Good morning, Whitewater.
Leap Day in Whitewater will be partly cloudy and windy, with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset 5:44, for 11h 14m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2004, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King wins big:
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing, trailblazing performer in film in 2003 did not receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor–but he was honored nonetheless. The eerily lifelike quality of Gollum, the computer-generated (CG) creature who simpered and schemed his way through The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, remained one of the most awe-inspiring aspects of the trilogy’s final installment, The Return of the King. At the 76th Academy Awards ceremony, held on this day in 2004, the film won a record-tying 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Jackson) and Best Visual Effects.
On this day in 1956, a prominent Wisconsin Republican passes away, after taking the party in a different direction:
1956 – Father of Modern Wisconsin Republican Party dies
On this day William J. Campbell, a major contributor the Wisconsin Republican Party, died at his home in Oshkosh. A lumber broker and former University of Wisconsin regent, Campbell never held public office, but was generally given credit for the founding of the Republican Voluntary Committee, the working party organization in the state. State Attorney General Vernon W. Thomson hailed Campbell as a “true political pioneer” for steering the selection of GOP candidates away from the “domination of Robert M. LaFollette, Sr.” An ardent opponent of the “nomination paper” method of endorsing candidates for office, Campbell founded the Republican Voluntary Committee in 1925, in large part as a means of circumventing state limitations on spending by the statutory Republican Party. [Source: Milwaukee Journal 2/29/1956, Section 2 p. 12]
It’s a tape measure puzzle today from JigZone: