Good morning.
For Whitewater today, it’s likely to be a cloudy day with a high temperature of forty-two. In Anchorage, the forecast calls for a cloudy day, but with temperatures in the teens to lower twenties.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1864,
Emil Seidel was born in Ashland, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Wisconsin when he was a child. As a young man he lived in Germany where he trained as a woodcarver. While in Germany, Seidel became a socialist and when he returned to the United States he joined the Socialist Party of America. He settled in Milwaukee and in 1904 Seidel and eight other socialists were elected as city aldermen.
In 1910, the Socialist Party in Milwaukee selected Seidel as their candidate for mayor. With the support of Victor Berger’s newspaper, the Milwaukee Leader, and the city’s large German-born population, Seidel became the first socialist mayor of a major city in the United States.
One of Seidel’s achievements was to introduce the country’s first worker’s compensation program in 1911. Other initiatives included adult and worker education classes and free medical and dental examinations for school children. Emil Seidel also served as a city alderman from 1916 to 1920 and again from 1932 to 1936. He died on 24th June, 1947. [Source: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Archives].
Here’s a trailer, for an upcoming film, about the world’s only sloth orphanage, in Costa Rica. Enjoy — I think it’s impossible not to like this trailer —
The film will appear on Animal Planet this weekend:
The trailer is just a taste of the new documentary, “Too Cute! Baby Sloths,” airing Saturday Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Animal Planet. The show is filmmaker Lucy Cooke’s follow-up to her wildly popular internet video “Meet the Sloths.” Both were shot at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica.
The sanctuary takes in any sloth in need, but is mostly populated by orphaned baby sloths who lost their mothers to power lines or road traffic or other accidents. There are currently around 160 sloths there.