Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a mild Tuesday, with a high of seventy-three, and a one-fifth chance of late afternoon showers.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets today at 5:30 PM. (Update: later canceled.)

On this day in 1752, Benjamin Franklin conducts a now-famous experiment:

….Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning, enabling him to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. He also invented the lightning rod, used to protect buildings and ships….

Accounts of the experiment are varying, and controversial, but it is likely that Franklin did perform a variation of the widely-celebrated experiment.

Here’s the Tuesday game in Puzzability‘s Pop Flies series:

This Week’s Game — June 9-13

Pop Flies

It all starts with Dad this week. For each day, we started with a word that begins with the two-letter chunk PA and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer PA word followed by the shorter word.

Example:

Undercover scheme to entrap the gang of kids wielding liquid adhesive

Answer:

Pasting sting

What to Submit:

Submit the two-word phrase, with the PA word first (as “Pasting sting” in the example), for your answer.

Tuesday, June 10

What the queen’s doilies are made of

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise today is 5:16 AM and sunset is 8:32 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with 85% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets this evening at 6 PM.

The U.S. winner of the 7th annual Doodle 4 Google art contest is Audrey Zhang of New York. Her original work appears today on Google’s U.S. search page, and there’s a YouTUbe video reporting on the finalists’ work:

On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins the Triple Crown:

With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.

Here he is, in that race, pulling far ahead:

Here’s Puzzability‘s Monday game from a new weekly series, Pop Flies:

This Week’s Game — June 9-13

Pop Flies

It all starts with Dad this week. For each day, we started with a word that begins with the two-letter chunk PA and deleted it to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer PA word followed by the shorter word.

Example:

Undercover scheme to entrap the gang of kids wielding liquid adhesive

Answer:

Pasting sting

What to Submit:

Submit the two-word phrase, with the PA word first (as “Pasting sting” in the example), for your answer.

Monday, June 9

Illusion performed by actor Stewart

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will begin with clouds and grow increasingly sunny as the day progresses. We’ll have a high of seventy-one.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether a pilot or a sunbather was more to blame for a near-accident between an airplane and the vacationer. The plurality of respondents (45.83%) thought the sunbather was more to blame, with 29.17% blaming the pilot, and 25% finding both equally responsible.

Lightning storms pack enormous power, as one tree in New York learned the hard way:

On this day in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright is born:

On this date Frank Lincoln Wright (he changed his middle name after his parents divorced) was born in Richland Center. An architect, author, and social critic, Wright’s artistic genius demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to create architectural space and vocabulary that drew inspiration from both nature and technology.

The son of William Cary Wright, a lawyer and music teacher, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a school teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright’s family moved to Madison in 1877 to be near Anna’s family in Spring Green. Wright briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which he moved to Chicago to pursue a career in architecture.

Wright started his own firm in 1893 and between 1893 and 1901, 49 buildings designed by Wright were built. Some notable Frank Lloyd Wright structures in Wisconsin include S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc. Administration Building in Racine, the A.D. German Warehouse in Richland Center, and Taliesin and Hillside in Spring Green. The Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison was also based on Wright’s design. Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. [Source: American National Biography, Vol. 24, 1999, p.15]

Here’s Wright, in 1956, on the program What’s My Line? —

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a one-third chance of late afternoon showers, with a high of eighty-three today.

On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee, a delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia, introduces a resolution:

That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.

Astronaut Reid Wiseman, now aboard the International Space Station, recorded a Vine (a short, repeating video) showing that the sun never sets if one orbits parallel and above the boundary between day and night: