We have a lovely day ahead: sunny, with a high of sixty-seven, and southwest winds of ten to fifteen mph.
On this day in 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano explodes, killing dozens.
On this day in 1863, Wisconsin regiments begin participating in the Siege of Vicksburg:
1863 – (Civil War) Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Begins
After nearly three weeks spent encircling Vicksburg, Mississippi, Union forces had bottled up their enemy inside the city and prepared to attack it. Seventeen different Wisconsin regiments were involved in the assault that began the next day (8th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th and 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st, 6th and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries as well as the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry).
We’ll have a mostly sunny day with a high of sixty-nine for Saturday’s citywide rummage sale. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:13 PM. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase with eighty-nine percent of its visible disk illuminated.
1673 – Jolliet and Marquette Expedition Gets Underway
On this date Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and five French voyageurs departed from the mission of St. Ignace, at the head of Lake Michigan, to reconnoitre the Mississippi River. The party traveled in two canoes throughout the summer of 1673, traveling across Wisconsin, down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, and back again. [Source: Historic Diaries: Marquette & Joliet, 1673]
In the servile rush to defend every big institution, it might help to consider that publishing about a criminal investigation, while simultaneously writing in the same item about an employee’s administrative suspension, can leave an innocent employee looking like a criminal suspect.
Following up with a ‘clarification’ a day afterward is better than no follow-up, but it still leaves a publisher mired in misleading reporting.
Conflating stories of administrative and criminal actions is a bush-league mistake, and is simply evidence of poor judgment.
In New Jersey, on a highway clearly marked with warnings against truck traffic, a motorist followed and recorded a truck before and after it struck an overpass.
The motorist knew that the truck was too large to fit underneath the bridges above the highway, and that it was only a matter of time before the truck hit one of those bridges.
Here’s the question: should the motorist have merely recorded the trucker, or tried to warn him? (Admittedly, the trucker was foolish to ignore signs along the road warning against truck traffic on a highway with low overpasses.)
On this date, seventy-five members of the Janesville-based 32nd Tank Company and 121st Field Artillery were mobilized to quell potential violence in the Wisconsin farmers’ statewide milk strike. The strike was called to protest low milk prices and protesters employed “milk dumping” as their main tactic. The following day, Private Harry Wolfe, a tank company member, was assaulted during strike-related violence that erupted in Waukesha County. [Source: Janesville Gazette].
Puzzability‘s Just Drop It! series concludes with Friday’s game:
This Week’s Game — May 12-16
Just Drop It!
Sometimes, it goes without saying. For each day this week, we started with a word that contains the two-letter chunk IT and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer IT word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Einstein from England
Answer:
Britain brain
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the IT word first (as “Britain brain” in the example), for your answer.
Perhaps you’re in a company, or on a committee, in which you feel that there’s never any progress. Your meetings lead only to more meetings, and others’ preoccupation with details inhibits good results (or any results).
Google, in a Web ad for its video conferencing services, understands how you feel (and wants to help).
There are always a number of accidents, crimes, or tragedies in a community. One hopes for as few as possible.
The best way for government to address those misfortunes is to act quickly and openly to take whatever actions law and charity require.
Along the way, however, it might be useful for big talking officials to comprehend that the exaggeration of good news is both laughable on its own and also a source of added scorn when contrasted with actual, bad news.
Honesty going in brings sympathy during bad times; exaggeration going in brings frustration and derision during bad times.
One would think that so many clever officials would think so, too, but then they’ve the problem of not looking ahead.
We’ll have rain today, in the =morning, and then a cloudy day with a high in the low fifties. Sunrise is 5;32 AM and sunset 8:11 PM. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase with ninety-nine percent of the its visible disk illuminated.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created a brief animated film about the formation of galaxies. Video and description below:
Galaxies are collections of stars, gas, dust and dark matter held together by gravity. Their appearance and composition are shaped over billions of years by interactions with groups of stars and other galaxies. Using supercomputers, scientists can look back in time and simulate how a galaxy may have formed in the early universe and grown into what we see today. Galaxies are thought to begin as small clouds of stars and dust swirling through space. As other clouds get close, gravity sends these objects careening into one another and knits them into larger spinning packs. Subsequent collisions can sling material toward a galaxy’s outskirts, creating extensive spiral arms filled with colonies of stars. Watch the video to see this process unfold.
