Good morning, Whitewater.
A new month in town begins on a day with morning showers and a high of fifty-six. Sunrise is 5:46 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 14h 09m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday’s FW poll asked if readers thought that SpaceX, a private company, could land an unmanned capsule on Mars by 2020. Most respondents thought that goal was too optimistic: a majority of almost 70% didn’t think that goal could be achieved so soon.
Today is the anniversary, from 5.1.1931, of the official opening of the Empire State Building:
….The construction was part of an intense competition in New York for the title of “world’s tallest building“. Two other projects fighting for the title, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, were still under construction when work began on the Empire State Building. Each held the title for less than a year, as the Empire State Building surpassed them upon its completion, just 410 days after construction commenced. Instead of taking 18 months as anticipated, the construction took just under fifteen. The building was officially opened on May 1, 1931 in dramatic fashion, when United States President Herbert Hoover turned on the building’s lights with the push of a button from Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, the first use of tower lights atop the Empire State Building, the following year, was for the purpose of signaling the victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt over Hoover in the presidential election of November 1932.[29]
….
On this day in 1786, a famous Wisconsin brewer is born:
1786 – Brewer Jacob Best Born
On this date Jacob Best Sr. was born. Best founded the Best and Co. Brewery in Milwaukee. In 1889, the brewery was renamed the Pabst Brewing Co. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, 1960].