Good morning, and Happy Halloween, Whitewater.

We’ll have a rainy 10.31 in Whitewater, with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 7:28 and sunset 5:48, for 10h 19m 48s of daytime. The moon is waning gibbous, with 79.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Filmmakers at the The Saline Project have turned their spooky Halloween photos (shared last year at FW) into a video:

On this day in 1776, King George has something to say:

In his address, the king spoke about the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary leaders who signed it, saying, “for daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country.” The king went on to inform Parliament of the successful British victory over General George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, but warned them that, “notwithstanding the fair prospect, it was necessary to prepare for another campaign.”

On this day in 1968, a first for a new team:

1968 – Milwaukee Bucks Win First Game

On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in our small city will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-four.  Sunrise is 7:27 and sunset is 5:49, for 10h 22m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Two annual posts are on the way: this morning the third-annual Favorite Halloween Monster Poll, and tomorrow the ninth-annual Scariest Things in Whitewater post.

“The War of the Worlds” is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on Sunday, October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmakerOrson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells‘ novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for allegedly causing mass panic, although the reality of this mass panic is disputed as the program had relatively few listeners.^[3]

The first two thirds of the one-hour broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without commercial interruptions, adding to the program’s realism. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to “The War of the Worlds” during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction that the show was a drama, but recent research suggests this only happened in rare instances.^[4]:67-69

In the days following the adaptation, there was widespread outrage in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.^[3] The episode secured Welles’s fame as a dramatist.

On this day in 1914, 4-H gets going in Wisconsin:

1914 – First 4-H Club in Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Linn Junior Farmers Club in Walworth County was organized. This club was started five months after Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act which created the Cooperative Extension Service whereby federal, state, and county governments participate in the county agent system. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]

Friday brings the concluding game in Puzzability‘s week-long No Tricks series:

This Week’s Game — October 26-30

No Tricks

It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.

Example:

**TTER****ER

Answer:

Butterfinger

What to Submit:

Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, October 30

*****R ***T*

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be cloudy and windy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 5:26 and sunset 5:51 for 10h 25m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s city government will hold a Zoning Code Review Committee meeting at 7 PM tonight.

On this day in 1929, prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. The New York Times reported the large declines the next day:

Stocks Collapse In 16,410,030-share Day, But Rally At Close Cheers Brokers; Bankers Optimistic, To Continue Aid

CLOSING RALLY VIGOROUS
Leading Issues Regain From 4 to 14 Points in 15 Minutes
INVESTMENT TRUSTS BUY
Large Blocks Thrown on Market at Opening Start Third Break of Week.
BIG TRADERS HARDEST HIT
Bankers Believe Liquidation Now Has Run Its Course and Advise Purchases

Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.

There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.

From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street’s history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.

Puzzability‘s No Tricks series continues with Thursday’s game:

This Week’s Game — October 26-30

No Tricks

It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.

Example:

**TTER****ER

Answer:

Butterfinger

What to Submit:

Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, October 29

T*****ER*

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will be cloudy, with scattered showers and a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 5:52, for 10h 27m 37s of daytime. We’ve a waning gibbous moon with 98.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s Dr. Jonas Salk‘s birthday:

Jonas Edward Salk … October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician.

Until 1957, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation’s history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,^[1] with most of its victims being children. The “public reaction was to a plague”, said historian Bill O’Neal.^[2] “Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned.” According to a 2009 PBS documentary, “Apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”^[3] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. In 1938, U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, the world’s most recognized victim of the disease, had founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known as March of Dimes Foundation since 2007), an organization that would fund the development of a vaccine.

In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O’Neill, “the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers.” Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial.^[4] When news of the vaccine’s success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a “miracle worker” and the day almost became a national holiday. Around the world, an immediate rush to vaccinate began, with countries including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium planning to begin polio immunization campaigns using Salk’s vaccine.

Salk campaigned for mandatory vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a “moral commitment.”^[5] His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”^[6] In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. He continued to conduct research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason (1983). Salk’s last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV. His personal papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library.^[7][8]

On this day in 1892, a fire sweeps through part of Milwaukee:

1892 – Disastrous Fire in Milwaukee’s Third Ward

On this date an exploding oil barrel started a small fire in Milwaukee. It spread rapidly and by morning four people had died, 440 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,900 people in the Irish neighborhood were left homeless. It was the most disastrous fire in Milwaukee’s history.[Source:Historic Third Ward]

Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — October 26-30

No Tricks

It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.

Example:

**TTER****ER

Answer:

Butterfinger

What to Submit:

Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, October 28

*A** R*T*

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday will bring rain in the afternoon and evening, with a high of fifty-eight. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 5:53, for 10h 30m 15s of daytime. We’ve a full moon today.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 1 PM, the Urban Forestry Commission at 4:30 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1904, New York begins a new means of transportation for that city:

At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city’s innovative new rapid transit system: the subway.

While London boasts the world’s oldest underground train network (opened in 1863) and Boston built the first subway in the United States in 1897, the New York City subway soon became the largest American system. The first line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), traveled 9.1 miles through 28 stations. Running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. On opening day, Mayor McClellan so enjoyed his stint as engineer that he stayed at the controls all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street.

At 7 p.m. that evening, the subway opened to the general public, and more than 100,000 people paid a nickel each to take their first ride under Manhattan. IRT service expanded to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908 and to Queens in 1915. Since 1968, the subway has been controlled by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The system now has 26 lines and 468 stations in operation; the longest line, the 8th Avenue “A” Express train, stretches more than 32 miles, from the northern tip of Manhattan to the far southeast corner of Queens.

On this day in 1864, a Union officer serves the U.S. Navy very well:

1864 – Waukesha Soldier Sinks Confederate Ship

On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandonded ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Tuesday game:

This Week’s Game — October 26-30

No Tricks

It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.

Example:

**TTER****ER

Answer:

Butterfinger

What to Submit:

Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.

Tuesday, October 27

RA****ET*