.m. the following day proved cataclysmic. The explosions could be heard as far as 3,000 miles away, and ash was propelled to a height of 50 miles. Fine dust from the explosion drifted around the earth, causing spectacular sunsets and forming an atmospheric veil that lowered temperatures worldwide by several degrees.

Of the estimated 36,000 deaths resulting from the eruption, at least 31,000 were caused by the tsunamis created when much of the island fell into the water. The greatest of these waves measured 120 feet high, and washed over nearby islands, stripping away vegetation and carrying people out to sea. Another 4,500 people were scorched to death from the pyroclastic flows that rolled over the sea, stretching as far as 40 miles, according to some sources.

In addition to Krakatau, which is still active, Indonesia has another 130 active volcanoes, the most of any country in the world.

On this day in 1878, a patent for a true innovation in writing and communication:

On this date Christopher Latham Sholes patented the typewriter. The idea for this invention began at Kleinsteuber’s Machine Shop in Milwaukee in the late 1860s. A mechanical engineer by training, Sholes, along with associates Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, spent hours tinkering with the idea. They mounted the key of an old telegraph instrument on a base and tapped down on it to hit carbon & paper against a glass plate. This idea was simple, but in 1868 the mere idea that type striking against paper might produce an image was a novelty. Sholes proceeded to construct a machine to reproduce the entire alphabet. The prototype was sent to Washington as the required Patent Model. This original model still exists at the Smithsonian. Investor James Densmore provided the marketing impetus which eventually brought the machine to the Remington Arms Company. Although Remington mass-marketed his typewriter beginning in 1874, it was not an instant success. A few years later, improvements made by Remington engineers gave the machine its market appeal and sales skyrocketed. [Source: Wisconsin Lore and Legends, p.41]

A Google a Day asks a question about literature:

What poem title did T. S. Eliot say he created by combining the titles of a romance by William Morris with the title of a Rudyard Kipling poem?

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?