Good morning, Whitewater.

Election Day in town will see an even chance of morning showers, with a high of fifty-six.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 58m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 56.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1895, Röntgen discovers X-rays:

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen … 27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.^[2] In honour of his accomplishments, in 2004 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) named element 111, roentgenium, a radioactive element with multiple unstable isotopes, after him….

In the late afternoon of 8 November 1895, Röntgen was determined to test his idea. He carefully constructed a black cardboard covering similar to the one he had used on the Lenard tube. He covered the Hittorf-Crookes tube with the cardboard and attached electrodes to a Ruhmkorff coil to generate an electrostatic charge. Before setting up the barium platinocyanide screen to test his idea, Röntgen darkened the room to test the opacity of his cardboard cover. As he passed the Ruhmkorff coil charge through the tube, he determined that the cover was light-tight and turned to prepare the next step of the experiment. It was at this point that Röntgen noticed a faint shimmering from a bench a few feet away from the tube. To be sure, he tried several more discharges and saw the same shimmering each time. Striking a match, he discovered the shimmering had come from the location of the barium platinocyanide screen he had been intending to use next.

Röntgen speculated that a new kind of ray might be responsible. 8 November was a Friday, so he took advantage of the weekend to repeat his experiments and make his first notes. In the following weeks he ate and slept in his laboratory as he investigated many properties of the new rays he temporarily termed “X-rays”, using the mathematical designation (“X”) for something unknown. The new rays came to bear his name in many languages as “Röntgen Rays” (and the associated X-ray radiograms as “Röntgenograms”).

On this day in 1870, Increase Lapham goes national:

On this date Increase Lapham recorded the first published national weather forecast, calling for “high winds and falling temperatures for Chicago, Detroit and the Eastern cities.” [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

Here’s JigZone‘s daily puzzle for Tuesday:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-four.  Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 4:38 PM, for 10h 00m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1916, Jeannette Rankin is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives:

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States when, in 1916, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana.^[1] She won a second House term 24 years later, in 1940.

Each of Rankin’s Congressional terms coincided with initiation of U.S. military intervention in each of the World Wars. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 50 House members (total of 56 in both chambers) who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.^[2][3]

Rankin was also instrumental in initiating the legislation that eventually became the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting unrestricted voting rights to women; and she championed the causes of gender equality and civil rights throughout a career that spanned more than six decades….

Rankin’s campaign for one of Montana’s two at-large House seats in the congressional election of 1916 was financed and managed by her brother Wellington, an influential member of the Montana Republican Party. The campaign involved traveling long distances to reach the state’s widely scattered population. Rankin rallied support at train stations, street corners, potluck suppers on ranches, and remote one-room schoolhouses. She was elected on November 7, by over 7,500 votes, to become the first female member of Congress.^[5][9]

JigZone‘s daily puzzle for Monday is of candy:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be sunny with a high of sixty-seven. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset is 4:39 PM, for 10h 02m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 37.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1860, Americans elect Abraham Lincoln president of the United States:

Voter turnout was 81.2%, the highest in American history up to that time, and the second-highest overall (exceeded only in the election of 1876).^[16][17] All six Presidents elected since Andrew Jackson won re-election in 1832 had been one-term presidents, the last four with a popular vote under 51 percent.^[18] Lincoln won the Electoral College with less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationwide by carrying states above the Mason–Dixon lineand north of the Ohio River, plus the states of California and Oregon in the Far West. Unlike all of his predecessors, he did not carry even one slave-holding state, and he received no votes at all in ten of the fifteen slave states.

The Republican victory resulted from the concentration of votes in the free states, which together controlled a majority of the presidential electors.^[19] Population increases in the free states had far exceeded those seen in the slave states for many years before the election of 1860, hence their dominance in the Electoral College. The split in the Democratic party is sometimes held responsible for Lincoln’s victory,^[20] but he would still have won in the Electoral College, 169 to 134, even if all of the anti-Lincoln voters had united behind a single candidate. In the three states in which anti-Lincoln votes did combine into fusion tickets, Lincoln still won in two states and split the electoral vote of New Jersey. At most, a single opponent nationwide would only have deprived Lincoln of California and Oregon (both of which he only won via a plurality of the statewide vote), whose combined total of seven electoral votes would have made no difference to the result; every other state won by the Republicans was won by a clear majority of the vote.^[21]

Like Lincoln, Breckinridge and Bell won no electoral votes outside of their respective sections. While Bell retired to his family business, quietly supporting his state’s secession, Breckinridge served as a Confederate general. He finished second in the Electoral College with 72 votes, carrying 11 of 15 slave states (including South Carolina, whose electors were chosen by the state legislature, not popular vote). He won a distant third in national popular vote at 18 percent, but he accrued 50–75 percent in the first seven states that would become the Confederate States of America and took nine of the eleven states that eventually joined.^[22]

Bell carried three slave states (Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia) and lost Maryland by only 722 votes. Nevertheless, he finished a remarkable second in all the slave states won by Breckinridge and Douglas. He won 45–47 percent for Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina and he canvassed respectably with 36–40 percent in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. Nonetheless, he came in last in the national popular vote at 12 percent.

Douglas was the only candidate who won electoral votes in both slave and free states (free New Jersey and slave Missouri). His support was the most widespread geographically; he finished second behind Lincoln in the popular vote with 29.5 percent, but last in the Electoral College. Douglas attained a 28–47 percent share in the states of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Trans-Mississippi West, but slipped to 19–39 percent in New England. Outside his regional section, Douglas took 15–17 percent of the popular vote total in the slave states of Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana, then 10 percent or less in the nine remaining slave states. Douglas, in his “Norfolk Doctrine”, reiterated in North Carolina, promised to keep the Union together by coercion if states proceeded to secede. The popular vote for Lincoln and Douglas combined was 70% of the turnout.

On this day in 1837, a city in Iowa becomes the Wisconsin Territory’s temporary capital:

1837 – Burlington, Iowa Selected as Temporary Capital

On this date Burlington, Iowa was chosen as a temporary capital of the Wisconsin Territory. A year earlier, legislators offered a bill making Madison the capital with a temporary capital in Dubuque until which time a permanent building could be constructed in Madison. Legislators also proposed the City of Belmont as a temporary capital. One month later, on December 12th, a fire destroyed the two-story temporary capital in Burlington. The new legislature moved its headquarters to the Webber and Remey’s store in Burlington where they conducted government affairs until June 1838.[Source: State of Wisconsin Blue Book]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be sunny with a high of sixty-six. Sunrise is 7:35 AM and sunset 5:41 PM, for 10h 05m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 28% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, Lincoln removes McClellan as commanding general of the Army of the Potomac:

On this day in 1862, a tortured relationship ends when President Abraham Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

McClellan was a promising commander who served as a railroad president before the war. In the early stages of the conflict, troops under McClellan’s command scored several important victories in the struggle for western Virginia.

Lincoln summoned “Young Napoleon,” as some called the general, to Washington, d.C., to take control of the Army of the Potomac a few days after its humiliating defeat at the Battle of First Bull Run, Virginiain July 1861. Over the next nine months, McClellan capably built astrong army, drilling his troops and assembling an efficient command structure.

However, he also developed extreme contempt for the president, and often dismissed Lincoln’s suggestions out of hand. In 1862, McClellan led the army down Chesapeake Bay to the James Peninsula, southeast of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. During this campaign, he exhibited the timidity and sluggishness that later doomed him.

During the Seven Days Battles, McClellan was poised near Richmond but retreated when faced with a series of attacks by Lee. McClellan always believed that he was vastly outnumbered, though he actually had the numerical advantage. He spent the rest of the summer camped on the peninsula while Lincoln began moving much of his command to General John Pope’s Army of Virginia.

After Lee defeated Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, 1862he invaded Maryland. With the Confederates crashing into Union territory, Lincoln had no choice but to turn to McClellan to gather the reeling Yankee forces and stop Lee. On September 17, 1962, McClellan and Lee battled to a standstill along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. Lee retreated back to Virginia and McClellan ignored Lincoln’surging to pursue him.

For six weeks, Lincoln and McClellan exchanged angry messages, but McClellan stubbornly refused to march after Lee. In late October, McClellan finally began moving across the Potomac in feeble pursuit of Lee, but he took nine days to complete the crossing. Lincoln had seen enough. Convinced that McClellan could never defeat Lee, Lincoln notified the general on November 5 of his removal. A few days later, Lincoln named General Ambrose Burnside to be the commander of the Army of the Potomac.

After his removal, McClellan battled with Lincoln once more–for the presidency in 1864. McClellan won the Democratic nomination but was easily defeated by his old boss.

On this day in 1912, Wisconsin voters (all male) reject a proposal to recognize a woman’s right to vote:

1912 – Women’s Suffrage Referendum

On this date Wisconsin voters (all male) considered a proposal to allow women to vote. When the referendum was over, Wisconsin men voted women’s suffrage down by a margin of 63 to 37 percent. The referendum’s defeat could be traced to multiple causes, but the two most widely cited reasons were schisms within the women’s movement itself and a perceived link between suffragists and temperance that antagonized many German American voters.

Although women were granted the vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin’s own constitution continued to define voters as male until 1934. [Source: Turning Points in Wisconsin History]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in Whitewater begins with a dense fog, fading into a funny day with a high of sixty. Sunrise is 7:34 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 10h 07m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, Howard Carter discovers the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb:

In 1907, after three hard years for Carter, Lord Carnarvon employed him to supervise Carnarvon’s Egyptian excavations in the Valley of the Kings.^[6] The intention of Gaston Maspero, who introduced the two, was to ensure that Howard Carter imposed modern archaeological methods and systems of recording.^[7][8]

Carnarvon financed Carter’s work in the Valley of the Kings to 1914, but until 1917 excavations and study were interrupted by the First World War. Following the end of the First World War, Carter enthusiastically resumed his work.

After several years of finding little, Lord Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the lack of results, and in 1922 informed Carter that he had one more season of funding to search the Valley of the Kings and find the tomb.^[9]

On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter’s excavation group found steps that Carter hoped led to Tutankhamun‘s tomb (subsequently designated KV62) (the tomb that would be considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings).

He wired Lord Carnarvon to come, and on 26 November 1922, with Carnarvon, Carnarvon’s daughter and others in attendance, Carter made the “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of the doorway (with a chisel his grandmother had given him for his 17th birthday.) He was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know whether it was “a tomb or merely a cache”, but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Carnarvon asked “Can you see anything?”, Carter replied with the famous words:

“Yes, wonderful things!”^[10]

The next several months were spent cataloguing the contents of the antechamber under the “often stressful” supervision of Pierre Lacau, director general of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt.^[11] On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway, and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. All of these discoveries were eagerly covered by the world’s press, but most of their representatives were kept in their hotels; only H. V. Morton was allowed on the scene, and his vivid descriptions helped to cement Carter’s reputation with the British public.

Carter’s own notes and photographic evidence indicate that he, Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the burial chamber shortly after the tomb’s discovery and before the official opening.^[12]

On this day in 1909, America sees her first commercially-built airplane:

On this date in Beloit, a plane was assembled and built by Wisconsin’s first pilot, Arthur P. Warner. This self-taught pilot was the 11th in the U.S. to fly a powered aircraft and the first in the U.S. to buy an aircraft for business use. Warner used it to publicize his automotive products.[Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]

JigZone‘s puzzle for Friday is of a flower: