Good morning, Whitewater.
Thursday in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:55 PM, for 9h 37m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The prototype 747 was displayed to the public for the first time on 30 September 1968. Via Wikipedia.
On this day in 1970, the first jumbo jet enters commercial service:
….On January 15, 1970, First Lady of the United States Pat Nixon christened Pan Am’s first 747, at Dulles International Airport (later Washington Dulles International Airport) in the presence of Pan Am chairman Najeeb Halaby. Instead of champagne, red, white, and blue water was sprayed on the aircraft. The 747 entered service on January 22, 1970, on Pan Am’s New York–London route;[61] the flight had been planned for the evening of January 21, but engine overheating made the original aircraft unusable. Finding a substitute delayed the flight by more than six hours to the following day.[2]
On the 747-100 and 747-200, a spiral staircase connected the main and upper decks. Previously, Boeing used a spiral staircase in its Model 377 Stratocruiser back in 1946.
The 747 enjoyed a fairly smooth introduction into service, overcoming concerns that some airports would not be able to accommodate an aircraft that large.[62] Although technical problems occurred, they were relatively minor and quickly solved.[63] After the aircraft’s introduction with Pan Am, other airlines that had bought the 747 to stay competitive began to put their own 747s into service.[64] Boeing estimated that half of the early 747 sales were to airlines desiring the aircraft’s long range rather than its payload capacity.[65][66] While the 747 had the lowest potential operating cost per seat, this could only be achieved when the aircraft was fully loaded; costs per seat increased rapidly as occupancy declined. A moderately loaded 747, one with only 70 percent of its seats occupied, used more than 95 percent of the fuel needed by a fully occupied 747.[67]….
On this day in 1964, Wisconsin produces a really big piece of cheese:
1964 – World’s Largest Block of Cheese Produced
On this date The world’s largest cheese of the time was manufactured in Wisconsin. The block of cheddar was produced from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consumed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire. A replica is displayed in Neilsville in the specially designed “Cheesemobile”, a semi-tractor trailer in which the original cheese toured. [Source: American Profile, December 16, 2001]
Google-a-Day asks a question about American history:
Who is generally regarded as one of the very first Americans to die in the struggle for liberty from British Rule?