Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday brings a slight chance of thunderstorms and a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 6:06 AM and sunset 7:51 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with twenty-nine percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On August 19, 1934, Germany selected Adolf Hitler by plebiscite as leader-chancellor. Here’s how the New York Times reported Germany’s descent into despotism the next day:

Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20 — Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday’s plebiscite Chancellor Hitler’s assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected.

The German people were asked to vote whether they approved the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor in a single Leader-Chancellor personified by Adolf Hitler. By every appeal known to skillful politicians and with every argument to the contrary suppressed, they were asked to make their approval unanimous.

Nevertheless 10 per cent of the voters have admittedly braved possible consequences by answering “No” and nearly [text unreadable] made their answers, ineffective by spoiling the simplest of ballots. There was a plain short question and two circles, one labeled “Yes” and the other “No,” in one of which the voter had to make a cross. Yet there were nearly 1,000,000 spoiled ballots….

Google-a-Day asks a question about musical history:

What musical period is best described as an era of contrasts; e.g., between loud and soft, fast and slow?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday brings a one-third chance of thunderstorms during the day, an eight-in-ten chance this evening, with a high of eighty.

On this day in 1991, Soviet diehards stage a coup against Gorbachev:

The 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt, also known as the August Putsch or August Coup … Avgustovsky Putch), was a coup d’état attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union‘s government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev’s reform program and the new union treaty that he had negotiated which decentralised much of the central government’s power to the republics. They were opposed, mainly in Moscow, by a short but effective campaign of civil resistance.^[5] Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to government, the event destabilised the Soviet Union and is widely considered to have contributed to both the demise of the CPSU and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

After the capitulation of the State Committee on the State of Emergency—popularly referred to as the “Gang of Eight,” the Supreme court of the RSFSR and the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev qualified their actions as a coup attempt.

In Wisconsin history on this date, a baseball great is born:

1893 – Burleigh Arland Grimes Born

On this date Baseball Hall of Famer Burleigh Arland Grimes was born in Emerald, Wisconsin. Knicknamed “Ol’ Stubblebeard” and known as the last legal spitball pitcher, Grimes played major league baseball for the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1916 to 1934. After spitball pitching was banned in 1920, 17 established spitball pitchers were allowed to continue with the pitch. Grimes lasted the longest, using the spitball until retiring in 1934. He won 270 games over 19 seasons for seven major league teams, reaching 20 wins in a season on five occasions. He helped Brooklyn to the championship in 1920, the Cardinals to pennants in 1930 and 1931, and the Cubs to the flag in 1932. Grimes was known as “Ol’ Stubblebeard” for his habit of not shaving on the day he was scheduled to pitch. Grimes managed the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1937 to 1938. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964. Burleigh Arland Grimes died on December 6, 1985 in Clear Lake. [Source: Wisconsin Lore and Legends edited by Lou and John Russell, p.30 and Baseball Hall of Fame]

Google-a-Day asks about the architecture of the Ancients:

The Parthenon combined elements of two of three classical architectural orders. Which one was not included?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-five, and east winds of ten mph. Sunrise today is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:54 PM. The moon is in its last quarter today.

In the mid-August sky, the conjunction between Venus and Jupiter is on display. A short Vine clip captures the scene, even lovelier when viewed directly:

Venus and Jupiter over Lick Observatory on Aug 17, 2014 https://t.co/kyHuii6HxJ #venus #jupiter #conjunction #california #goodmorning

— Observing Space (@ObservingSpace) August 17, 2014

On this day in 1978, three adventurers make the world’s first trans-Atlantic balloon crossing:

Double Eagle II, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it landed 17 August 1978 in Miserey near Paris, 137 hours 6 minutes after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.

It can be regarded as a successful crossing at the point that the Double Eagle II crossed the Irish coast, on the evening of 16 August, an event that Shannon Airport notified the crew about when it happened. Newman originally intended to hang glide from the balloon to a landing, while Anderson and Abruzzo continued to fly, but the hang-glider had to be dropped as ballast earlier on 16 August.

While flying over France, they heard by radio that authorities had closed Le Bourget Airfield, where Charles Lindbergh had landed, for them. The crew declined the offer as they were running out of ballast and it would be too risky (to themselves and anyone below) to pass over the suburbs of Paris. They landed in a field of barley, owned by Roger and Rachel Coquerel, in Miserey, 60 miles (96 km) northwest of Paris. Television images showed a highway nearby, its shoulders and outer lanes crowded with stopped cars, people sweeping across the farm field to the landing spot. The gondola was protected, but most of the logs and charts were swiped by souvenir hunters.

The flight, the fourteenth known attempt, was the culmination of more than a century of previous attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean by balloon. Some of the people who had attempted it were never found.

Larry Newman won a draw among the three to sleep in the same bed at the United States embassy that Lindbergh slept in. Cameron and Davey, the British balloonists, feted the trio at a party that included a balloon shaped like the Double Eagle II. The trio and their wives planned to return to the United States aboard the supersonic Concorde. Upon the successful crossing, the trip was accommodated by Air France at no charge to the trio and spouses.

A full chronicle of the voyage can be found in the December 1978 issue of National Geographic.

The Double Eagle II Airport is named for the balloon.

The gondola is displayed at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum annex at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Chantilly area of Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.^[1] A monument, containing a model of the balloon, was built to commemorate the Double Eagle II and its Atlantic crossing at the field from where the balloon lifted off (46°37?36.54?N 68°1?16.66?W).

Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in the city will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two.

In Friday’s FW poll, readers could vote on whether stories about cats trapping their owners in the owners’ homes were evidence of feline fury or human hysteria. The results were close: 52.38% thought humans were being hysterical, but 47.62% thought that these cats were overly-feisty.

On this day in 1896, a gold rush begins:

On August 16, 1896, an American prospector named George Carmack, his Tagish wife Kate Carmack, her brother Skookum Jim and their nephew Dawson Charlie were travelling south of the Klondike River.^[15] Following a suggestion from Robert Henderson, another prospector, they began looking for gold on Bonanza Creek, then called Rabbit Creek, one of the Klondike’s tributaries.^[16] It is not clear who discovered the gold: George Carmack or Skookum Jim, but the group agreed to let George Carmack appear as the official discoverer because they feared that mining authorities would be reluctant to recognize a claim made by an Indian.^{[17][18][n 3]}

In any event, gold was present along the river in huge quantities.^[20] Carmack measured out four claims, strips of ground that could later be legally mined by the owner, along the river; these including two for himself—one as his normal claim, the second as a reward for having discovered the gold—and one each for Jim and Charlie.^[21] The claims were registered next day at the police post at the mouth of the Forty mile River and news spread rapidly from there to other mining camps in the Yukon River valley.^[22]

By the end of August, all of Bonanza Creek had been claimed by miners.^[23] A prospector then advanced up into one of the creeks feeding into Bonanza, later to be named Eldorado Creek. He discovered new sources of gold there, which would prove to be even richer than those on Bonanza.^[24]Claims began to be sold between miners and speculators for considerable sums.^[25] Just before Christmas, word of the gold finds reached Circle City. Despite the winter, many prospectors immediately left for the Yukon by dog-sled, eager to reach the region before the best claims were taken.^[26]The outside world was still largely unaware of the news and although Canadian officials had managed to send a message to their superiors in Ottawa about the gold finds and the rapidly increasing influx of prospectors, the government did not give the matter much attention.^[27] The ice prevented river traffic over the winter and it was not until June 1897 that the first boats left the area, carrying the freshly mined gold and the full story of the discoveries.^[28]