Good morning, Whitewater.
The beginning of our week will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-eight. Sunrise today is 6:58 AM and sunset 6:28 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with ninety-six percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday’s FW poll asked respondents whether they thought a dog (Sammy, a boxer) should be allowed on the sofa. Almost seventy-four percent of respondents said yes, she should; around twenty-six percent of respondents said she shouldn’t.
Every day, countless people use computers to draw, and many of those drawings use curved shapes. How do computers really make those curves? Peter Nowell explains how:
Cubic Bezier Curves – Under the Hood from Peter Nowell on Vimeo.
On this day in 1866, America experiences her first train robbery:
Famous train robbers include Bill Miner, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy. Jesse James is mistakenly thought to have completed the first successful train robbery in the American West when on July 21, 1873 the James-Younger Gang took US $3,000 from a Rock Island Railroad train after derailing it southwest of the town of Adair, Iowa.[1] However, the first peacetime train robbery in the United States actually occurred on October 6, 1866, when robbers boarded the Ohio & Mississippi train shortly after it left Seymour, Indiana. They broke into one safe and tipped the other off the train before jumping off. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency later traced the crime to the Reno Gang. There was one earlier train robbery in May 1865, but because it was committed by armed guerrillas and occurred shortly after the end of the Civil War, it is not considered to be the first peacetime train robbery in the United States. Some sources say that the May 1865 robbery took place at a water siding while the train was stopped taking on water.
On this day in 1917, Wisconsin’s Fighting Bob speaks up for free speech:
1917 – Robert La Follette Supports Free Speech in Wartime
On this date Senator Robert La Follette gave what may have been the most famous speech of his Senate career when he responded to charges of treason with a three hour defense of free speech in wartime. La Follette had voted against a declaration of war as well as several initiatives seen as essential to the war effort by those that supported U.S. involvement in the first World War. His resistance was met with a petition to the Committee on Privileges and Elections that called for La Follette’s expulsion from the Senate. The charges were investigated, but La Follette was cleared of any wrong doing by the committee on January 16, 1919. [Source: United States Senate]
Google-a-Day asks a question about pop culture:
The 2011 Emmy Award winner for “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series,” starred opposite “The Big Easy” actress in the 2011 revival of what Broadway play?