Good morning, Whitewater.
Morning flurries will give way to a cloudy day with a high of thirty-eight in town. Sunrise is 6:21 and sunset 5:50, for 11h 29m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1963, inventors receive a patent for a now-famous toy:
…the Hula-Hoop, a hip-swiveling toy that became a huge fad across America when it was first marketed by Wham-O in 1958, is patented by the company’s co-founder, Arthur “Spud” Melin. An estimated 25 million Hula-Hoops were sold in its first four months of production alone.
In 1948, friends Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr founded a company in California to sell a slingshot they created to shoot meat up to falcons they used for hunting. The company’s name, Wham-O, came from the sound the slingshots supposedly made. Wham-O eventually branched out from slingshots, selling boomerangs and other sporting goods. Its first hit toy, a flying plastic disc known as the Frisbee, debuted in 1957. The Frisbee was originally marketed under a different name, the Pluto Platter, in an effort to capitalize on America’s fascination with UFOs.
Melina and Knerr were inspired to develop the Hula-Hoop after they saw a wooden hoop that Australian children twirled around their waists during gym class. Wham-O began producing a plastic version of the hoop, dubbed “Hula” after the hip-gyrating Hawaiian dance of the same name, and demonstrating it on Southern California playgrounds. Hula-Hoop mania took off from there.
On this day in 1935, Baby Doe, who wasn’t a baby, passes away:
1935 – Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt Dies
On this date, the controversial wife of Horace (H.A.W.) Tabor, silver mine owner during the 19th century Colorado gold and silver booms, died. Born Elizabeth Bondeul McCourt in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1854, she was first married to Harvey Doe, Jr. of Oshkosh but in 1880 divorced him on the grounds of adultery. She then moved to Colorado where she married Leadville’s silver king, Horace Tabor. Despite great wealth, she died penniless and alone in Leadville: she froze to death in a cabin near the famous Matchless mine, which in its heyday had produced $10,000 worth of silver ore per day. Elizabeth and Horace are the subject of an American opera, “The Ballad of Baby Doe”. [Sources: http://www.babydoetabor.com/ and http://www.coloradohistory.com/ch-stories/tabor/index.htm]