Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be cloudy with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset 5:56, for 11h 43m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM, and there is a Fire Department business meeting at 7 PM.

On 3.10.864, Pres. Lincoln signs a promotion:

On this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoting then-Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army.

The rank of lieutenant general had not officially been used since 1798; at that time, President John Adams assigned the post to former President George Washington, in anticipation of a possible French invasion of the United States. One of Grant’s predecessors in the Civil War, Winfield Scott, had briefly earned the rank, but the appointment was only temporary—really, use of the rank had been suspended after George Washington’s death in 1799.

In 1862, Lincoln asked Congress to revive the rank of lieutenant general in order to distinguish between the general in charge of all Union forces and other generals of equal rank who served under him in the field. Congress also wanted to reinstate the rank of lieutenant general, but only if Lincoln gave the rank to Grant. Lincoln had other ideas.

Lincoln preferred to promote then-Commanding General Henry Wagner Halleck to lead the Union Army, which had been plagued by a string of ineffective leaders and terrible losses in battle. He was reluctant to promote Grant and risk boosting the general’s popularity; at the time Washington was abuzz with rumors that many northern senators were considering nominating Grant instead of Lincoln at the 1864 Republican National Convention. After Grant publicly dismissed the idea of running for the presidency, Lincoln submitted to Congress’ choice and agreed to give Grant the revived rank. As lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, Grant was answerable only to Lincoln. Well-respected by troops and civilians, Grant earned Lincoln’s trust and went on to force the South’s surrender in 1865.

Although Grant enjoyed a distinguished career in the military, he later wrote that he never consciously chose the life of a soldier. As a student at West Point, he never expected to graduate, let alone lead the entire U.S. Army in a desperate but ultimately successful struggle to preserve the Union.

In 1869, Grant became the 18th president of the United States.

Here’s the Thursday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — March 7-11

Contain Yourself

Hey, hold it! Each day’s answer this week is a title, name, or phrase whose initial letters spell the three-letter name of a container.

Example:

What documentary about Wikipedia takes its name from a phrase indicating that statistics don’t lie?

Answer:

Truth in Numbers? (TIN)

What to Submit:

Submit the title, name, or phrase (as “Truth in Numbers?” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, March 10

What actor is known for his role in Beverly Hills, 90210 and his marriage to Megan Fox?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will grow increasingly sunny, with a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset 5:55, for 11h 40m 56s of daytime. It’s a new moon again today, with just .3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets tonight at 7 PM.

Here’s time-lapse video of yesterday’s solar eclipse, an eclipse that was visible over parts of the Pacific:

NASA also keeps an eclipse website with records about past and upcoming eclipses.

On this day in 1862 during the Civil War, two ironclads battle off the coast of Virginia, near Hampton Roads:

On March 9, the two vessels engaged each other, and both the Monitor and the Virginia suffered direct hits that failed to penetrate their iron shells. Finally, after four hours, a cannon blast from the Virginia hit the Monitor‘s pilothouse, temporarily blinding the ship’s captain, Union Lieutenant John L. Worden. The Virginia was thus allowed to escape to Norfolk, Virginia, and the Battle of the Ironclads ended in a draw. Two months later, the Virginia was trapped in Norfolk by advancing Union forces, and its Confederate crew blew up the fearful vessel rather than allow it to fall into Union hands.

Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability, in a series entitled, Contain Yourself:

This Week’s Game — March 7-11

Contain Yourself

Hey, hold it! Each day’s answer this week is a title, name, or phrase whose initial letters spell the three-letter name of a container.

Example:

What documentary about Wikipedia takes its name from a phrase indicating that statistics don’t lie?

Answer:

Truth in Numbers? (TIN)

What to Submit:

Submit the title, name, or phrase (as “Truth in Numbers?” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, March 9

What tingling “falling asleep” feeling in a limb is technically known as paresthesia?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be warm, with intermittent showers, and a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 6:16 and sunset 5:54, for 11h 38m 01s of daytime. We’ve a new moon today, with less than one-percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the first generation of the VW bus goes into production:

The first generation of the Volkswagen Type 2 with the split windshield, informally called the Microbus, Splitscreen, or Splittie among modern fans, was produced from 8 March 1950 through the end of the 1967 model year. From 1950 to 1956, the T1 (not called that at the time) was built in Wolfsburg; from 1956, it was built at the completely new Transporter factory in Hanover. Like the Beetle, the first Transporters used the 1100 Volkswagen air-cooled engine, an 1,131 cc (69.0 cu in), DIN-rated 18 kW (24 PS; 24 bhp), air-cooled flat-four-cylinder ‘boxer’ engine mounted in the rear. This was upgraded to the 1200 – an 1,192 cc (72.7 cu in) 22 kW (30 PS; 30 bhp) in 1953. A higher compression ratio became standard in 1955; while an unusual early version of the 30 kW (41 PS; 40 bhp) engine debuted exclusively on the Type 2 in 1959. This engine proved to be so uncharacteristically troublesome that Volkswagen recalled all 1959 Transporters and replaced the engines with an updated version of the 30 kW engine.^{[citation needed]} Any 1959 models that retain that early engine today are true survivors. Since the engine was totally discontinued at the outset, no parts were ever made available.

The early versions of the T1 until 1955 were often called the “Barndoor” (retrospectively called T1a since the 1990s), owing to the enormous rear engine cover, while the later versions with a slightly modified body (the roofline above the windshield is extended), smaller engine bay, and 15″ roadwheels instead of the original 16″ ones are nowadays called the T1b (again, only called this since the 1990s, based on VW’s restrospective T1,2,3,4 etc. naming system.). From the 1963 model year, when the rear door was made wider (same as on the bay-window or T2), the vehicle could be referred to as the T1c. 1964 also saw the introduction of an optional sliding door for the passenger/cargo area instead of the outwardly hinged doors typical of cargo vans.

On this day in 1862, the 1st Wisconsin readies:

The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry mustered in at Camp Harvey, Kenosha, and left for for St. Louis, Missouri, a week later. It would go on to fight in the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863 and in the Atlanta Campaign the following year. It also helped capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis on May 10, 1865. The 1st Cavalry lost about half its men in three years: six officers and 67 enlisted men were killed in combat and seven officers and 321 enlisted men died from disease.

Here’s the Tuesday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — March 7-11

Contain Yourself

Hey, hold it! Each day’s answer this week is a title, name, or phrase whose initial letters spell the three-letter name of a container.

Example:

What documentary about Wikipedia takes its name from a phrase indicating that statistics don’t lie?

Answer:

Truth in Numbers? (TIN)

What to Submit:

Submit the title, name, or phrase (as “Truth in Numbers?” in the example) for your answer.

Tuesday, March 8

What option on eBay, which allows you to purchase an item without bidding, was introduced in 2000 to enable last-minute holiday shoppers to avoid waiting for auctions to close?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be cloudy with a chance of afternoon showers and a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:17 and sunset 5:53, for 11h 35m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent:

The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.

While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.

With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate–called the diaphragm–to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message–the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”–from Bell to his assistant.

Bell’s patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A. Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Bell’s patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.

On this day in 1911, a great naturalist is born:

1811 – Increase Allen Lapham Born

A pioneer naturalist and noted author, Increase Allen Lapham was instrumental in establishing the Milwaukee public high school program. He was one of the founders of Milwaukee Female Seminary in 1848 and served as president of the State Historical Society from 1862 to 1871. Lapham came to Milwaukee in 1836 to serve as chief engineer and secretary for the Rock River Canal Company. He was one of the first authors and map makers in Wisconsin. Among approximately 80 titles in his bibliography, most notable was his Antiquities of Wisconsin, the first book length investigation of Wisconsin’s Indian mounds. Lapham also served as chief geologist for Wisconsin from 1873 to 1875. He founded many educational, civic, and scientific organizations in Wisconsin. You can see many of his writings, letters, maps, and drawings, at Turning Points in Wisconsin History by typing “Lapham” into the search box. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 221]

Puzzability begins a new series this week, entitled Contain Yourself:

This Week’s Game — March 7-11

Contain Yourself

Hey, hold it! Each day’s answer this week is a title, name, or phrase whose initial letters spell the three-letter name of a container.

Example:

What documentary about Wikipedia takes its name from a phrase indicating that statistics don’t lie?

Answer:

Truth in Numbers? (TIN)

What to Submit:

Submit the title, name, or phrase (as “Truth in Numbers?” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, March 7

What’s the subtitle of the 1991 movie in which Kevin Costner played Robin Hood?

My name is:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 6:19 and sunset 5:51, for 11h 32m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether readers favored or disfavored the idea of a beer spa. Most respondents liked the idea (64.71% liked it; 34.29% disfavored it).

On the day in 1899, Bayer patents aspirin:

…the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registers Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co.

Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine, beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19thcentury, it was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to damage the stomach.

In 1897, Bayer employee Felix Hoffman found a way to create a stable form of the drug that was easier and more pleasant to take. (Some evidence shows that Hoffman’s work was really done by a Jewish chemist, Arthur Eichengrun, whose contributions were covered up during the Nazi era.) After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time. The brand name came from “a” for acetyl, “spir” from the spirea plant (a source of salicin) and the suffix “in,” commonly used for medications. It quickly became the number-one drug worldwide.

On this day in 1862, the 4th Wisconsin to the Deep South:

1862 – The 4th Wisconsin Cavalry Heads South

On this date, the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry (then an infantry unit) embarked to join the “Army of the Gulf.” It arrived below New Orleans on March 12, 1862, and landed in New Orleans on May 1. The 4th was at once assigned to active service and joined an expedition up the Mississippi River against Vicksburg in May. By June they occupied Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The troops there were employed in several successful expeditions during that winter, and remained in the area through most of the war. In June of 1862, its commander was punished for refusing to return escaping slaves to their masters (more information on this event is at Turning Points in Wisconsin History). In 1863 the unit was equipped as a Cavalry Regiment; it returned to Wisconsin in 1866. Read more about it in Charles Estabrook’s guide to Wisconsin in the Civil War.