Good morning, Whitewater.

A new month begins, with only four days until Tuesday’s election. We’ll have sunny skies and a high of forty-five in the Whippet City.

The FW Halloween poll results are in, and vampires have won the most responses, with 32.26% of the total. Last year, with the same choices available, ghosts led with 28.89%.

What’s it look like – observed closely – when a drop of water hits a pool of that same liquid? It look like this, as recorded by scientists of fluid dynamics in Brazil:

On this day in 1952, America first tests a hydrogen bomb:

The idea of a thermonuclear fusion bomb ignited by a smaller fission bomb was first proposed by Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in 1941 at the start of what would become the Manhattan Project.[3] Teller spent most of the Manhattan Project attempting to figure out how to make the design work, to some degree neglecting his assigned work on the Manhattan Project fission bomb program. His difficult and devil’s advocate attitude in discussions led Robert Oppenheimer to sidetrack him and other “problem” physicists into the super program to smooth his way.

Stanislaw Ulam, a coworker of Teller, made the first key conceptual leaps towards a workable fusion design. Ulam’s two innovations which rendered the fusion bomb practical were that compression of the thermonuclear fuel before extreme heating was a practical path towards the conditions needed for fusion, and the idea of staging or placing a separate thermonuclear component outside a fission primary component, and somehow using the primary to compress the secondary. Teller then realized that the gamma and X-ray radiation produced in the primary could transfer enough energy into the secondary to create a successful implosion and fusion burn, if the whole assembly was wrapped in a hohlraum or radiation case.[3] Teller and his various proponents and detractors later disputed the degree to which Ulam had contributed to the theories underlying this mechanism. Indeed, shortly before his death, and in a last-ditch effort to discredit Ulam’s contributions, Teller claimed that one of his own “graduate students” had proposed the mechanism.

The “George” shot of Operation Greenhouse of 9 May 1951 tested the basic concept for the first time on a very small scale. As the first successful (uncontrolled) release of nuclear fusion energy, which made up a small fraction of the 225kt total yield,[19] it raised expectations to a near certainty that the concept would work.

On November 1, 1952, the Teller–Ulam configuration was tested at full scale in the “Ivy Mike” shot at an island in the Enewetak Atoll, with a yield of 10.4 megatons (over 450 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II). The device, dubbed the Sausage, used an extra-large fission bomb as a “trigger” and liquid deuterium—kept in its liquid state by 20 short tons (18 metric tons) of cryogenic equipment—as its fusion fuel, and weighed around 80 short tons (70 metric tons) altogether.

A pen magnate is born on this day in 1863:

1863 – George Safford Parker Born
On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.280]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Whitewater will see a bit of snow in the early morning, on a chilly Halloween day with a high of thirty-nine.

Google has a doodle (one of several, really) to mark Halloween:

On this day in 1968, a win:

1968 – Milwaukee Bucks Win First Game
On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]

Google-a-Day asks about music:

During what musical period did composers perfect and standardize the concerto, sonata and symphony forms?

Here’s an animated graphic from the Saline Project‘s animators for the day:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be cloudy with a high of fifty-four, and just a one-in-five chance of rain.

On this day in 1938, Orson Welles captivates and scares America with a radio play:

“The War of the Worlds” is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for causing mass panic, although the extent of this panic is debated.[3]

The first two thirds of the 62-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to some listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show (it ran without commercial breaks), adding to the program’s realism, and that others were primarily listening to Edgar Bergen and only tuned in to the show during a musical interlude, thereby missing the introduction that proved the show was a drama.[3] In the days following the adaptation, there was widespread outrage in the media.[4] The program’s news-bulletin format was described as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers (which had lost advertising revenue to radio) and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.[3] Despite these complaints—or perhaps in part because of them—the episode secured Welles’s fame as a dramatist.

On this day in 1914, Wisconsin gets her first 4-H Club:

1914 – First 4-H Club in Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Linn Junior Farmers Club in Walworth County was organized. This club was started five months after Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act which created the Cooperative Extension Service whereby federal, state, and county governments participate in the county agent system. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]

Google-a-Day asks a question about a band:

The main character in the Broadway production of “Jersey Boys” was the lead singer for a band that celebrated their first commercial release in what year?

For today, from the Saline Project‘s animators, let’s go with a Loch Ness Monster for Halloween:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-eight.

On this day in 1929, Wall Street (and so America) suffers its greatest stock crash. Here’s how the New York Times reported the losses:

Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.

There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.

From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street’s history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.

Efforts to estimate yesterday’s market losses in dollars are futile because of the vast number of securities quoted over the counter and on out-of-town exchanges on which no calculations are possible. However, it was estimated that 880 issues, on the New York Stock Exchange, lost between $8,000,000,000 and $9,000,000,000 yesterday. Added to that loss is to be reckoned the depreciation on issues on the Curb Market, in the over the counter market and on other exchanges.

Google-a-Day asks a sports question:

In the longest-running prime time sports program on TV, what was the nickname of the person who replaced Don Meredith during the 1974 pre-season?

From the Saline Project‘s Emmy-winning team, here’s a Halloween animation of Frankenstein’s monster: