Good morning.

Wednesday’s forecast calls for cloudy skies and a high of thirty-five. We’ll have snow this week, but it’s not forecast to begin during daytime Wednesday. There will be 9h 2m of sunlight today, 10h 6m of daylight, and tomorrow will be one minute shorter.

On this day in 1776, America first saw one of her finest, and most inspirational, political essays:

These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

When these phrases appeared in the pages of the Pennsylvania Journal for the first time, General George Washington‘s troops were encamped at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River opposite Trenton, New Jersey. In August, they had suffered humiliating defeats and lost New York City to British troops. Between September and December, 11,000 American volunteers gave up the fight and returned to their families. General Washington could foresee the destiny of a rebellion without an army if the rest of his men returned home when their service contracts expired on December 31. He knew that without an upswing in morale and a significant victory, the American Revolution would come to a swift and humiliating end.

Thomas Paine was similarly astute. His Common Sense was the clarion call that began the revolution. As Washington’s troops retreated from New York through New Jersey, Paine again rose to the challenge of literary warfare. With American Crisis, he delivered the words that would salvage the revolution.

Washington commanded that the freshly printed pamphlet be read aloud to his dispirited men; the rousing prose had its intended effect. Reciting Paine’s impassioned words, the beleaguered troops mustered their remaining hopes for victory and crossed the icy Delaware River to defeat hung-over Hessians on Christmas night and on January 2, the British army’s best general, Earl Cornwallis, at the Battle of Princeton.

Also on this day, in 1813, Wisconsin governor Nelson Dewey was born:

1813 – Nelson Dewey Born
On this date Nelson Dewey, the first governor of the state of Wisconsin, was born in Lebanon, Connecticut. The son of Ebenezer Dewey and Lucy Webster, Nelson arrived in the Wisconsin Territory in 1836. He studied law, began a legal and business career in Lancaster, and made a considerable sum of money in land and lead mining investments. At the age of 35, he became the first state governor and served two terms, from June 7, 1848 to January 5, 1852.

In later years, Dewey suffered misfortune. On Thanksgiving day, 1873, his mansion at Stonefield was gutted by fire, after which his wife and children moved to Europe for several years. In 1886 he began divorce proceedings against his wife on grounds of desertion but later dropped the suit. For more than 10 years Dewey lived alone. During the final 5 years of his life he had no contact with his family. He lost a fortune in a railroad deal and was ruined financially.

In February 1889, he suffered a stroke while arguing a court case in Lancaster. Nelson Dewey died on July 21, 1889, in Cassville, where he is buried. [Source: First Ladies of Wisconsin-The Governors’ Wives by Nancy G. Williams]

Google-a-Day offers up a combined sports and television question: “Who is the only NFL player married to a former million-dollar winner of “Survivor”?”

Good morning.

It’s a snowy day ahead for Whitewater, with only a slight accumulation expected, at a high of thirty.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM, where they will consider both an appointee to that body and a proposed backyard chicken ordinance.

On this day in 1957, the first civilian nuclear power plant went online:

Electricity has been produced before from atomic reactors, but never before in such quantity from a strictly civilian plant.

The Commission asserted in its announcement that the Shippingport plant is “the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses.”

Since October, 1956, the British atomic-power plant at Calder Hall has been generating up to 100,000 kilowatts of electricity, but this plant was designed to produce plutonium for weapons as well as electricity.

The Soviet Union has announced ambitious plans for atomic power but has disclosed only the operation of a 5,000-kilowatt plant.

From Wisconsin history on this day in 1950, here’s what might have been:

1950 – Lake Geneva Vies for Air Force Academy
On this date the city of Lake Geneva put forth efforts to be the future site for the U.S. Air Force Academy. A federal selection committee arrived to inspect the 100-room Stone Manor on Geneva Lake’s south shore and considered it as a possible headquarters building. The Air Force’s college for officers was eventually located in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1958. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Google-a-Day asks about MVPs: “Besides being honored as their respective leagues’ 1963 MVPs, what did Sandy Koufax and Elston Howard have in common?”

Good morning.

Our week begins with cloudy skies and a high of thirty five. We’ll have 9h 2m of sunlight and 10h 6m of daylight, with tomorrow being one minute shorter.

On this day in 1903, the first success of one of the greatest inventions of all history, reported later with marked understatement in the New York Times:

The inventors of the airship which is said to have made several successful flights in North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, are anxious to sell the use of their device to the Government. They claim that they have solved the problem of aerial navigation, and have never made a failure of any attempt to fly.

Their machine is an adaptation of the box kite idea, with a propeller working on a perpendicular shaft to raise or lower the craft, and another working on a horizontal shaft to send it forward. The machine, it is said, can be raised or lowered with perfect control, and can carry a strong gasoline engine capable of making a speed of ten miles an hour.

The test made in North Carolina will be fully reported to the Ordnance Board of the War Department, and if the machine commends itself sufficiently, further tests will be made in the vicinity of Washington, and an effort made to arrange a sale of the device to the Government. The use to which the Government would put it would be in scouting and signal work, and possibly torpedo warfare.

From Google-a-Day, a question about American literature, and history: “What state holds a real life contest and celebration commemorating Mark Twain’s short story about the out-of-towner and the compulsive gambler?”

Good morning.

It’s a a cloudy day for us, with a high of forty-two, today.

On 12.16.1773, the original tea party:

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.

When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.

Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

Google-a-Day has a science question: “What is the name of the famous Scot, born in 1997, who was an identical twin to her mother, born six years earlier?”

Good morning.

We’ve a rainy Saturday ahead, with a high of forty-four, and rainfall in an amount between a quarter and half of an inch.

On this day in 1791, a triumph of American liberty:

…Virginia becomes the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Before theMassachusetts ratifying convention would accept the Constitution, which they finally did in February 1788, the document’s Federalist supporters had to promise to create a Bill of Rights to be amended to the Constitution immediately upon the creation of a new government under the document.

The Anti-Federalist critics of the document, who were afraid that a too-strong federal government would become just another sort of the monarchical regime from which they had recently been freed, believed that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government by outlining its rights but failing to delineate the rights of the individuals living under it. The promise of a Bill of Rights to do just that helped to assuage the Anti-Federalists’ concerns.

The newly elected Congress drafted the Bill of Rights on December 25, 1789. Virginia’s ratification on this day in 1791 created the three-fourths majority necessary for the ten amendments to become law…

The Washington Post showcases the recent Geminid meteor shower with a slideshow at the paper’s website.  They’ve some fine photos on display.

In 1847, our state’s second constitutional convention began:

1847 – Wisconsin’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes in Madison
On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage. [Source: Attainment of Statehood by Milo M. Quaife]

Google’s daily puzzle asks about geography and military history: “How many main islands comprise the only British territory that was occupied by Germany during WWII?”