Good morning, Whitewater.
Sunday in town will be warm and sunny, with a high of sixty-six. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 7:24 PM, for 12h 53m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 21.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday’s FW poll asked whether readers thought that waking up in the middle of the night with a kinkajou in one’s bed, as a Floridian recently did, would be an unpleasant event or a great story to tell. Most thought that it would be an unpleasant event.
On this day in 1860, it’s the debut of the Pony Express:
…the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America’s imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph or an efficient transcontinental railroad.
On 4.3.1865, Wisconsin soldiers helped capture Richmond:
When Petersburg, Virginia, fell on the night of April 2, 1865, Confederate leaders hastily abandoned Richmond. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry participated in the occupation of Petersburg and Richmond. The brigade containing the 19th Wisconsin Infantry was the first to enter Richmond on the morning of April 3rd. Their regimental flag became the first to fly over the captured capital of the Confederacy when Colonel Samuel Vaughn planted it on Richmond City Hall.