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]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-eight.

On this day in 1969, Woodstock began:

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair—informally, the Woodstock Festival or simply Woodstock—was a music festival, billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music”. It was held at Max Yasgur‘s 600-acre (240 ha; 0.94 sq mi) dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors before an audience of 400,000 young people.^[2] It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.^[3]

The festival is also widely considered to be the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation.^[4][5]

The event was captured in the 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell‘s song “Woodstock“, which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Embedded below is a 30-year anniversary documentary as part of the VH1 Behind the Music series:

Google-a-Day asks a question about literature:

What Tom Wolfe novel is named after a 1497 ritual that Savonarola led involving mirrors?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday will be sunny with a high of seventy-four.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, the existence of a Japanese proclamation of surrender is made public:

…an official announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is made public to the Japanese people:

Even though Japan’s War Council, urged by Emperor Hirohito, had already submitted a formal declaration of surrender to the Allies, via ambassadors, on August 10, fighting continued between the Japanese and the Soviets in Manchuria and between the Japanese and the United States in the South Pacific. In fact, two days after the Council agreed to surrender, a Japanese submarine sank the Oak Hill, an American landing ship, and the Thomas F. Nickel, an American destroyer, both east of Okinawa.

In the afternoon of August 14, Japanese radio announced that an Imperial Proclamation was soon to be made, accepting the terms of unconditional surrender drawn up at the Potsdam Conference. That proclamation had already been recorded by the emperor. The news did not go over well, as more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers stormed the Imperial Palace in an attempt to find the proclamation and prevent its being transmitted to the Allies. Soldiers still loyal to Emperor Hirohito repulsed the attackers.

That evening, General Anami, the member of the War Council most adamant against surrender, committed suicide. His reason: to atone for the Japanese army’s defeat, and to be spared having to hear his emperor speak the words of surrender.

The emperor’s recording to his people was broadcast the next day, on 8.15.1945.

Today, a geography question from Google-a-Day:

After centuries of being passed between Genoa, France and Sardinia what European country was finally granted sovereignty in 1861?