Good morning.

Monday brings a probability of afternoon showers or thundershowers and a high of seventy-five.

SpaceX, a private aerospace firm, had a successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule on Friday. Two days’ time later, on Easter, the capsule successful arrived at the International Space Station with tons (literally) of supplies and equipment.

Here’s NASA’s video of the Friday launch:

Today is the day (by tradition from 753 BC) on which Rome is founded.

It’s John Muir’s birthday:

1838 – John Muir Born
On this date John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland. He immigrated with his family to Wisconsin in 1849 and spent his youth working on his father’s farms in Marquette County, experiences that are recounted in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913). In 1868 he moved to Yosemite Valley, California, where he became a conservationist and leader in the forest preserve movement. His work led to the creation of the first national parks, the saving of California’s redwoods, and the founding of the Sierra Club. [Source:  Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 261]

Puzzability has a new series, entitled, Mark Antonyms.  Here’s Monday’s game:

This Week’s Game — April 21-25

Mark Antonyms

We’ve searched high and low for this week’s opposites. For each day, we’ll give definitions of two words that, using different meanings, are antonyms of each other.

Example:

Strange / smooth

Answer:

Odd / even

What to Submit:

Submit the antonym pair (as “Odd / even” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, April 21

Long overhead microphone holder / woman’s measurement

Good morning.

Saturday in town will be beautiful, with sunny skies and a high of sixty-five. Sunrise today is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:42 PM. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase with seventy-eight percent of its visible disk illuminated.

In the FW third-annual Easter candy poll, there’s an upset of sorts – jelly beans bested chocolate rabbits atop the poll. Of all responses, 34.21% were for jelly beans, 26.32% for chocolate rabbits, 21.05% for marshmallow peeps, 11% for other, and 7.89% for Cadbury eggs.

Four-hundred, fifty-nine light years from our planet, there may be a world of similar size with liquid water:

Using the Kepler space telescope, Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center in California and her colleagues detected the planet around a relatively small, cool, reddish star in the constellation Cygnus, which is located about 459 light years from Earth.

Known officially as Kepler-186f, the planet is the outermost of five Earth-size worlds orbiting in that star’s solar system, the scientists said at a news conference Thursday. They also reported their findings in the journal Science.

In the search for worlds where life might take hold, scientists so far have detected 20 potentially habitable planets around other stars. But this one is the first so close in size to Earth that is located within its star’s so-called habitable zone, where it receives the right amount of solar radiation so that water there wouldn’t boil or freeze, the researchers said.

“This is the first validated Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of another star,” Dr. Quintana said. “We can now say other potentially habitable worlds the size of Earth can exist.”

Good morning.

Good Friday in Whitewater will be clear, with a high of fifty-five, and north winds around 5 MPH.

On this day in 1906, an earthquake hits San Francisco:

At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing hundreds of people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.

San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called for the enforcement of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and authorized soldiers to shoot-to-kill anyone found looting. Meanwhile, in the face of significant aftershocks, firefighters and U.S. troops fought desperately to control the ongoing fire, often dynamiting whole city blocks to create firewalls. On April 20, 20,000 refugees trapped by the massive fire were evacuated from the foot of Van Ness Avenue onto the USS Chicago.

By April 23, most fires were extinguished, and authorities commenced the task of rebuilding the devastated metropolis. It was estimated that some 3,000 people died as a result of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the devastating fires it inflicted upon the city. Almost 30,000 buildings were destroyed, including most of the city’s homes and nearly all the central business district.

Here’s Puzzability‘s final game in this week’s Tax Deductions series:

This Week’s Game — April 14-18

Tax Deductions

They say there are two things you can’t avoid, but this week we’re avoiding one of them. For each day, we started with a word or phrase and removed one instance of each of the letters in IRS anywhere in the word or phrase, but in order, to get a new word. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the longer one first.

Example:

Those who provide equipment; soft and bendable

Answer:

Suppliers; supple

What to Submit:

Submit both pieces, with the longer one first (as “Suppliers; supple” in the example), for your answer.

Friday, April 18

April Fool’s Day or May Day, for example; burglary

Good morning.

Thursday will be a partly sunny day, with a high of fifty-five.  

The Fire & Rescue Task Force is scheduled to meet at 7 PM.  

On this day in 1964, Ford Motor Company unveils a company-saving car:

The Ford Mustang, a two-seat, mid-engine sports car, is officially unveiled by Henry Ford II at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, on April 17, 1964. That same day, the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Named for a World War II fighter plane, the Mustang was the first of a type of vehicle that came to be known as a “pony car.” Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations.

On April 17, 1897, Thornton Wilder is born:

1897 – Thornton Wilder Born
On this date Thornton Wilder was born in Madison. A renowned author and playwright, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1937. His plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of our Teeth (1942) won Pulitzer Prizes and have been performed countless times by school and amateur theatrical companies in the decades since.You can read a 1928 article about his Wisconsin roots in our Wisconsin Local History & Biographies collection. [Source: Thornton Wilder Society]

Here’s Puzzability’s Thursday game: