Good morning, Whitewater.

Our first work week of the year begins today, and I hope you’re looking forward to it as I am. Challenges await our city, but nothing that cannot be overcome, and much to which we can look forward. We have a day of partly cloudy skies and twenty-six degrees for a high. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:34, for 9h 09m 06s daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 28.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

A quick note – I had promised posts on how UW-Whitewater (and now the UW System) have addressed sexual assault. I’ve delayed the posts only to consider to additional information. It’s a serious subject, and an ongoing one for this city (and state). I’ll publish posts when they’re ready, with the understanding that there will be more policy developments to address throughout the year. It seems there will, sadly, always be the risk and occurrence of some violence in society; there needn’t, by contrast, be any administrative self-protection and mendacity in a well-ordered society.

On this day in 2004, the American rover Spirit landed on Mars:

Spirit, also known as MER-A (Mars Exploration Rover – A) or MER-2, is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010.^[1] It was one of two rovers of NASA‘s ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity (MER-B), landed on the other side of the planet. Its name was chosen through a NASA-sponsored student essay competition. The rover became stuck in late 2009, and its last communication with Earth was sent on March 22, 2010.

The rover completed its planned 90-sol mission. Aided by cleaning events that resulted in higher power from its solar panels, Spirit went on to function effectively over twenty times longer than NASA planners expected. Spirit also logged 7.73 km (4.8 mi) of driving instead of the planned 600 m (0.4 mi),^[5] allowing more extensive geological analysis of Martian rocks and planetary surface features. Initial scientific results from the first phase of the mission (the 90-sol prime mission) were published in a special issue of the journal Science.^[6]

Puzzability begins the year with a series entitled, Sweet Sixteen:

This Week’s Game — January 4-8

Sweet Sixteen

Happy 2016! For each day this week, we’ll give an eight-letter word or phrase and a trivia question. The 16-letter answer to that question (a title, name, or place) uses only the eight letters given.

Example:

HISTOGEN: What Rod Stewart song was his first U.S. #1 after “Maggie May,” five years later?

Answer:

“Tonight’s the Night”

What to Submit:

Submit the 16-letter title, name, or place (as “Tonight’s the Night” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, January 4

SHIPMENT: In what city (with state) is FedEx’s headquarters?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday look much like yesterday: cloudy in the morning, sunny in the afternoon, with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:33 for 9h 08m 06s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 36.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked readers if, on New Year’s Day, they’d watch a college football game.  Most respondents (76.47%) said yes, that they would watch one.

Two-thousand fifteen saw (at least) 83 rocket launches.  Here are those 83:

On January 3rd, 1777, following his earlier victories at Trenton and Assunpink Creek, Washington is again victorious at Princeton:

The Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was a small battle in which General George Washington‘s revolutionary forces defeated British forces near Princeton,New Jersey.

On the night of January 2, 1777 George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek inTrenton. That night, he evacuated his position, circled around General Lord Cornwallis‘ army, and went to attack the British garrison at Princeton. Brigadier GeneralHugh Mercer of the Continental Army clashed with two regiments under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood of the British Army. Mercer and his troops were overrun and Washington sent some militia under Brigadier General John Cadwalader to help him. The militia, on seeing the flight of Mercer’s men, also began to flee. Washington rode up with reinforcements and rallied the fleeing militia. He then led the attack on Mawhood’s troops, driving them back. Mawhood gave the order to retreat and most of the troops tried to flee to Cornwallis in Trenton….

The British viewed Trenton and Princeton as minor American victories, but with these victories, the Americans believed that they could win the war.^[43]American historians often consider the Battle of Princeton a great victory, on par with the battle of Trenton, due to the subsequent loss of control of most of New Jersey by the Crown forces. Some other historians, such as Edward Lengel consider it to be even more impressive than Trenton.^[4] A century later, British historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan would write in a study of the American Revolution, when talking about the impact of the victories at Trenton and Princeton, that “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”^[51]

Good morning, Whitewater.

The second day of the year will be, for Whitewater, sunny with a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:32, for 9h 07m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 46.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

One can be sure that a Star Wars tide has swept all before it when Sarah Reich tap dances to a medley from that film series –

1863 – (Civil War) Final day of Battle of Stones River, Tennessee

This was the final day of the Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The 1st, 10th, 15th, 21st and 24th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries participated. The 21st was in the forefront all three days. The 24th lost nearly 40 percent of its men and almost all its officers. The two sides had traded control for three days until they both withdrew and the Union took possession of the field. The rich farmland meant to feed the Confederates now supplied the Union.

Good morning, Whitewater.

A new year begins in the Whippet City, with cloudy skies, perhaps a few flurries, and a high of twenty-five. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:31, for 9h 06m 20s of daytime each day. The moon is a waning gibbous with 56.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

I’ve made a change to the cartoon feature here at FW.  Before, only Wednesday featured a cartoon, but I have replaced the weekly cartoon with a widget on the right sidebar that, when clicked, will produce a daily cartoon. The image on the sidebar stays the same, but clicking it shows a larger, daily cartoon from the popular, professional cartoonist Mark Anderson. I’m a big fan of his work and I know that many of you are, too (thanks for your messages about these cartoons).

On this day in 1946, an American solider has an unexpected encounter:

An American soldier accepts the surrender of about 20 Japanese soldiers who only discovered that the war was over by reading it in the newspaper.

On the island of Corregidor, located at the mouth of Manila Bay, a lone soldier on detail for the American Graves Registration was busy recording the makeshift graves of American soldiers who had lost their lives fighting the Japanese. He was interrupted when approximately 20 Japanese soldiers approached him—literally waving a white flag. They had been living in an underground tunnel built during the war and learned that their country had already surrendered when one of them ventured out in search of water and found a newspaper announcing Japan’s defeat.

On this day in 1836, Michigan forms a territory:

1836 – Wisconsin Territory Formed

On this date the Wisconsin Territory was formed by an act of the Michigan Legislature. Brown County lost a portion of its original possession north of the Menominee River but gained the remainder of the eastern peninsula. Territorial officials were sworn on July 4th of the same year.  [Source: Sussex-Lisbon Area Historical Society]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our year ends with morning clouds, afternoon sunshine, and a high of twenty-four. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:30, for 9h 05m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3% off its visible disk illuminated.

Google has a doodle to send off ’15, and welcome ’16:

It’s Matisse’s birthday:

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse …

31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.^[1]

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.^[2][3][4][5] Although he was initially labelled a Fauve(wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.^[6] His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.^[7]

….The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did not affect the career of Matisse; many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917, when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, even though he did not quite fit in, with his conservative appearance and strict bourgeois work habits. He continued to absorb new influences. He travelled to Algeria in 1906 studying African art and Primitivism. After viewing a large exhibition of Islamic art in Munich in 1910, he spent two months in Spain studying Moorish art. He visited Morocco in 1912 and again in 1913 and while painting in Tangiers he made several changes to his work, including his use of black as a colour.^[24][25][26] The effect on Matisse’s art was a new boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour, as in L’Atelier Rouge (1911).^[15]

On this day in 1967, an unforgettable Packer’s win:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday will be cloudy with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:30, for 9h 04m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Behold, from among the wonders of the deep, a rare and beautiful creature in Toyama Bay:

On this day in 1922, Prohibition leads to confiscation in Madison:

1922 – Authorities Confiscate Illegal Alcohol

On this date authorities in Madison confiscated 1,200 gallons of “mash” and fifteen gallons of moonshine from the home of a suspected bootlegger. As the illegal liquor trade flourished in Madison’s Greenbush neighborhood during Prohibition, two rival gangs, one on Regent Street and the other located on Milton Street, fought to gain control until the “Rum War” erupted among these factions in 1923. [Source:Bishops to Bootleggers: A Biographical Guide to Resurrection Cemetery, p.189]