Good morning.

Whitewater’s week ends with sunny skies and a high temperature of fifty-six.

On this day in 1909, explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole. The claim was later confirmed by the Navigation Foundation in 1989.

The Wisconsin Historical Society records today as a day in 1831 when Wisconsin lost some of her original residents:

1831 – Sauk Indians Leave Illinois & Wisconsin

On this date, in the spring of 1831, the Sauk Indians led by Chief Keokuk left their ancestral home near the mouth of the Rock River and moved across the Mississippi River to Iowa to fulfill the terms of a treaty signed in 1804. Many of the tribe, however, believed the treaty to be invalid and the following spring, when the U.S. government failed to provide them with promised supplies, this dissatisfied faction led by Black Hawk returned to their homeland on the Rock River, precipitating the Black Hawk War. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

Google’s daily puzzle asks about an animal, its senses, and the Eiffel tower during wartime: “A particular type of animal served as a lookout atop the Eiffel Tower during World War I. Which of the animal’s five senses made it the logical choice for the duty?”

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Thursday looks to be a mostly sunny day with a high temperature of fifty-four.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1860,

Wisconsin Congressman Challenged to Duel

On this date, with the threat of civil war hanging in the air, John F. Potter, a Wisconsin representative in Congress, was challenged to a duel by Virgina representative Roger Pryor. Potter, a Northern Republican, had become a target of Southerners during heated debates over slavery. After one exchange, Pryor challenged Potter to a duel and Potter, as the one challenged, specified that bowie knives be used at a distance of four feet. Pryor refused and Potter became famous in the anti-slavery movement. Two years later, when Republicans convened in Chicago, Potter was given a seven foot blade as a tribute; the knife hung with pride during all the sessions of the convention.  Before his death, Potter remembered the duel and proclaimed, “I felt it was a national matter – not any private quarrel – and I was willing to make sacrifices.” [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes]

Our present politics in Madison and Washington, however contentious, are nowhere near so acrimonious.

It’s a day before Friday Catblogging, but I wanted to catch up today with a story about a cat who survived a nineteen-floor fall in Boston.

Impressive.

From Google’s daily puzzle, something of China and tunnels: “China recently completed a tunnel that goes beneath the Pearl River. How many minutes would it take you to go through it by train?”

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Wednesday will be a sunny day, with a high of fifty-nine. Not a bad Wednesday, at all.

I’ll have a political recap later today of Whitewater’s elections, for Common Council, for the Whitewater Schools referendum, and a post about county election websites from across the area. However you voted, don’t you feel better today, for having voted? I know I do. The day after an election should, fundamentally, always feel better.

In the city today, there will be a meeting of the Landmarks Commission at 5 PM.

Why did the dodo become extinct? Perhaps their demise was more the result of nature than human predation:

An extended drought that struck Mauritius about 4200 years ago turned one of the island’s few sources of fresh water into a muddy death trap for dodos, giant tortoises, and other wildlife, a new study suggests. The excavations have yielded the fossils of small creatures–including insects, bats, and snails–as well as the pollen and seeds of plants that lived in the area, giving scientists a much more comprehensive look at the dodo’s ecosystem.

Mauritius, an island nation in the southwest Indian Ocean about 870 kilometers east of Madagascar, is famed as the home of the dodo, a flightless, turkey-sized relative of pigeons and doves whose name has become synonymous with extinction. Even though dodos died out in the late 1600s, about 80 years after Europeans first colonized the islands, only a few descriptions of the bird exist, and those accounts are often contradictory, says Hanneke Meijer, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, several excavations on the island recovered large amounts of dodo remains, but at the time it wasn’t routine to collect information that could provide ecological context.

See, Sid Perkins’s Death by Dry Spell.

Google’s daily puzzle tests knowledge of biology: “If one monozygotic twin has an innie, is it guaranteed that the other will as well?”