Good morning, Whitewater.
Wednesday in town will bring thunderstorms and a high of eighty-three to Whitewater. Sunrise is 6:04 AM and sunset 7:52 PM, for 13h 47m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 98.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
Earlier in the afternoon, at 5:30 PM, Whitewater’s School Board will meet to consider the wording of a proposed referendum question on capital spending.
On this day in 1978, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon:
Double Eagle II, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, became the first balloon to crossthe Atlantic Ocean when it landed 17 August 1978 in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours 6 minutes after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.
It can be regarded as a successful crossing at the point that the Double Eagle II crossed the Irish coast, on the evening of 16 August, an event that Shannon Airport notified the crew about when it happened. Newman originally intended to hang glide from the balloon to a landing, while Anderson and Abruzzo continued to fly, but the hang-glider had to be dropped as ballast earlier on 16 August.
While flying over France, they heard by radio that authorities had closed Le Bourget Airfield, where Charles Lindbergh had landed, for them. The crew declined the offer as they were running out of ballast and it would be too risky (to themselves and anyone below) to pass over the suburbs of Paris. They landed in a field of barley, owned by Roger and Rachel Coquerel, in Miserey, 60 mi (97 km) northwest of Paris. Television images showed a highway nearby, its shoulders and outer lanes crowded with stopped cars, people sweeping across the farm field to the landing spot. The gondola was protected, but most of the logs and charts were stolen by souvenir hunters.
The flight, the fourteenth known attempt, was the culmination of more than a century of previous attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. Some of the people who had attempted it were never found.
On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites defending the Union bury Confederate dead:
A soldier in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry wrote home this day describing the aftermath of the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Virginia. He criticizes Confederate officers for withdrawing under cover of darkness and forcing Union soldiers to inter their enemies: “Instead of burying his dead, we found the plains, the hills, the villages strewn with dead and dying rebels. Oh! the sight was sickening, and beggars description. Here an arm, there a leg, yonder half of what was once a man…”
Here’s the JigZone puzzle for Wednesday: