Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday will be partly sunny, with a one-third chance of scattered showers.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission is listed to meet at 6 PM tonight.

It’s Bastille Day:

The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France on the morning of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. The prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming but was a symbol of the abuses of the monarchy: its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.

In France, Le quatorze juillet (14 July) is a public holiday, usually called Bastille Day in English….

On 19 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were the Catholic Church and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis XVI started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The assembly renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution.

In the wake of the 11 July dismissal of Jacques Necker, the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain ammunition and gunpowder for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed. Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance.

When the crowd—eventually reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises—proved a fair match for the fort’s defenders, Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre. However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. Ninety-eight attackers and just one defender died in the actual fighting, but in the aftermath, de Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was the ‘prévôt des marchands’ (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles.

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 4 August feudalism was abolished and on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was proclaimed.

On this day in 1948, Janesville tries the latest:

1948 – Janesville Sprays for Bugs

On this date, intending to create a bug-free environment, Janesville tested a DDT fogging machine that quickly emitted a “smokescreen of insect-killing fog.” City officials hoped to persuade the county to buy the machine for use by all municipalities or to buy it jointly with Beloit. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Google-a-Day asks a science question:

If the Saffir-Simpson Scale had existed at the time, the storm described in Erik Larson’s 1999 book would have been rated as what?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in the Whippet City will be mostly sunny, with a high of eighty-one, and just a one-in-five chance of afternoon showers. Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:33 PM. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase with ninety-seven percent of its visible disk illuminated.

They’ve had a season of widespread forest fires in Canada, and the effects of these fires are so clear that they may be seen from space —

For more about the photograph and the fires, see Smoke From Canada’s Copious Wildfires As Seen From Space.

On this day in 1787, Congress under the Articles of Confederation passes the Northwest Ordinance:

The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or The Ordinance of 1787) was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States, passed July 13, 1787. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory, the firstorganized territory of the United States, from lands south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River.

On August 7, 1789, President George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 into law after the newly created U.S. Congress reaffirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under theConstitution. The Ordinance purported to be not merely legislation that could later be amended by Congress, but rather “the following articles shall be considered as Articles of compact between the original States and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent….”^[1]

Arguably the single most important piece of legislation passed by members of the earlier Continental Congresses other than the Declaration of Independence, it established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation. It is the most important legislation that Congress has passed with regard to American public domain lands.^[2]

Good morning, Whitewater.

We have a likelihood of late afternoon thunderstorms today, with a high of eighty-one.

If conventional race cars produce a powerful roar, then what’s the sound of an electric race car?

They sound like something from Star Wars:

On this day in 1984, Mondale chooses Ferraro:

Walter Mondale, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, announces that he has chosen Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. Ferraro, a daughter of Italian immigrants, had previously gained notoriety as a vocal advocate of women’s rights in Congress.

Four days after Ferraro was named vice presidential candidate, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York opened the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco with an impassioned retort to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s contention that the United States was a “shining city on a hill.” Citing widespread poverty and racial strife, Cuomo derided President Reagan as oblivious to the needs and problems of many of America’s citizens. His enthusiastic keynote address inaugurated a convention that saw Ferraro become the first woman nominated by a major party for the vice presidency. However, Mondale, the former U.S. vice president under Jimmy Carter, proved a lackluster choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.

On November 6, President Reagan and Vice President George Bush defeated the Mondale-Ferraro ticket in the greatest Republican landslide in U.S. history. The Republicans carried every state but Minnesota–Mondale’s home state.

Ferraro left Congress in 1985. In 1992 and 1998, she made unsuccessful bids for a U.S. Senate seat. During President Bill Clinton’s administration, she was a permanent member on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

On this day in 1865, with the war won, Wisconsin regiments muster out of service to the Union:

1865 – (Civil War) 16th and 36th Infantry regiments muster out
The 16th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments mustered out. The 16th had participated in the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Jonesboro, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and the siege of Savannah. It lost 399 men during service. The 36th had only mustered in March 23, 1864, and remained around the Washington, D.C., for the duration of its service. Its brief service included the Appomattox Campaign, Hatcher’s Run, and the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. It lost 342 men in a little over a year.