Good morning, Whitewater.

Memorial Day in Whitewater will see thunderstorms in the morning, with a high of eighty-one for the day. Sunrise is 5:22 and sunset 8:20, for 14h 58m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1977, Star Wars opens.

Here’s the original teaser trailer:

This Week’s Game — May 25-29

Cheese Filling

We’ve got string cheese on the menu all week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a cheese spanning the gap between the answers. When the cheese’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.

Example:

Affleck’s Good Will Hunting costar; river of South America; astound

Answer:

AMAZEDAMON (Damon, Amazon, amaze; the cheese is Edam)

What to Submit:

Submit just the full string of letters, with the cheese in the middle (as “AMAZEDAMON” in the example), for your answer.

Monday, May 25

Shoreside platform; laser printer cartridge contents; stamen’s counterpart

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy, with thunderstorms, and a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 5:22 and sunset 8:20, for 14h 56m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 38.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether, in the effort to save endangered species, a priority should go to pandas (as a high-profile, sharp-looking animal). A majority of respondents (60%) said that we should not prioritize panda survival, but that we should develop a different set of standards.

On this day in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic:

The bridge—originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and as the East River Bridge^{[citation needed]}— was opened for use on May 24, 1883. The opening ceremony was attended by several thousand people and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester A. Arthur and Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower.^[26] Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at the latter’s home, after the ceremony. Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and in fact rarely visited the site again), but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display.^[27]

On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge’s main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost US$15.5 million in 1883 dollars (about US$379,661,000 in today’s dollars) to build and an estimated number of 27 people died during its construction.^[28]

On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which was responsible for at least twelve people being crushed and killed.^[29] On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge’s stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.^{[30][31][32][33]}

Sixteen years later, in 1899, Thomas Edison’s company filmed a crossing from Brooklyn into New York:

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be mostly sunny, with a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset 8:19, for 14h 54m 57s of daytime.

On this day in 1934, bank robbers and members of a murderous gang Bonnie and Clyde find that their vicious crime spree comes to an end:

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow^[1] (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American outlaws and robbers from the Dallas area who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. At times, the gang included Buck Barrow, Blanche Barrow, Raymond Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer,Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the “Public Enemy Era“, between 1931 and 1935. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians. The couple were eventually ambushed and killed near the town of Sailes, Louisiana, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, by law officers.

On this day in 1908, a Nobel Prize winner is born in Wisconsin:

1908 – John Bardeen Born
On this date double Nobel Prize winner John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Bardeen attended high school in Madison and went on to study Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin where he received a B.S. in 1928 and an M.S. in 1929.

After working at Gulf Research Laboratories, Bardeen returned to graduate studies in 1933 at Princeton in mathematical physics. Bardeen, along with Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for “investigations on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect.”

In 1957, Bardeen and two colleagues, L.N. Cooper and J.R. Schrieffer, proposed the first successful explanation of superconductivity.

He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize with L.N. Cooper and J.R. Schrieffer for the theory of superconductivity. He received the distinguished Lomonosov Award of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1990, Bardeen was one of 11 recipients of the Third Century Award honoring exceptional contributions to American creativity. He was also named by Life Magazine as one of the “100 most influential people of the century.” Dr. Bardeen died on January 30, 1991. [Source: Nobelprize.org]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be sunny with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset 8:18, for 14h 53m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.

He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste.^[1] He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels….

Doyle’s attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent.^[26] In November 1891 he wrote to his mother: “I think of slaying Holmes … and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.” His mother responded, “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!”.^[30] In an attempt to deflect publishers’ demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked.^[26] As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time.

In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story “The Final Problem“. Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.

In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, The Adventure of the Empty House, in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to also be perceived as dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories – the last published in 1927 – and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.

Jane Stanford compares some of Moriarty’s characteristics to those of the Fenian John O’Connor Power. ‘The Final Problem’ was published the year the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the House of Commons. ‘The Valley of Fear’ was serialised in 1914, the year Home Rule, the Government of Ireland Act (18 September) was placed on the Statute Book.^[31]

Here is the final game in Puzzability‘s series of the week, Prhymetime:

This Week’s Game — May 18-22

Prhymetime

For your viewing pleasure this week, we’re airing a series series every day. Each day’s clues lead to a series of answer words that, in order, rhyme with the title of an Emmy-winning TV series (comedy or drama).

Example:

Pretending to be sick; tartan pattern

Answer:

Breaking Bad (faking; plaid)

What to Submit:

Submit the series title and the rhyming words (as “Breaking Bad (faking; plaid)” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, May 22

Sirloin or ribeye; mausoleum, for example; U.S. Marines group; golf assistant

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17, for 14h 51m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM (for an appreciation dinner) and the city’s Police & Fire Commission at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1927, Charles Lindbergh completes a solo flight across the Atlantic:

Six well-known aviators had already lost their lives in pursuit of the Orteig Prize [to be awarded to the pilot of the first successful nonstop flight made in either direction between New York City and Paris] when Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on his successful attempt in the early morning of Friday, May 20, 1927. Burdened by its heavy load of 450 U.S. gallons (1,704 liters) of gasoline weighing about 2,710 lb (1,230 kg), and hampered by a muddy, rain-soaked runway, Lindbergh’sWright Whirlwind-powered monoplane gained speed very slowly as it made its 7:52 am (07:52) takeoff run, but its J-5C radial engine still proved powerful enough to allow the Spirit to clear the telephone lines at the far end of the field “by about twenty feet [six meters] with a fair reserve of flying speed”.^[52] Over the next 33.5 hours, he and the Spirit—which Lindbergh always jointly referred to as “WE”—faced many challenges, including skimming over both storm clouds at 10,000 ft (3,000 m) and wave tops at as low at 10 ft (3.0 m), fighting icing, flying blind through fog for several hours, and navigating only by the stars (whenever visible), and dead reckoning before landing at Le Bourget Airport at 10:22 pm (22:22) on Saturday, May 21.^[53] The airfield was not marked on his map and Lindbergh knew only that it was some seven miles northeast of the city. He initially mistook the airfield for some large industrial complex with bright lights spreading out in all directions. The lights were, in fact, the headlights of tens of thousands of cars all driven by eager spectators now caught in “the largest traffic jam in Parisian history.”^[54]

Here’s the Thursday game in Puzzability‘s Prhymetime series:

This Week’s Game — May 18-22

Prhymetime

For your viewing pleasure this week, we’re airing a series series every day. Each day’s clues lead to a series of answer words that, in order, rhyme with the title of an Emmy-winning TV series (comedy or drama).

Example:

Pretending to be sick; tartan pattern

Answer:

Breaking Bad (faking; plaid)

What to Submit:

Submit the series title and the rhyming words (as “Breaking Bad (faking; plaid)” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, May 21

Feather pen; break the rules in order to win; vacation on a ship