Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be mostly cloudy, with a high of thirty. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 4:56. We’ve a full moon today, with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1957, Wham-O acquires the rights to a flying disc:

Fred Morrison discovered a market for the modern-day flying disc^[6] in 1938 when he and future wife, Lucile, were offered 25 cents for a cake pan that they were tossing back and forth on a beach in Santa Monica, California. “That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for five cents, and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well – there was a business,” Morrison told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2007.^[7]

The Morrisons continued their business until World War II, when Morrison served in the Army Air Force, flying a P-47s, and then was a prisoner of war. Mustered out, Morrison sketched a design for anaerodynamically improved flying disc that he called the Whirlo-Way. By 1948, after design modifications and experimentation with several prototypes, Morrison and business partner Warren Franscioni began producing the first plastic discs, renaming them the Flyin-Saucer in the wake of reported unidentified-flying-object sightings.

“We worked fairs, demonstrating it,” Morrison told the Virginian-Pilot. The two of them once overheard someone saying the pair were using wires to make the discs hover, so they developed a sales pitch: “The Flyin-Saucer is free, but the invisible wire is $1.” “That’s where we learned we could sell these things,” he said, because people were enthusiastic about them.

Morrison and Franscioni ended their partnership in early 1950, and in 1954 Morrison formed his own company, called American Trends, to buy and sell Flyin-Saucers, which were by then being made of a flexible polypropylene plastic from Southern California Plastics, the original molder. After learning that he could produce his own disc more cheaply, in 1955 Morrison designed a new model, the Pluto Platter, the archetype of all modern flying discs. He sold the rights to Wham-O on January 23, 1957, and in 1958 Morrison was awarded U.S. Design Patent D183,626 for his product.

In June 1957, Wham-O co-founder Richard Knerr decided to stimulate sales by giving the discs the additional brand name Frisbee (pronounced “friz’-bee”), after learning that Northeastern college students were calling the Pluto Platter by that name,^[8] the term “Frisbee” coming from the name of the Bridgeport, CT pie manufacturer Frisbie Pie Company.^[9] “I thought the name was a horror. Terrible,” Morrison told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside in 2007.^[10] In 1982, Morrison told Forbes magazine that he had received about US$2 million in royalty payments and said: “I wouldn’t change the name of it for the world.”^[10]

There’s an alternative history of the flying disc, in which the inventor of that toy was Norville Barnes –

That, however, is another story …

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our work week ends with a high of twenty-seven under cloudy skies. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 4:55, for 9h 37m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s the birthday of Wilbur Scoville, born this day in 1865. Google has doodle to commemorate his birth, and in tribute to his creation of the Scoville scale:

…a measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers, such as the Jalapeno, Ghost peppers, and the world’s (current) hottest pepper—the Carolina Reaper, or other spicy foods as reported in Scoville heat units (SHU),^[1]a function of capsaicin concentration. Capsaicin is one of many related chemicals, collectively called capsaicinoids. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. His method, devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.^[2]

On this day in 1965, Wisconsin claimed (for that time) a new world record:

1964 – World’s Largest Block of Cheese Produced

On this date The world’s largest cheese of the time was manufactured in Wisconsin. The block of cheddar was produced from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consumed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire. A replica is displayed in Neilsville in the specially designed “Cheesemobile“, a semi-tractor trailer in which the original cheese toured. [Source: American Profile, December 16, 2001]

Here’s the last game in the Asia Fantasia series from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — January 18-22

Asia Fantasia

We’re working on eastern time this week. For each day, we’ll give a three-by-three letter grid in which we’ve hidden the name of a major city in Asia, followed by its country, with a total of 11 or more letters. To find it, start at any letter and move from letter to letter by traveling to any adjacent letter—across, up and down, or diagonally. You may come back to a letter you’ve used previously, but may not stay in the same spot twice in a row. You will not always need all nine letters in the grid.

Example:

Answer:

Baghdad, Iraq

What to Submit:

Submit the city and country (as “Baghdad, Iraq” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, January 22

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be cloudy, although noticeably warmer than yesterday, with a high of twenty-eight degrees. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset 4:53, for 9h 35m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

There will be a Zoning Code Update meeting in the city tonight at 7 PM.

On this day in 1935, Janesville sees an example of temerity:

1935 – Five Janesville Youths Arrested

On this date five Janesville boys, ages 13-16, were arrested for a string of burglaries, including the thefts of cigarettes, whisky and blankets. While in the police station, one of the boys tried to crack the safe in the chief’s office. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Ten years later, on this day, America recognizes an example of courage and tenacity:

1945 – Truman Olson of Cambridge Awarded WWII Medal of Honor

On this date the Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously to Sgt. Truman C. Olson of Cambridge, for almost single-handedly stopping a German counterattack on the beachhead in Anzio, Italy, on January 30, 1944. Twice wounded, Olson nevertheless manned his machine-gun for 36 hours. He killed 20 Germans and wounded many others. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Here’s Thursday’s Puzzability game:

This Week’s Game — January 18-22

Asia Fantasia

We’re working on eastern time this week. For each day, we’ll give a three-by-three letter grid in which we’ve hidden the name of a major city in Asia, followed by its country, with a total of 11 or more letters. To find it, start at any letter and move from letter to letter by traveling to any adjacent letter—across, up and down, or diagonally. You may come back to a letter you’ve used previously, but may not stay in the same spot twice in a row. You will not always need all nine letters in the grid.

Example:

Answer:

Baghdad, Iraq

What to Submit:

Submit the city and country (as “Baghdad, Iraq” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, January 21

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in town will offer an even chance of morning snow showers and a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset is 4:52, for 9h 33m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Aquatic Center Board meets at 7 AM today, and the Fire/EMS Task Force at 7 PM.

On this day in 1942, senior officials of Nazi Germany meet at what’s now know as the the Wannsee Conference:

The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannseekonferenz) was a meeting of senior officials of Nazi Germany, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942.

The purpose of the conference, called by director of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the final solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and murdered. Conference attendees included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the Schutzstaffel (SS). In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up from west to east and sent to extermination camps in the General Government (the occupied part of Poland), where they would be murdered.

The Wannsee Conference lasted only about ninety minutes. The enormous importance which has been attached to the conference by postwar writers was not evident to most of its participants at the time. Heydrich did not call the meeting to make fundamental new decisions on the Jewish question. Massive killings of Jews in the conquered territories in the Soviet Union and Poland were ongoing and a new extermination camp was already under construction at Belzec at the time of the conference; other extermination camps were in the planning stages.^[28][64] The decision to exterminate the Jews had already been made, and Heydrich, as Himmler’s emissary, held the meeting to ensure the cooperation of the various departments in conducting the deportations.^[65] According to Longerich, a primary goal of the meeting was to emphasise that once the deportations had been completed, the implementation of the Final Solution became an internal matter of the SS, totally outside the purview of any other agency.^[66] A secondary goal was to determine the scope of the deportations and arrive at definitions of who was Jewish, who was Mischling, and who (if anybody) should be spared.^[66] “The representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy had made it plain that they had no concerns about the principle of deportation per se. This was indeed the crucial result of the meeting and the main reason why Heydrich had detailed minutes prepared and widely circulated”, said Longerich.^[67] Their presence at the meeting also ensured that all those present were accomplices and accessories to the murders that were about to be undertaken.^[68]

Heydrich, himself, did not live to see the unconditional surrender of the genocidal regime he served; he died of sepsis later in 1942.

Puzzability‘s Asia Fantasia series continues with Wednesday’s game:

This Week’s Game — January 18-22

Asia Fantasia

We’re working on eastern time this week. For each day, we’ll give a three-by-three letter grid in which we’ve hidden the name of a major city in Asia, followed by its country, with a total of 11 or more letters. To find it, start at any letter and move from letter to letter by traveling to any adjacent letter—across, up and down, or diagonally. You may come back to a letter you’ve used previously, but may not stay in the same spot twice in a row. You will not always need all nine letters in the grid.

Example:

Answer:

Baghdad, Iraq

What to Submit:

Submit the city and country (as “Baghdad, Iraq” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, January 20