Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be cloudy, with a high of thirty-three, and bring freezing rain & sleet in the afternoon. Sunrise is 7 AM and sunset 5:17 PM, for 10h 17m 32s of daytime. (A journalist recently told me that using AM and PM for sunrise & sunset was unnecessary, as sunrise is always in the morning and sunset always after midday. True enough; I’ll adjust after today by either abandoning AM and PM or using a twenty-four hour measurement.)

Two-thirds of respondents to Friday’s FW poll thought that Jimmy the Groundhog (of Sun Prairie) was justified in nipping the ear of that city’s mayor on Groundhog Day.

Quite the xylophonist:

On this day in 1858, a Wisconsin representative starts a fight in Congress:

Just before the Civil War, the issue of slavery tore apart the U.S. Congress. On February 8, 1858, Wisconsin Rep. John Potter (considered a backwoods hooligan by Southern aristocrats) leaped into a fight on the House floor. When Potter embarrassed a pro-slavery brawler by pulling off his wig, the gallery shouted that he’d taken a Southern scalp. Potter emerged from the melee covered in blood and marked by slave owners as an enemy.

Two years later, on April 5, 1860, he accused Virginia Rep. Roger Pryor of falsifying the Congressional record. Pryor, feeling his character impugned, challenged Potter to a duel. According to Southern custom, a person challenged had the right to choose weapons. Potter replied that he would only fight with “Bowie knives in a closed room,” and his Southern challenger beat a hasty retreat. Republican supporters around the nation sent Potter Bowie knives as a tribute, including this six-foot-long one. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday brings a day of partly sunny skies with a high of thirty-seven to the Whippet City. Sunrise today is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:16 PM, for 10h 14m 57s of daytime.

On this day in 1964, the Beatles arrive:

On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York’s Kennedy Airport–and “Beatlemania” arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” At Kennedy, the “Fab Four”–dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts–were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.

Two days later, Paul McCartney, age 21, Ringo Starr, 23, John Lennon, 23, and George Harrison, 20, made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million U.S. television viewers, or about 40 percent of the U.S. population, tuned in to watch. Sullivan immediately booked the Beatles for two more appearances that month. The group made their first public concert appearance in the United States on February 11 at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and 20,000 fans attended. The next day, they gave two back-to-back performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and police were forced to close off the streets around the venerable music hall because of fan hysteria. On February 22, the Beatles returned to England.

On this day in 1867, Laura Ingalls Wilder is born:

Wisconsin’s most famous children’s author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born this day near Pepin. Although her family moved away a year later, it subsequently returned in 1870 and remained until 1874. It is this period that is immortalized in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.

Good morning, Whitewater.

The work week ends with mostly cloudy skies and a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 AM, for 10h 12m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s Babe Ruth’s birthday:

George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American baseball outfielder and pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1914 to 1935. Nicknamed “The Bambino” and “The Sultan of Swat”, he began his career as a stellar left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Ruth established many MLB batting (and some pitching) records, including career home runs (714), slugging percentage (.690), runs batted in (RBIs) (2,213), bases on balls (2,062), and on-base plus slugging (OPS) (1.164); his career slugging percentage and OPS records still stand today.[1] He was one of the first five inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936….

At age seven, Ruth was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory where he learned life lessons and baseball skills from Brother Matthias Boutlier, of the Christian Brothers, the school’s disciplinarian and a capable baseball player. In 1914, Ruth was signed to play minor-league baseball for the Baltimore Orioles. Soon sold to the Red Sox, by 1916 he had built a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who sometimes hit long home runs, a feat unusual for any player in the pre-1920 dead-ball era. Although Ruth twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and was a member of three World Series championship teams with Boston, he wanted to play every day and was allowed to convert to an outfielder. He responded by breaking the MLB single-season home run record in 1919.

After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee controversially sold Ruth to the Yankees. In his 15 years with New York, Ruth helped the Yankees win seven league championships and four World Series championships. His big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only drew fans to the ballpark and boosted the sport’s popularity but also helped usher in the live-ball era of baseball, in which it evolved from a low-scoring game of strategy to a sport where the home run was a major factor. As part of the Yankees’ vaunted “Murderer’s Row” lineup of 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs, extending his MLB single-season record. He retired in 1935 after a short stint with the Boston Braves. During his career, Ruth led the league in home runs during a season twelve times.

Google-a-Day asks about a company:

Because the company increased shareholder dividends for 25 years in a row, what S&P designation was granted the world’s largest distributor of toys?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fourteen degrees. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 09m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1937, Pres. Roosevelt introduced a plan to give him authority to increase the number of Supreme Court justices, to as many as fifteen:

Washington, Feb. 5 — The President suddenly, at noon today, cut through the tangle of proposals made by his Congressional leaders to “bring legislative and judicial action into closer harmony” with a broadaxe message to Congress recommending the passage of statutes to effect drastic Federal court reforms.

The message- prepared in a small group and with deepest secrecy — was accompanied by a letter from the Attorney General and by a bill drawn at the Department of Justice, which would permit an increase in the membership of the Supreme Court from nine to a maximum of fifteen if judges reaching the age of 70 declined to retire; add a total of not more than fifty judges to all classes of the Federal courts; send appeals from lower court decisions on constitutional questions, direct to the Supreme Court, and require that government attorneys be heard before any lower-court injunction issue against the enforcement of any act of Congress.

Avoiding both the devices of constitutional amendment and statutory limitation of Supreme Court powers, which were favored by his usual spokesmen in Congress, the President endorsed an ingenious plan which will on passage give him the power to name six new justices of the Supreme Court.

