Good morning.

A sunny Thursday with a high of forty-four awaits.

Over at the Washington Post, they’ve an annual contest in which readers submit Peeps candy dioramas. This year’s winner of the seventh annual contest was Rest in Peeps:

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Peep

Zero Peep Thirty

Peep’s Chili Bowl

In Wisconsin history on this day in 1954, a recall campaign begins (but later falls short):

1954 – McCarthy Recall Campaign Begins in Sauk City
On this date, “Joe Must Go,” a bipartisan grassroots campaign to recall Sen. Joe McCarthy from the Senate, began in earnest with an organizational meeting in Sauk City. The campaign had to collect 403,000 signatures in 60 days to force a recall election. With little money, a hastily thrown together organizational structure, and unenthusiastic or non-existent support from existing organizations (including farmers and organized labor), the group was still able to secure 335,000 signatures. Later in 1954 Sen. McCarthy was publicly censured by his Senate colleagues.  [Source: The History of Wisconsin, v.6: Continuity and change, 1940-1965 (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973-1998).]

Google-a-Day poses a geography question: “What’s the southernmost province of the country that occupies approximately one sixth of the Iberian Peninsula?”

Good morning.

The middle of our week will be mostly cloudy but with a high of forty, and northwest winds 5 to 10 MPH.

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

Dogs are said to be man’s best friend, but they’re dog’s best friend sometimes, too:

On this day in 1912, Japanese cherry trees are first planted along the Potomac as a sign of friendship between Japan and America:

In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, plant two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.

The planting of Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac was first proposed by socialite Eliza Scidmore, who raised money for the endeavor. Helen Taft had lived in Japan while her husband was president of the Philippine Commission, and knowing the beauty of cherry blossoms she embraced Scidmore’s idea. After learning of the first lady’s interest, the Japanese consul in New York suggested making a gift of the trees to the U.S. government from the city of Tokyo.

In January 1910, 2,000 Japanese cherry trees arrived in Washington from Japan but had fallen prey to disease during the journey. In response, a private Japanese citizen donated the funds to transport a new batch of trees, and 3,020 specimens were taken from the famous collection on the bank of the Arakawa River in Adachi Ward, a suburb of Tokyo. In March 1912, the trees arrived in Washington, and on March 27 the first two trees were planted along the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin in a formal ceremony. The rest of the trees were then planted along the basin, in East Potomac Park, and on the White House grounds.

The blossoming trees proved immediately popular with visitors to Washington’s Mall area, and in 1934 city commissioners sponsored a three-day celebration of the late March blossoming of the trees, which grew into the annual Cherry Blossom Festival….

On 3.27.1920 Wisconsin, a national first:

On this date Janesville was chosen as home base for the National Guard’s first tank company in the United States, the 32nd. When activated for duty during WWII, the unit was called Company A, 192nd Tank Battalion. This company fought in the Philippines during World War II. Many of the ninty-nine Janesville men who became prisoners of war and were tortured during the infamous Bataan Death March, were affiliated with this tank company. Its story is told in a compelling collection of documents and interviews created by high school students in nearby Maywood, Illinois. [Source: Janesville Gazette.]

Google-a-Day asks American history question: “What was the charge of the 1807 indictment by the man who was chosen as Vice President on February 17, 1801, by the House of Representatives after thirty-six ballots?”

Good morning.

A chance of flurries but a high of thirty-eight: early spring in Whitewater. Today, we’ll have 12h 26m of sunlight, 13h 23m of daylight, and a full moon.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets today at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1979, a peace that now seems faded and tenuous by contrast with more hopeful times:

In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties….

For their achievement, Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace. Sadat’s peace efforts were not so highly acclaimed in the Arab world–Egypt was suspended from the Arab League, and on October 6, 1981, Muslim extremists assassinated Sadat in Cairo. Nevertheless, the peace process continued without Sadat, and in 1982 Egypt formally established diplomatic relations with Israel.

Sometimes someone just wants to play:

Google-a-Day asks about South Africa: “What structure on the South African coast has a range of 63km and releases flashes every thirty seconds?”

Good morning.

Our week begins with a chance of flurries and a high of thirty-five.

Downtown Whitewater’s Design Committee meets this morning at 8 AM. The organization, generally, has new board members, and much of the year yet ahead. One hopes for the best.

Sometimes people chase storms, and sometimes, as in Mulwala, New South Wales, storms chase people. In the latter case, one gets a great video, with lots of explicit language from the surprised people:

Today is the 1911 anniversary of a notorious industrial fire:

…The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan. It was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. At the time of the fire, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and it could hold only 12 people at a time. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent theft by the workers and the other opened inward only. The fire escape, as all would come to see, was shoddily constructed, and could not support the weight of more than a few women at a time.

Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again….

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. The manager turned the fire hose on it, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic ensued as the workers fled to every exit. The elevator broke down after only four trips, and women began jumping down the shaft to their deaths. Those who fled down the wrong set of stairs were trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth floor began jumping out the windows, which created a problem for the firefighters whose hoses were crushed by falling bodies. Also, the firefighters’ ladders stretched only as high as the seventh floor, and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who were jumping three at a time.

Blanck and Harris were on the building’s top floor with some workers when the fire broke out. They were able to escape by climbing onto the roof and hopping to an adjoining building.

Google asks a science question: “When birds remain airborne and gliding without flapping their wings, on what are they gliding?”

Good morning.

Snow is likely this Palm Sunday in Whitewater, with a daytime accumulation of less than an inch. If that forecast should prove correct, March 18th will remain our last day with accumulation over one inch.

The Punxsutawney Phil poll is now closed, over 81% of respondents believing him guilty following his recent criminal indictment in Ohio.

On this day in 1989, a huge oil spill off Alaska:

…one of the nation’s worst oil spills occurred as the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude.

Film fans may recall that Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (Universal, 1995) makes reference to the accident while depicting a dystopian future.

On this day in 1874,

Harry Houdini Born

On this date magician Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, though he later claimed to have been born on April 6, 1874, in Appleton, Wisconsin. At the age of 13 he left Appleton, where his family had emigrated, for New York City, and began his career as an escape artist and magician. [Source: History Museum at the Castle]

Google-a-Day poses a Civil War question: “What notable river was close by the campaign in which Lee defeated the much larger army led by Major General Joseph Hooker?”

Good morning.

Saturday will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-five. There will be 12h 17m of sunlight, 13h 13m of daylight, and tomorrow will offer three minutes more.

From the east coast, video of a presumed meteor streaking across the sky:

…the initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll correct,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”).

Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the “O.K. Club,” which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of “OK” to denigrate Van Buren’s political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation “OK” to cover up his own misspelling of “all correct.”

The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind “OK” was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of “OK,” ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, “OK” has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports.

Google has a sports question: “In 1963, in London, looking for his 19th consecutive win, over 50,000 people came to see what athlete battle Henry Cooper?”