Good morning, Whitewater.
We will have a wintry mix this morning, on a day with a high of thirty-four. Later tonight we will likely see at least an inch of snowfall. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 6:52 PM, for 9h 33m 42s of daytime. It’s a new moon today.
Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM. Among the items on the agenda is a reading of a Complete Streets initiative, so that in future designs planners will take account of pedestrians and cyclists, for example, when building or reconstructing streets. I would hope readers would support the proposal. See, In Support of the Complete Streets Initiative for Whitewater.
Industrialist Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been designing private alternatives for human and cargo transportation to Earth orbit. SpaceX is trying to build a rocket, the Falcon 9, that could land upright after launch, so that it might be reused cheaply. Cheaper spaceflight, needless to say, would mean more spaceflight, and more exploration or industry in orbit. SpaceX’s recent test of a reusable Falcon 9 failed, but it was a near miss – even on an early test, Musk is close to his goal.
Here’s a clip of that test, and although it failed, even on this try it was very close to succeeding (the rocket found its small target even after flight). There’s reason to believe that Musk will succeed, and soon —
On this day in 1981, the Iran hostage crisis ends:
Minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the 40th president of the United States, the 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, are released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis….
President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began between the United States and Iran. On the day of Reagan’s inauguration, the United States freed almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and the hostages were released after 444 days. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet the Americans on their way home.
Google-a-Day asks a geography question:
The mountain range extending along the northern frontier of India was formed as the result of a collision of the Indian subcontinent and what other continent?