On this day in 1756, a world war officially begins after England declares war on France, in a conflict later to claim around a million lives:
The Seven Years’ War was a war that took place between 1754 and 1763 with the main conflict being in the seven-year period 1756–1763. It involved most of the great powers of the time and affected Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines. In the historiography of some countries, the war is alternatively named after combatants in the respective theatres: the French and Indian War as it is known in the United States or the War of the Conquest as it is known in French-speaking Canada, while it is called the Seven Years’ War in English-speaking Canada (North America, 1754–63);Pomeranian War (with Sweden and Prussia, 1757–62); Third Carnatic War (on the Indian subcontinent, 1757–63); and Third Silesian War (with Prussia and Austria, 1756–63).
The war ended with the Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain and the Treaty of Hubertusburg between Saxony, Austria and Prussia, both in 1763. The war was characterized in Europe by sieges and arson of towns as well as open battles involving extremely heavy losses; overall, some 900,000 to 1,400,000 people died.
Puzzability‘s Just Drop It! series continues with Thursday’s game:
This Week’s Game — May 12-16
Just Drop It!
Sometimes, it goes without saying. For each day this week, we started with a word that contains the two-letter chunk IT and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer IT word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Einstein from England
Answer:
Britain brain
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the IT word first (as “Britain brain” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday, May 15
Sauce for meat formed by letting the heavy bits sink to the bottom
The video, apparently compiled from security-camera footage of a California home, is entitled, ‘My cat saved my son.’
(Note: The last ten seconds show injuries for which the boy received medical treatment. His mother reports that the child needed stitches but is otherwise fine.)
Downtown Whitewater volunteers and supporters: help us give the downtown a little “spit and polish” ahead of UW-Whitewater graduation this weekend!
This will be a light cleanup, after the major cleanup April 26.
When: Thursday, May 15, from 8 to 10 am.
Where: Meet at Discover Whitewater (150 West Main Street).
* We’ll be sweeping the sidewalks along Main Street and picking up trash.
* Come for however long you can. We’ll have tools and gloves.
* Look for downtown photos on our Facebook page.
We’re at mid-week in the Whippet City, with a Wednesday that will reach a high of fifty-nine, under partly cloudy skies.
There is a special session of the Whitewater School Board tonight at 6 PM.
Some people worry about our nation’s future. They can now put their minds at ease. Online retailer Vat19 is offering customers the world’s largest gummy bear: “The World’s Largest Gummy Bear is the lion of the candy world. There is no candy more magnificent or more powerful. This five-pound beast is the equivalent of 1,400 regular sized gummy bears…..”
Oh, yes. That’s the stuff. America’s going to be just fine.
On this day in 1804, Lewis and Clark begin their expedition across North America:
The Corps of Discovery departed from Camp Dubois at 4 p.m. on May 14, 1804, and met up with Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri, a short time later, marking the beginning of the voyage to the Pacific coast. The Corps followed the Missouri River westward. Soon they passed La Charrette, the last Euro-American settlement on the Missouri River.
The expedition followed the Missouri through what is now Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis. He was the only member of the expedition to die, and was among the first to sign up with the Corps of Discovery. He was buried at a bluff by the river, now named after him, in what is now Sioux City, Iowa. His burial site was marked with a cedar post on which was inscribed his name and day of death. A mile up the river the expedition camped at a small river which they named Floyd’s River.[40][41][42] During the final week of August, Lewis and Clark reached the edge of the Great Plains, a place abounding with elk, deer, bison, and beavers.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition established relations with two dozen Indian nations, without whose help the expedition would have risked starvation during the harsh winters and/or become hopelessly lost in the vast ranges of the Rocky Mountains.[43]
Sometimes, it goes without saying. For each day this week, we started with a word that contains the two-letter chunk IT and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer IT word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Einstein from England
Answer:
Britain brain
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the IT word first (as “Britain brain” in the example), for your answer.
Wednesday, May 14
Penalty for keeping a library book past its due date, but not forever
