Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s a sunny end to the week, with a high of thirty for Friday. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset 7:15, for 12h 31m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 51.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1912, Americans celebrate a gift of Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac:

In a ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two of these trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. At the end of the ceremony, the First Lady presented Viscountess Chinda with a bouquet of ‘American Beauty’ roses. These two trees still stand at the terminus of 17th Street Southwest, marked by a large plaque.[3] By 1915, the United States government had responded with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan.[5]

From 1913 to 1920, trees of the Somei-Yoshino variety, which comprised 1800 of the gift, were planted around the Tidal Basin. Trees of the other 11 cultivars, and the remaining Yoshinos, were planted in East Potomac Park. In 1927, a group of American school children re-enacted the initial planting. In 1934, the District of Columbia Commissioners sponsored a three-day celebration of the flowering cherry trees.

Puzzability‘s Mixed Company series ends with Friday’s game:

This Week’s Game — March 23-27

Mixed Company

The economy may be looking up, but these businesses have fallen to pieces. For each day this week, we started with the name of a current Fortune 500 company. We removed all spaces and punctuation, then divided the string into three-letter chunks. Those chunks, in random order, are the day’s clue.

Example:

RIC ESS XPR AME ANE

Answer:

American Express

What to Submit:

Submit the company name (as “American Express” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, March 27

OPG MAN NOR RUM THR

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be increasingly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:46 and sunset 7:14, for 12h 28m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 41.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, Jonas Salk makes an announcement:

On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952–an epidemic year for polio–there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, which is known as “infant paralysis” because it mainly affects children, Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time….

On this day in 1881, a Wisconsin mascot dies in a fire:

1881 – Old Abe Dies
On this date Old Abe, famous Civil War mascot, died from injuries sustained during a fire at the State Capitol. Old Abe was the mascot for Company C, an Eau Claire infantry unit that was part of the Wisconsin 8th Regiment. During the Capitol fire of 1881, smoke engulfed Old Abe’s cage. One of his feathers survived and is in the Wisconsin Historical Museum. [Source: Wisconsin Lore and Legends, pg. 51]

Here is the Thursday game from Puzzability, in the Mixed Company series:

This Week’s Game — March 23-27

Mixed Company

The economy may be looking up, but these businesses have fallen to pieces. For each day this week, we started with the name of a current Fortune 500 company. We removed all spaces and punctuation, then divided the string into three-letter chunks. Those chunks, in random order, are the day’s clue.

Example:

RIC ESS XPR AME ANE

Answer:

American Express

What to Submit:

Submit the company name (as “American Express” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, March 26

ERS IBB STO BRI SQU LMY

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in the Whippet City will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:47 and sunset is 7:13, for 12h 25m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM. This afternoon, the CDA’s Seed Capital Committee meets at 4 PM, and the CDA Board at 5 PM.

It’s the one-hundred fourth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire:

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men [1] – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23;[2][3][4] of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and “Sara” Rosaria Maltese.[5]

Because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, a common practice used to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and pilferage,[6] many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors to the streets below. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
The factory was located in the Asch Building, at 23–29 Washington Place in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, now known as the Brown Building and part of New York University. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.[7]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — March 23-27

Mixed Company

The economy may be looking up, but these businesses have fallen to pieces. For each day this week, we started with the name of a current Fortune 500 company. We removed all spaces and punctuation, then divided the string into three-letter chunks. Those chunks, in random order, are the day’s clue.

Example:

RIC ESS XPR AME ANE

Answer:

American Express

What to Submit:

Submit the company name (as “American Express” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, March 25

ORN OWE ING NSC

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be increasingly cloudy with a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise today is 6:49 and sunset 7:12, for 12h 22m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets today at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1989, America saw one of the worst oil spills in her history:

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef at 12:04 a.m.[1] local time and spilled 11,000,000 to 38,000,000 gallons of crude oil[2][3] over the next few days. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters.[4] The Valdez spill was the largest in US waters until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of volume released.[5] However, Prince William Sound’s remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and severely taxed existing plans for response. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds. The oil, originally extracted at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, eventually covered 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline,[6] and 11,000 square miles (28,000 km2) of ocean.[7]

It’s Harry Houdini’s birthday:

1874 – Harry Houdini Born
On this date magician Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, though he later claimed to have been born on April 6, 1874, in Appleton, Wisconsin. At the age of 13 he left Appleton, where his family had emigrated, for New York City, and began his career as an escape artist and magician. [Source: Houdini.org]

Here’s the Tuesday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — March 23-27

Mixed Company

The economy may be looking up, but these businesses have fallen to pieces. For each day this week, we started with the name of a current Fortune 500 company. We removed all spaces and punctuation, then divided the string into three-letter chunks. Those chunks, in random order, are the day’s clue.

