Good morning.
It’s a day of a wintry mix, and about two to four inches of snow, ahead for Whitewater. Not a bad term ‘wintry mix’ – it’s a quick way of saying sleet, snow, cold rain, all together. Better as a term, of course, than an experience.
The Landmarks Commission is now listed for a meeting tonight at 6 PM, but the weather may yet change their schedule.
On this day in 1984, U.S. astronauts take the first untethered spacewalk:
Houston, Feb. 7 — In a spectacle of bravery and beauty, two American astronauts flew out, up and away from the space shuttle Challenger today. Free of any lifeline and propelled into the dark void by tiny jets, they became, in effect, the first human satellites.
The successful test of the propulsion backpacks – a wireless high-wire act 170 miles above the earth – was an important step toward future operations to repair and service orbiting satellites and to assemble and maintain large space stations.
A second test by the same two space fliers, Capt. Bruce McCandless 2d of the Navy and Lieut. Col. Robert L. Stewart of the Army, is scheduled for Thursday morning. They are to practice grappling a large object rotating at the end of the shuttle’s mechanical arm, a dress rehearsal for a mission in April to repair a crippled scientific satellite.
On 2.7.1867, a famous Wisconsin author is born:
1867 – Laura Ingalls Wilder born
Wisconsin’s most famous children’s author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born this day near Pepin. Although her family moved away a year later, it subsequently returned in 1870 and remained until 1874. It is this period that is immortalized in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin History]
Google-a-Day aska about a famous author: “Though he created one of the most popular, classic works in the English language, who died in 1400 and was buried in Poet’s Corner, but never made a living as a writer?”