Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in the Whippet City will be pretty, with a high of fifty-nine and sunny skies. Sunrise is 5:54 and sunset 7:50, for 13h 55m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Recent weather events color our perception of trends, and television hysteria over single events does, too:

Today is the anniversary, from 1986, of the Chernobyl Disaster:

The Chernobyl disaster … Chornobylska Katastrofa – Chornobyl Catastrophe; also referred to as Chernobyl or the Chornobyl accident) was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially the Ukrainian SSR), which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe.

The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and casualties.[1] It is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011.[2] The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles.[3] During the accident itself, 31 people died, and long-term effects such as cancers are still being investigated….

The disaster began during a systems test on Saturday, 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the city of Pripyat and in proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and the Dnieper River. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, an exponentially larger spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of steam explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.[4] The resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe. From 1986 to 2000, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.[5][6] According to official post-Soviet data,[7][8] about 60% of the fallout landed in Belarus.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with an even chance of rain during the day, and a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 5:56 and sunset is 7:48, for 13h 52m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Popcorn – it’s both delicious and interesting:

On this day in 1996, Gov. Tommy Thompson signs a welfare reform bill:

On this date Governor Tommy Thompson signed the W-2 (Wisconsin Works) program into law, making Wisconsin the first U.S. state to replace a benefits-based welfare system with a requirement that recipients work to get aid. W-2 formed the basis for national welfare reform.[Source: W-2, Wisconsin Works.]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be sunny, but with a forty-percent chance of late afternoon showers. Sunrise is 5:57 and sunset 7:47, for 13h 49m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

1977 – Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism Moves to Waukesha

On this date the Morris Pratt Insititute, dedicated to the study of Spiritualism and Mediumship, moved from Whitewater to Waukesha. Founded in 1888 and incorporated in 1901, it was one of the few institutes in the world that instructed spiritualists. These were people “who believe as the basis of his or her religion, in the communication between this and the Spirit World by means of mediumship and who endeavors to mould his or her character and conduct in accordance with the highest teachings derived from such communication.” [Source: Morris Pratt Institute]

An affront to both traditional theology and secular thinking, the loss of the private Pratt Institute meant that the core of nutty ideas for the city would no longer be found in the leaders of a private institution, but mostly thereafter among the proposals from leaders and hangers-on of our public ones.

Here’s the final game in Puzzability‘s Breaking the Monopoly series:

This Week’s Game — April 20-24

Breaking the Monopoly

Go to solve. Go directly to solve. For each day this week, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the name of a space on a classic Monopoly board.

Example:

Square footage / home run, in slang / bad space in Monopoly / children’s author Dahl

Answer:

Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)

What to Submit:

Submit the space name and the smaller words (as “Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, April 24

Higher than / Apollo mission destination / alehouse / take advantage of

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in the Whippet City will be sunny with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 5:59 and sunset 7:46, for 13h 47m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

A canonical playwright and an esteemed physicist are both born on this day (in Shakespeare’s case, this is his traditionally-observed birthday):

William Shakespeare … 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.[2] He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon”.[3][nb 2] His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,[nb 3] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, of which the authorship of some is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[4]

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[5] Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.[6][nb 4] His early plays were mainly comedies and histories and these works remain regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

It’s also Max Planck‘s birthday:

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck…. April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.[3] Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as an originator of the quantum theory. However, his name is also known on a broader academic basis, through the renaming in 1948 of the German scientific institution, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (of which he was twice president), as the Max Planck Society (MPS). The MPS now includes 83 institutions representing a wide range of scientific directions.
Max Planck’s quantum theory revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity revolutionized the understanding of space and time.

Here’s the Thursday game in Puzzability‘s Breaking the Monopoly series:

This Week’s Game — April 20-24

Breaking the Monopoly

Go to solve. Go directly to solve. For each day this week, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the name of a space on a classic Monopoly board.

Example:

Square footage / home run, in slang / bad space in Monopoly / children’s author Dahl

Answer:

Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)

What to Submit:

Submit the space name and the smaller words (as “Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, April 23

Insane / shouting insanely / Noah’s vessel / thick, as fog

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our day will become partly sunny and breezy, with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:00 and sunset 7:45, for 13h 44m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM today, the CDA Capital Screening Committee at 3:30 PM, and the CDA Board at 4:30 PM.

Happy Earth Day —

Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness. “The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.” Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — April 20-24

Breaking the Monopoly

Go to solve. Go directly to solve. For each day this week, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the name of a space on a classic Monopoly board.

Example:

Square footage / home run, in slang / bad space in Monopoly / children’s author Dahl

Answer:

Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)

What to Submit:

Submit the space name and the smaller words (as “Reading Railroad (area / dinger / jail / Roald)” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, April 22

Ruler unit / Mafia’s code of silence / yoked work animal