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Daily Bread for 3.25.14

Good morning.

It’s spring, but Tuesday will be a blustery day with a high of twenty-five. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 7:13 PM. The moon’s a waning crescent with 32% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today in town, the Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1911, America experiences one of her worst industrial tragedies:

In one of the darkest moments of America’s industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers, on this day in 1911….

The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in dowas a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. At the time of the fire, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and it could hold only 12 people at a time. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent theft by the workers and the other opened inward only. The fire escape, as all would come to see, was shoddily constructed, and could not support the weight of more than a few women at a time….

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. The manager turned the fire hose on it, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic ensued as the workers fled to every exit. The elevator broke down after only four trips, and women began jumping down the shaft to their deaths. Those who fled down the wrong set of stairs were trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth floor began jumping out the windows, which created a problem for the firefighters whose hoses were crushed by falling bodies. Also, the firefighters’ ladders stretched only as high as the seventh floor, and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who were jumping three at a time.

Puzzability‘s March Madness series continues with Tuesday’s game:

This Week’s Game — March 24-28
March Madness
You can fill in your brackets every day for our little tournament. Each answer in this week’s trivia quiz is a name, title, or phrase that includes the letters in the word MARCH together, but out of order.
Example:
What song was Culture Club’s biggest hit, and its only song to reach #1 in the United States?
Answer:
“Ka[RMA CH]ameleon”
What to Submit:
Submit the name, title, or phrase, with the MARCH section in brackets (as “Ka[RMA CH]ameleon” in the example), for your answer.
Tuesday, March 25
What Discovery Channel series was about severe weather in Tornado Alley?

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