Good morning.

Sunday will see gradually sunnier skies and a high of twenty=three in Whitewater.

On this day in 1945, fighting on Iwo Jima ends, assuring that the island was wholly in American hands:

…the west Pacific volcanic island of Iwo Jima is declared secured by the U.S. military after months of fiercely fighting its Japanese defenders.

The Americans began applying pressure to the Japanese defense of Iwo Jima in February 1944, when B-24 and B-25 bombers raided the island for 74 days straight. It was the longest pre-invasion bombardment of the war, necessary because of the extent to which the Japanese–21,000 strong–fortified the island, above and below ground, including a network of caves. Underwater demolition teams (“frogmen”) were dispatched by the Americans just before the actual invasion to clear the shores of mines and any other obstacles that could obstruct an invading force. In fact, the Japanese mistook the frogmen for an invasion force and killed 170 of them.

The amphibious landings of Marines began the morning of February 19, 1945, as the secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, accompanied by journalists, surveyed the scene from a command ship offshore. The Marines made their way onto the island–and seven Japanese battalions opened fire, obliterating them. By that evening, more than 550 Marines were dead and more than 1,800 were wounded.

In the face of such fierce counterattack, the Americans reconciled themselves to the fact that Iwo Jima could be taken only one yard at a time. A key position on the island was Mt. Suribachi, the center of the Japanese defense. The 28th Marine Regiment closed in and around the base of the volcanic mountain at the rate of 400 yards per day, employing flamethrowers, grenades, and demolition charges against the Japanese that were hidden in caves and pillboxes (low concrete emplacements for machine-gun nests). Approximately 40 Marines finally began a climb up the volcanic ash mountain, which was smoking from the constant bombardment, and at 10 a.m. on February 23, a half-dozen Marines raised an American flag at its peak, using a pipe as a flag post. Two photographers caught a restaging of the flag raising for posterity, creating one of the most reproduced images of the war. With Mt. Suribachi claimed, one-third of Iwo Jima was under American control.

On March 16, with a U.S. Navy military government established, Iwo Jima was declared secured and the fighting over. When all was done, more than 6,000 Marines died fighting for the island, along with almost all the 21,000 Japanese soldiers trying to defend it.

Good morning.

Sunrise this Saturday is 7:07 AM and sunset is 7:01 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with 99% of its visible disk illuminated. Today’s high will be thirty-five.

Of Friday’s poll, over 80% of respondents thought that Rod Sommerville of Australia was sensible when he had a beer while waiting for medical assistance after receiving a snake bite.

We’re at the Ides of March, famous to us as an expression for a long-ago assassination:

“Beware the Ides of March,” the soothsayer urges Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar (act I, scene ii). Despite the forewarning, Caesar is stabbed in the back by his friend Marcus Brutus. Caesar falls and utters his famous last words, “Et tu, Brute?” (And you, Brutus?)

Shakespeare’s source for the play was Thomas North’s Lives of the Nobel Grecians and Romans, which detailed the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C. Caesar’s friends and associates feared his growing power and his recent self-comparison to Alexander the Great and felt he must die for the good of Rome. North’s work translated a French version of Plutarch, which itself had been translated from Latin. Shakespeare’s version was written about 1599 and performed at the newly built Globe Theater.

Ides, Kalends, Nones – simply terms of the Roman calendar that might have had no special meaning to us but for Shakespeare’s play about a certain act on a certain day.

On this day in 1862, more Wisconsinites do their part for the Union:

1862 – (Civil War) 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry Regiments Mustered In
The 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments mustered in at Madison and Milwaukee, respectively. Both regiments would move from the lower Mississippi Valley into Tennessee and Georgia, participate in Sherman’s March to the Sea, and converge on Virginia at the end of the war. Before they mustered out, the 17th would lose 269 men and the 18th, 225.

Good morning.

Whitewater’s work week ends with partly sunny skies and a high of forty-seven.

It’s Albert Einstein’s birthday (born this day in 1879).

On this day in 1979, the Bucks set a team record:

1979 – Bucks Set Scoring Record
Milwaukee set a team scoring record for a regulation-length game with 158 points against New Orleans. [Source: Bucks.com, Official Site of the Milwaukee Bucks]

Puzzability‘s Easy as Pi series concludes today, on Pi Day:

This Week’s Game — March 10-14

Easy as Pi

This Friday is Pi Day: 3.14. For each day this week, we’re celebrating by starting with a word and adding the two-letter chunk PI (before, within, or after) to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the shorter word followed by the PI word.

Example:

Noisy bird that’s a sorcerer

Answer:

Mage magpie

What to Submit:

Submit the two-word phrase, with the PI word second (as “Mage magpie” in the example), for your answer.

Friday, March 14

Editorial viewpoint of a satirical news source

Good morning.

Sunrise today is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:59 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with ninety-one percent of its visible disk illuminated. Thursday will be an increasingly cloudy day, with a high of thirty-seven.

Whitewater’s Fire & Rescue Task Force will meet at 6 PM tonight.

On this day in 1781, Herschel discovers a planet:

The German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. Herschel’s discovery of a new planet was the first to be made in modern times, and also the first to be made by use of a telescope, which allowed Herschel to distinguish Uranus as a planet, not a star, as previous astronomers believed.

Herschel, who was later knighted for his historic discovery, named the planet Georgium Sidus, or the “Georgian Planet,” in honor of King George III of England. However, German astronomer Johann Bode proposed the name “Uranus” for the celestial body in order to conform to the classical mythology-derived names of other known planets. Uranus, the ancient Greek deity of the heavens, was a predecessor of the Olympian gods. By the mid-19th century, it was also the generally accepted name of the seventh planet from the sun.

The planet Uranus is a gas giant like Jupiter and Saturn and is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The third largest planet, Uranus orbits the sun once every 84 earth years and is the only planet to spin perpendicular to its solar orbital plane. In January 1986, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 visited the planet, discovering 10 additional moons to the five already known, and a system of faint rings around the gas giant.

Puzzability‘s Easy as Pi series continues with Thursday’s game:

This Week’s Game — March 10-14

Easy as Pi

This Friday is Pi Day: 3.14. For each day this week, we’re celebrating by starting with a word and adding the two-letter chunk PI (before, within, or after) to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the shorter word followed by the PI word.

Example:

Noisy bird that’s a sorcerer

Answer:

Mage magpie

What to Submit:

Submit the two-word phrase, with the PI word second (as “Mage magpie” in the example), for your answer.

Thursday, March 13

Ask an Enterprise captain for proof of age at the bar

Good morning.

We’ll have a gradually sunnier day today, with a high of twenty-eight.

On this day in 1933, Pres. Roosevelt gives his first fireside chat:

…eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address or “fireside chat,” broadcast directly from the White House.

Roosevelt began that first address simply: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investors worried about possible bank failures. The banks would be reopening the next day, Roosevelt said, and he thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper” during the “banking holiday.”

At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the work force unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt’s address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership. Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time.

Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase “fireside chat” to describe Roosevelt’s radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation….

Here’s Puzability’s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — March 10-14

Easy as Pi

This Friday is Pi Day: 3.14. For each day this week, we’re celebrating by starting with a word and adding the two-letter chunk PI (before, within, or after) to get a new word. The two-word answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the shorter word followed by the PI word.

Example:

Noisy bird that’s a sorcerer

Answer:

Mage magpie

What to Submit:

Submit the two-word phrase, with the PI word second (as “Mage magpie” in the example), for your answer.

Wednesday, March 12

Generously allows others to use one’s permanent markers