Example:

RIC ESS XPR AME ANE

Answer:

American Express

What to Submit:

Submit the company name (as “American Express” in the example) for your answer.

Tuesday, March 24

LEL RIC ERA GEN ECT

Good morning, Whitewater.

Spring, but a cold spring: some snow, with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset 7:10, for 12h 19m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

This day in 1839 turns out O.K., OK, okay:

On this day in 1839, the initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll correct,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”).

Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the “O.K. Club,” which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of “OK” to denigrate Van Buren’s political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation “OK” to cover up his own misspelling of “all correct.”

The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind “OK” was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of “OK,” ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, “OK” has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports.

On this day in 1864, the 36th musters in:

1864 – (Civil War) 36th Wisconsin Infantry Mustered In
The 36th Wisconsin Infantry mustered in at Camp Randall in Madison. Its brief service included the defense of Washington, D.C., the Battle of Hatcher’s Run, Virginia, and the surrender of General Lee and his army at Appomattox Court House.

Puzzability has a corporate theme this week, in its Mixed Company series:

This Week’s Game — March 23-27

Mixed Company

The economy may be looking up, but these businesses have fallen to pieces. For each day this week, we started with the name of a current Fortune 500 company. We removed all spaces and punctuation, then divided the string into three-letter chunks. Those chunks, in random order, are the day’s clue.

Example:

RIC ESS XPR AME ANE

Answer:

American Express

What to Submit:

Submit the company name (as “American Express” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, March 23

ACI ONP UNI FIC

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our Sunday will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-one. We may have up to an inch of snow overnight, and at the least some rain or sleet. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset 7:09, for 12h 16m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On March 22, 1765, Britain imposed the Stamp Act of 1765 on her American (and other) colonies. The British thought themselves justified; not all agreed, however:

The debate in Parliament began soon after this meeting. Petitions submitted by the colonies were officially ignored by Parliament. In the debate Charles Townshend said, “…and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?”[26] This led to Colonel Isaac Barré’s response:

They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted ‘em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s earth. …

They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ‘em. As soon as you began to care about ‘em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over ’em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon ’em; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them … .

They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument … The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.”[27]

Honest to goodness, Townsend’s remarks so nicely summarize a condescending government view, looking at others as though they were children. Britain came to get the comeuppance she deserved from America during the Revolution; in a truly just outcome, British officials would have received even worse.

On this day in 1854, a great Wisconsin inventor, so to speak, is born:

1854 – Eugene Shepard, Father of the Hodag
On this date Eugene Shepard was born near Green Bay. Although he made his career in the lumbering business near Rhinelander, he was best known for his story-telling and practical jokes. He told many tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack, and drew pictures of the giant at work that became famous. Shepard also started a new legend about a prehistoric monster that roamed the woods of Wisconsin – the hodag. Shepard built the mythical monster out of wood and bull’s horns. He fooled everyone into believing it was alive, allowing it to be viewed only inside a dark tent. The beast was displayed at the Wausau and Antigo county fairs before Shepard admitted it was all a hoax. [Source: Badger saints and sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p.459-474]

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ve a mostly sunny day with a high of forty-eight ahead. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset 7:08, for 12h 13m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with just 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

How ’bout an aerial tour of faraway Nepal?

Drone over Nepal from Fallout Media on Vimeo.

A quick edit of some aerial drone footage shot over Kathmandu and Annapurna in Nepal.
We did a short trek to Poon Hill which is part of the Annapurna circuit, and I flew the Phantom at Ghandruk and Tadapani villages. Unfortunately my drone had a mishap and I wasn’t able to fly it on the second half of our journey. Next time, flying on an actual mountain summit!

DJI Phantom 2 (v2) with GoPro HERO 4.
Music: ‘Dragon Age Inquisition Theme’ by Trevor Morris

Via Fallout Media.

On this day in ’63, Alcatraz shuts down:

Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it’s peak period of use in 1950s, “The Rock, or “”America’s Devil Island” housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable.

The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times.

Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there. It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907.

The end of its prison days did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities.

The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism.