Good morning, Whitewater.
Tuesday in town will be cloudy with something less than one inch of snow, and a daytime high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 7:09, for 10h 01m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 36.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets tonight at 6 PM, and her Common Council at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1887, Gobbler’s Knob celebrates its first Groundhog Day:
…Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State….
In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog. The line of groundhogs that have since been known as Phil might be America’s most famous groundhogs, but other towns across North America now have their own weather-predicting rodents, from Birmingham Bill to Staten Island Chuck to Shubenacadie Sam in Canada.
On this day in 1846, Beloit College gets its charter:
On this date Beloit College was chartered by the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin. It is the second the oldest college in Wisconsin, Carroll College in Waukesha having been chartered two days earlier on Jan. 31, 1846. [Source: Beloit College Archives]
Fifty-nine years later, on 2.2.1905, Wisconsin gets its first professional baseball league:
On this date the Wisconsin State League was formed, bringing professional baseball to five Wisconsin cities. The six-team league began play the following summer with franchises in Beloit, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Wausau, and Freeport, Illinois. The league lasted through 1914, although its named was changed to Wisconsin-Illinois in 1908.
JigZone‘s puzzle for the day is entitled, Red Rope Blocks: