Daily Bread for 2.8.15

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be cloudy, with a high of thirty-three, and bring freezing rain & sleet in the afternoon. Sunrise is 7 AM and sunset 5:17 PM, for 10h 17m 32s of daytime. (A journalist recently told me that using AM and PM for sunrise & sunset was unnecessary, as sunrise is always in the morning and sunset always after midday. True enough; I’ll adjust after today by either abandoning AM and PM or using a twenty-four hour measurement.)

Two-thirds of respondents to Friday’s FW poll thought that Jimmy the Groundhog (of Sun Prairie) was justified in nipping the ear of that city’s mayor on Groundhog Day.

Quite the xylophonist:

On this day in 1858, a Wisconsin representative starts a fight in Congress:

Just before the Civil War, the issue of slavery tore apart the U.S. Congress. On February 8, 1858, Wisconsin Rep. John Potter (considered a backwoods hooligan by Southern aristocrats) leaped into a fight on the House floor. When Potter embarrassed a pro-slavery brawler by pulling off his wig, the gallery shouted that he’d taken a Southern scalp. Potter emerged from the melee covered in blood and marked by slave owners as an enemy.

Two years later, on April 5, 1860, he accused Virginia Rep. Roger Pryor of falsifying the Congressional record. Pryor, feeling his character impugned, challenged Potter to a duel. According to Southern custom, a person challenged had the right to choose weapons. Potter replied that he would only fight with “Bowie knives in a closed room,” and his Southern challenger beat a hasty retreat. Republican supporters around the nation sent Potter Bowie knives as a tribute, including this six-foot-long one. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]