Good morning, Whitewater.
For the Main Street Festival today, Whitewater will have a mostly sunny day with a high of eighty-two.
On this day in 1939, Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein send a letter to Pres. Roosevelt urging research on an atomic bomb:
The Einstein–Szilárd letter was a letter written by Leó Szilárd and signed by Albert Einstein that was sent to the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939. Though Szilárd consulted with his fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner on it, he was the principal author. The letter warned of the danger that Germany might develop atomic bombs and suggested that the United States should initiate its own nuclear program. It prompted action by Roosevelt, which eventually resulted in the Manhattan Project developing the first atomic bombs.
On this day in 1832, a war ends:
1832 – Black Hawk War Ends
On this date the defeat of Black Hawk and his followers at the Battle of Bad Axe, ended the Black Hawk War. Black Hawk led the American troops northward while the rest of the Indians constructed rafts and canoes to facilitate an escape over the Mississippi river. The plan was successful initially but eventually General Atkinson realized the ruse. In the battle, women, children and the elderly hid behind rocks and logs and American soldiers often could not or did not differentiate between warriors and the women and children. Atkinson sent Wabasha and his Sioux warriors, enemies of the Sauk, after the approximately 150 members of the British Band that made it to the Western bank of the Mississippi. The Sauk, “escaped the best they could, and dispersed“, but only 22 women and childern were spared. Black Hawk escaped, but the Battle of Bad Axe marked the end of the war. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p.142-153]