Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a high of twenty-six, and an even chance of snow showers this morning. Sunrise is 06:52 AM and sunset 16:28 PM, for 9h 35m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Tech Park Board meets this morning at 8 AM.

On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.

Google-a-Day asks about a spacecraft:

If the names of NASA’s space shuttles are listed alphabetically, how many missions were flown by the fourth one on the list?

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a partly cloudy Tuesday in town, giving way to more sun, with a high of twenty. Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 6:28 PM, for 9h 37m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1916 during the First World War, the Battle of the Somme ends with little to show for the effort expect casualties:

The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the River Somme in France. The battle was one of the largest of World War I, in which more than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. A Franco-British commitment to an offensive on the Somme had been made during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British, and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. The main part of the offensive was to be made by the French Army, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

Google-a-Day asks a question about sailing:

What is the common term used by the America’s Cup organization, for an object shaped like an airplane wing, designed to direct the flow of air over its surface?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday will be partly cloudy with a high of seventeen degrees (corrected from an earlier entry mistakenly listing the high as seven degrees). Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, with 9h 39m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with twenty-three percent of its disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, Congress submits the Articles of Confederation to the states for ratification (having been adopted by Congress two days earlier):

The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, was a document signed amongst the 13 original colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution.[1] Its drafting by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress began on July 12, 1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification in late 1777. The formal ratification by all 13 states was completed in early 1781. Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. Nevertheless, the weakness of the government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key nationalists. On March 4, 1789, general government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the U.S. Constitution.[2][3] The new Constitution provided for a much stronger federal government with a chief executive (the president), courts, and taxing powers.

Google-a-Day asks a geography question:

On the flag of Angola, the symbol with a half circle shape is part of three symbols, collectively chosen to relate to the flag of what former county?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be cloudy with a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 41m 19s of daytime.

Friday’s FW poll asked readers when they thought the city would first see at least one inch of accumulated snowfall. We’ve had more than an inch overnight, and of the total over an inch of that accumulated by midnight of Saturday, November 15th. Just over thirteen percent (13.04%) of respondents accurately predicted that the first inch of snow would accumulate sometime between November 14th and November 30th.

I love pumpkin pie, and this is that dessert’s season – from late October to just past Thanksgiving, pumpkin pie advances while fruit pies retreat from the menu. But what if the best pumpkin pie turns out to be butternut squash pie? Over at the New York Times, Melissa Clark nearly has me convinced:

See, also, The Trick to Great Pumpkin Pie: A Fresh Pumpkin Pie Recipe.

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a sunny and cold Saturday, with a high of twenty-eight, giving way to snowy skies and a half inch of accumulation later this evening.

Whitewater has no tall buildings, but every big city in America does. In the wildly improbably chance that you’re in a skyscraper’s elevator when the cable fails, what’s the best technique for survival? Business Insider offers the answer:

On this day in 1867, the stock ticker debuts in New York City:

Although telegraphic printing systems were first invented by Royal Earl House in 1846, early models were fragile, required hand-cranked power, frequently went out of necessary synchronization between sender and receiver, and did not become popular in widespread commercial use. David E. Hughes improved the printing telegraph design with clockwork weight power in 1856,[2] and his design was further improved and became viable for commercial use when George M. Phelps devised a resynchronization system in 1858.[3] The first stock price ticker system using a telegraphic printer was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1863; he unveiled his device in New York City in 1867.[4][5] Early versions of stock tickers provided the first mechanical means of conveying stock prices (“quotes”), over a long distance over telegraph wiring. In its infancy, the ticker used the same symbols as Morse code as a medium for conveying messages. One of the earliest practical stock ticker machines, the Universal Stock Ticker developed by Thomas Edison in 1869, used alphanumeric characters with a printing speed of approximately one character per second.

Previously, stock prices had been hand-delivered via written or verbal messages. Since the useful time-span of individual quotes is very brief, they generally had not been sent long distances; aggregated summaries, typically for one day, were sent instead. The increase in speed provided by the ticker allowed for faster and more exact sales. Since the ticker ran continuously, updates to a stock’s price whenever the price changed became effective much faster and trading became a more time sensitive matter. For the first time, trades were being done in what is now thought of as near real-time.

By the 1880s, there were about a thousand stock tickers installed in the offices of New York bankers and brokers. In 1890, members of the exchange agreed to create the New York Quotation Co., buying up all other ticker companies to ensure accuracy of reporting of price and volume activity.[6]

On this day in 1867, a noted artist is born in Wisconsin:

On this date Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute from 1904 to 1905. In 1907 she relocated to New York to study at the Arts Students League with William Chase. In 1926 she unveiled her now famous flower paintings. She received much of her artistic inspiration from her surroundings in New Mexico, where she settled permanently in 1946. O’Keeffe was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. Georgia O’Keeffe died in 1986 in Santa Fe. [Source: Wisconsin Women: A Gifted Heritage]