Good morning, Whitewater.
Midweek in town will bring partly cloudy skies, isolated thunderstorms, and a high of ninety. Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 6:35 PM, for 15h 11m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 6:30 PM this evening.
On 7.6.1775, Congress issues a declaration, almost a year before another, more decisive one:
On this day in 1775, one day after restating their fidelity to King George III and wishing him “a long and prosperous reign” in the Olive Branch Petition, Congress sets “forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms” against British authority in the American colonies. The declaration also proclaimed their preference “to die free men rather than live as slaves.”
As in the Olive Branch Petition, Congress never impugned the motives of the British king. Instead, they protested, “The large strides of late taken by the legislature of Great Britain toward establishing over these colonies their absolute rule…” Congress provided a history of colonial relations in which the king served as the sole governmental connection between the mother country and colonies, until, in their eyes, the victory against France in the Seven Years’ War caused Britain’s “new ministry finding all the foes of Britain subdued” to fall upon “the unfortunate idea of subduing her friends also.” According to the declaration, the king’s role remained constant, but “parliament then for the first time assumed a power of unbounded legislation over the colonies of America,” which resulted in the bloodletting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
At this point, Congress assumed that if the king could merely be made to understand what Parliament and his ministers had done, he would rectify the situation and return the colonists to their rightful place as fully equal members of the British empire. When the king sided with Parliament, however, Congress moved beyond a Declaration of Arms to a Declaration of Independence.
On this day in 1934, violence strikes a malted milk plant:
Seven injured in riot at Horlick plant
On this day three policemen and five office employees of the Horlick Malted Milk Corp. were injured when a crowd of strike sympathizers stormed a motorcade of employees entering the plant’s main gate. Emerging from a crowd of 500 striking employees, the rioters overpowered police escorts, shattered windshields and windows, and pelted officers with rocks. Police blamed Communist influence for the incident, and former Communist congressional candidate John Sekat was arrested in the incident. Employees of the plant were demanding wage increases and recognition of the Racine County Workers Committee as their collective bargaining agent. [Source: Capital Times 7/6/1934, p. 1]
A Google a Day asks a winding search question about history: “What was the highest political office held by the third husband of the woman who was later married to the first husband of Patti Sacks?”