The legislation, of course, never became law:

Roosevelt’s legislative initiative ultimately failed. The bill was held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee by Democrat committee chair Henry F. Ashurst, who delayed hearings in the Judiciary Committee, saying “No haste, no hurry, no waste, no worry—that is the motto of this committee.”[11] As a result of his delaying efforts, the bill was held in committee for 165 days, and opponents of the bill credited Ashurst as instrumental in its defeat.[5] The bill was further undermined by the untimely death of its chief advocate in the U.S. Senate, Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson. Contemporary observers broadly viewed Roosevelt’s initiative as political maneuvering. Its failure exposed the limits of Roosevelt’s abilities to push forward legislation through direct public appeal.

If one had to have a legislative motto, Sen. Ashurst’s pithy “No haste, no hurry, no waste, no worry” seems a good one.

On this day in 1849, a great institution opens:

On this day in 1849 the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts. The university was initially housed at the Madison Female Academy building, which had been provided free of charge by the city.

The course of study was English grammar; arithmetic; ancient and modern geography; elements of history; algebra; Caesar’s Commentaries; the Aeneid of Virgil (six books); Sallust; select orations of Cicero; Greek; the Anabasis of Xenophon; antiquities of Greece and Rome; penmanship, reading, composition and declamation. Also offered were book-keeping, geometry, and surveying. Tuition was “twenty dollars per scholar, per annum.” For a detailed recollection of early UW-Madison life, see the memoirs of Mrs. W.F. Allen [Source: History of the University of Wisconsin, Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1900]

Google-a-Day asks a question about coyotes:

What is the source of the pressure that has caused coyotes, which were once essentially diurnal, to adjust to a more nocturnal behavior?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventeen. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:12 PM, for 10h 07m 22s of daytime. It’s a full moon today, with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Videographer Alphonse Swinehart’s latest work, Riding Light, is a depiction (with a few liberties for watchability) of a photon of light’s journey from the sun to Jupiter. Despite the great speed of at which light travels, that’s a journey from the sun to the solar system’s with planet would still take about forty-five minutes. (The photon would reach Earth in under nine minutes.)

Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart on Vimeo.

On this day in 1922, Ford buys Lincoln:

The acquisition came at a time when Ford, founded in 1903, was losing market share to its competitor General Motors, which offered a range of automobiles while Ford continued to focus on its utilitarian Model T. Although the Model T, which first went into production in 1908, had become the world’s best-selling car and revolutionized the auto industry, it had undergone few major changes since its debut, and from 1914 to 1925 it was only available in one color: black. In May 1927, lack of demand for the Model T forced Ford to shut down the assembly lines on the iconic vehicle. Later that year, the company introduced the more comfortable and stylish Model A, a car whose sleeker look resembled that of a Lincoln automobile. In fact, the Model A was nicknamed “the baby Lincoln.”

Google-a-Day asks a geography question:

Due to its vast territory, in 2009 a bill was proposed in Russia to reduce “what”, down from eleven?

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a few inches of snow later this afternoon and evening, on a day with a high of nineteen degrees. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:11 PM, for 10h 04m 53s of daytime. We’ve a full moon today.

There are three principal public meetings scheduled for today. Downtown Whitewater’s board meets this morning at 8 AM, the Alcohol and Licensing Committee at 6:15 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, Gen. Nathaniel Greene successfully evades Gen. Charles Cornwallis:

On the evening of February 3, 1781, American General Nathanael Greene and his troops successfully cross the Yadkin River to evade General Charles Cornwallis. The crossing followed consecutive Patriot losses at the Catawba River and at Tarrant’s Tavern, as well as heavy rainfall on February 1, which Greene feared would soon make the river impassable.

Although contradictory evidence exists, it is likely that the efforts of Polish engineer and military advisor Thaddeus Kosciusko made the crossing possible. Kosciusko had made a canoe expedition up the Catawba and Pedee Rivers, assessing Greene’s options, in December 1780. He then built a fleet of flat-bottomed boats for General Greene to use as a means of transporting his men across the water without having to waste time on manual portage, which would have involved soldiers removing the boats from the water and carrying them on their shoulders over land. The boats could be loaded into the Southern Army’s wagons for transport between river crossings. Kosciusko’s study of the rivers also allowed Greene to accurately predict the two-day interval between a heavy rainfall and rising river water.

Greene had ordered the Kosciusko-designed boats to be waiting for his men at the Yadkin. Thus, despite the flood of refugees clogging North Carolina’s roads in a desperate rush to leave before notoriously cruel British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton arrived, Greene was able to move his troops to the river and cross it. Although Cornwallis caught the tail-end of the Patriot crossing and shelled Greene’s camp on the far side of the river on February 4, he was not able to cause major damage or disruption.

Greene’s timing was impeccable–Cornwallis was unable to ford the quickly rising Yadkin behind him. Instead, Cornwallis was forced to march his men to the aptly named Shallow Ford and did not finish crossing the Yadkin until the morning of the February 7, by which time Greene and the Southern Army had a two-day lead in the race towards the Dan River and safety in Patriot-held Virginia.

On this day in 1959, an accident claims popular musicians’ lives:

Bad winter weather and a bus breakdown prompted rock-and-roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper to rent a plane to continue on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Icy roads and treacherous weather had nearly undermined their performances in Green Bay and Appleton that weekend, so after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, they boarded a four-seat airplane. The three performers and pilot Roger Peterson perished when the plane crashed about 1:00 AM on Monday, February 3rd (“The Day the Music Died,” according to singer Don McLean in his song “American Pie”) . [Source: Mark Steuer; Wikipedia]

Google-a-Day asks about a virus:

What virus is believed to have caused the destruction of hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies across North American and Europe in 2007?