Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be sunny with a high of sixty-four. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:01 PM, for 14h 19m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM tonight, and there will be a business meeting of the Fire Department at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1961, Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American in space. Here’s how the New York Times drescribed that event:

Cape Canaveral, Fla. — A slim, cool Navy test pilot was rocketed 115 miles into space today.

Thirty-seven-year-old Comdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. thus became the first American space explorer.

Commander Shepard landed safely 302 miles out at sea fifteen minutes after the launching. He was quickly lifted aboard a Marine Corps helicopter.

“Boy, what a ride!” he said, as he was flown to the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain four miles away.

Extensive physical examinations were begun immediately.

Tonight doctors reported Commander Shepard in “excellent” condition, suffering no ill effects.

The near-perfect flight represented the United States’ first major step in the race to explore space with manned space craft.

True, it was only a modest leap compared with the once-around-the-earth orbital flight of Maj. Yuri A. Gagarin of the Soviet Union.

The Russian’s speed of more than 17,000 miles an hour was almost four times Commander Shepard’s 4,500. The distance the Russian traveled was almost 100 times as great.

But Commander Shepard maneuvered his craft in space–something the Russians have not claimed for Major Gagarin.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will be cloudy with a high of fifty-five. Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 14h 16m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission, R-2A subcommittee, meets this evening at 6 PM.

On this day in 1927, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded. At the Academy’s website, among so many other offerings, there’s an interesting interview with special effects designer Douglas Trumball, on the Science of Movies. Trumbull talks about creating believable effects through the use of miniatures, his film “Silent Running,” and plans for future filmmaking.

On this day in 1864, Wisconsin soldiers take part in the Wilderness Campaign:

1864 – (Civil War) Wilderness Campaign opens in Virginia
Union forces crossed the Rapidan River in Virginia and prepared to fight at the Wilderness the next day. The resulting series of battles between May 5 and June 12, 1864, is called the Wilderness Campaign, or Grant’s Overland Campaign.

The 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 4th Wisconsin Light Artillery participated in this series of bloody battles. The initial Battle of the Wilderness on May 5-7, 1864, produced nearly 30,000 casualties without giving either side a clear victory.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset 7:58 PM for 14h 14m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s City Market opens for the season today, at the Cravath Lakefront, on this and later Tuesdays (through October) from 3:30 to 7:30 PM. The city’s Urban Forestry Committee on landscape guidelines meets from 4 to 6 PM, Alcohol and Licensing Committee at 6:15 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.

It’s Machiavelli’s birthday:

On this day in 1469, the Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli is born. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory….

Machiavelli’s political life took a downward turn after 1512, when he fell out of favor with the powerful Medici family. He was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured and temporarily exiled. It was an attempt to regain a political post and the Medici family’s good favor that Machiavelli penned The Prince, which was to become his most well-known work.

Though released in book form posthumously in 1532, The Prince was first published as a pamphlet in 1513. In it, Machiavelli outlined his vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means. The Prince not only failed to win the Medici family’s favor, it also alienated him from the Florentine people. Machiavelli was never truly welcomed back into politics, and when the Florentine Republic was reestablished in 1527, Machiavelli was an object of great suspicion. He died later that year, embittered and shut out from the Florentine society to which he had devoted his life.

Though Machiavelli has long been associated with the practice of diabolical expediency in the realm of politics that was made famous in The Prince, his actual views were not so extreme. In fact, in such longer and more detailed writings asDiscourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (1517) and History of Florence (1525), he shows himself to be a more principled political moralist. Still, even today, the term “Machiavellian” is used to describe an action undertaken for gain without regard for right or wrong.

In Wisconsin history, Golda Meier is born on this date in 1898:

1898 – Golda Meir Born
On this date, Golda Meir (nee Mabovitch) was born in Kiev, Russia. Economic hardship forced her family to emigrate to the United States in 1906, where they settled in Milwaukee. She graduated from the Milwaukee Normal School (now University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and joined the Poalei Zion, the Milwaukee Labor Zionist Party, in 1915.

In 1921, she emigrated to Palestine with her husband, Morris Myerson, where they worked for the establishment of the State of Israel. Meir served as Israel’s Minister of Labor and National Insurance from 1949 through 1956 and as the Foreign Minister until January of 1966. When Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died suddenly in 1969, Meir assumed the post, becoming the world’s third female Prime Minister. She died in Jerusalem on December 8, 1978. [Source: Picturing Golda Meier]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of sixty-one.  Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 7:57 PM, for 14h 12m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 25.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Aquatic Center will hold an annual meeting this evening at 7 PM.

On this day in 1933, someone publishes an account of something in Loch Ness that he describes as a monster:

The term “monster” was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1933 by Alex Campbell, the water bailiff for Loch Ness and a part-time journalist, in a report in the Inverness Courier.^[8][9][10] On 4 August 1933, the Courierpublished as a full news item the assertion of a London man, George Spicer, that a few weeks earlier while motoring around the Loch, he and his wife had seen “the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life”, trundling across the road toward the Loch carrying “an animal” in its mouth.^[11] Other letters began appearing in the Courier, often anonymously, with claims of land or water sightings, either on the writer’s part or on the parts of family, acquaintances or stories they remembered being told.^[12]

These stories soon reached the national (and later the international) press, which described a “monster fish”, “sea serpent”, or “dragon”,^[13] eventually settling on “Loch Ness Monster”.^[14]On 6 December 1933 the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published in the Daily Express,^[15] and shortly after the creature received official notice when the Secretary of State for Scotland ordered the police to prevent any attacks on it.^[16] In 1934, interest was further sparked by what is known as The Surgeon’s Photograph. In the same year R. T. Gould published a book,^[17] the first of many that describe the author’s personal investigation and collected record of additional reports pre-dating 1933. Other authors have claimed that sightings of the monster go as far back as the 6th century….

On this day in 1941, a breakfast offering is born: “General Mills began shipping a new cereal called “Cheerioats” to six test markets. (The cereal was later renamed ‘Cheerios.’)” Cheerios billed itself as the world’s first “ready-to-eat oat cereal.”

Good morning, Whitewater.

A new month in town begins on a day with morning showers and a high of fifty-six. Sunrise is 5:46 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 14h 09m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked if readers thought that SpaceX, a private company, could land an unmanned capsule on Mars by 2020. Most respondents thought that goal was too optimistic: a majority of almost 70% didn’t think that goal could be achieved so soon.

Today is the anniversary, from 5.1.1931, of the official opening of the Empire State Building:

….The construction was part of an intense competition in New York for the title of “world’s tallest building“. Two other projects fighting for the title, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, were still under construction when work began on the Empire State Building. Each held the title for less than a year, as the Empire State Building surpassed them upon its completion, just 410 days after construction commenced. Instead of taking 18 months as anticipated, the construction took just under fifteen. The building was officially opened on May 1, 1931 in dramatic fashion, when United States President Herbert Hoover turned on the building’s lights with the push of a button from Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, the first use of tower lights atop the Empire State Building, the following year, was for the purpose of signaling the victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt over Hoover in the presidential election of November 1932.^[29]
….

On this day in 1786, a famous Wisconsin brewer is born:

1786 – Brewer Jacob Best Born
On this date Jacob Best Sr. was born. Best founded the Best and Co. Brewery in Milwaukee. In 1889, the brewery was renamed the Pabst Brewing Co. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography,  1960].

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be rainy with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:48 AM and sunset 7:55 PM, for 14h 07m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 46.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1803, a deal is reached to add a huge expanse to the United States:

On April 30, 1803, representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States. A formal treaty for the Louisiana Purchase, antedated to April 30, was signed two days later.

On this day in 1845, Wisconsin adopts public education:

On this date, under the leadership of Michael Frank, Wisconsin adopted “free” education for its residents. Frank’s plan narrowly passed the legislature by a vote of 90 to 79. Frank’s motivation for free education in Wisconsin was partially inspired by a similar campaign, promoted by Horace Mann in Massachusetts. On June 16, 1845 the first free school opened in Wisconsin. It was one of only three free schools in the country, outside the New England states. By August 1845, Wisconsin had five free schools in operation. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners, Fred L. Holmes, pg 78-92]