Good morning, Whitewater.
Tuesday in town will be cloudy, with an even chance of morning thunderstorms, and a daytime high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset is 8:32 PM, for 15h 03m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1389, Chaucer receives an appointment:
King Richard II appoints Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief clerk of the king’s works in Westminster on this day in 1389.
Chaucer, the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with the aristocracy for the rest of his life. In 1359, he fought in France with Edward III, and was captured in a siege. Edward III ransomed him, and he later worked for Edward III and John of Gaunt. One of his earliest known works was an elegy for the deceased wife of John of Gaunt, Book of the Duchesse.
In 1372, Chaucer traveled to Italy on diplomatic missions, where he may have been exposed to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He also visited Flanders and France, and was appointed comptroller of customs. He wrote several poems in the 1380s, including The Parlement of Foules and Troilus and Criseyde. In the late 1380s or early 1390s, he began work on the Canterbury Tales, in which a mixed group of nobles, peasants, and clergy make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The work, a compilation of tales told by each character, is remarkable for its presentation of the spectrum of social classes. Although Chaucer intended the book to include 120 stories, he died in 1399, with only 22 tales finished.
On this day in 1995, a heat wave begins to afflict the Midwest:
From July 12-15, 1995, the Midwest was subjected to a deadly outbreak of hot and humid weather responsible for 141 deaths in Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, this was the “greatest single event of weather-related deaths in Wisconsin history.” Most of the fatalities happened in the urban southeast counties of the state, and at one point several Milwaukee-area hospitals were unable to admit more patients.
Milwaukee Temperatures (from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel): July 12: Hi=91, Lo=65 July 13: Hi=103*, Lo=78 July 14: Hi=102, Lo=84 July 15: Hi=92, Lo=69 July 16: Hi=88, Lo=68 *Some communities reported highs as high as 108. Heat Index values were 120-130 degrees.
NOAA’s Natural Disaster Survey Report on the outbreak is available at http://www.weather.gov/os/assessments/pdfs/heat95.pdf [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
A Google a Day asks a geography question: “Who was the wife of the president whose legacy lives on through a famous landmark on the Colorado River?”