Daily Bread for 9.23.15

Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s the first day of fall, and Google has a doodle to mark the change of season. In Whitewater, we’ll have mostly sunny skies and a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset 6:49, for 12h 06m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Yesterday, I posted a video of a rat carrying a slice of pizza through the New York subway system. That animal has now been dubbed, predictably enough, the ‘Pizza Rat,’ and is the subject of a story in the New York Times: ‘Pizza Rat’ Prompts a Collective ‘Ew’ and Debate on Cleaning New York Subway. The newspaper story includes the observations of the commuter who recorded the rat’s efforts:

The video of the rat, posted by a comedian named Matt Little, showed just what the authority is up against: riders who have no qualms about casting aside food and other debris while aggressive rodents wait in the wings.

Mr. Little stumbled across the scene around 2 a.m. on Monday as he left a comedy show in the East Village with a friend. Rather than being put off by it, he said, he was “100 percent impressed” by the rat’s tenacity, and he pulled out his phone. After the rat carried it down a few steps and then ran away, Mr. Little said, he was not inclined to pick up the slice and throw it away before boarding his train to Brooklyn.

“I’ll be honest — I didn’t follow up with the slice,” Mr. Little said in an interview on Tuesday. “It was just in a rat’s mouth. We’ll let that stay where it is.”

On this day in 1779, John Paul Jones wins a victory over Britain:

During the American Revolution, the U.S. ship Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, wins a hard-fought engagement against the British ships of war Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, off the eastern coast of England….

In August 1779, Jones took command of the Bonhomme Richard and sailed around the British Isles. On September 23, the Bonhomme Richard engaged the Serapis and the smaller Countess of Scarborough, which were escorting the Baltic merchant fleet. After inflicting considerable damage to the Bonhomme Richard, Richard Pearson, the captain of the Serapis, asked Jones if he had struck his colors, the naval signal indicating surrender. From his disabled ship, Jones replied, “I have not yet begun to fight,” and after three more hours of furious fighting it was the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough that surrendered. After the victory, the Americans transferred to the Serapis from the Bonhomme Richard, which sank the following day.

A Google a Day asks a question about pop culture:

A popular singer whose real name is Katheryn Hudson, grew up listening to what type of music?