Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater: Sunny, eighty-four, with calm winds. Sunrise was 5:29 a.m., and sunset will be 8:32 p.m. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35% of the its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1965, Mariner 4 flies past Mars, taking pictures of that planet. The New York Times reported on the flyby:

Pasadena, Calif., July 14 — Mariner 4 completed its rendezvous with Mars this evening and sailed on into space carrying it is hoped, a series of tape-recorded pictures of that mysterious planet.

Instruments aboard the spacecraft indicated that Mars has no significant magnetic field and no appreciable radiation belts. Its lack of a magnetic umbrella has a direct bearing on its habitability.

Life on earth is protected by the shield of this planet’s magnetism, which diverts incoming radiation from the sun and exploding stars–radiation that might otherwise be lethal….

In Wisconsin history on this day in 1948, Janesville turns to DDT:

1948 – Janesville Sprays for Bugs
On this date, intending to create a bug-free environment, Janesville tested a DDT fogging machine that quickly emitted a “smokescreen of insect-killing fog.” City officials hoped to persuade the county to buy the machine for use by all municipalities or to buy it jointly with Beloit. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Good morning.

It’s a lovely day in store for Whitewater, with sunny skies and a high of eighty-seven.

Someone sent me a video of a small dog eating a watermelon, and I’ve embedded the video below. At least, I think it’s a dog: it’s small, extremely fluffy, and looks much (perhaps, too much) like a plush toy, from my way of thinking. Still, I’ll concede that he is moderately cute, and undeniably happy while enjoying his snack.

On this day in 1787, Congress establishes the Northwest Territory:

1787 – Northwest Territory Established
On this date the Northwest Ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress. The ordinance provided for the administration of the territories and set rules for admission as a state. The Northwest territory included land west of Pennsylvania and Northwest of the Ohio River, which encompassed present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, parts of Minnesota and of course Wisconsin. [Source: Indiana Historical Bureau]

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Friday will be sunny with calm winds and a high of eighty-two. Sunrise was 5:28 a.m., and sunset will be 8:33 p.m. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17% of the its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1990, Boris Yeltsin resigns from the Society Communist Party:

Just two days after Mikhail Gorbachev was re-elected head of the Soviet Communist Party, Boris Yeltsin, president of the Republic of Russia, announces his resignation from the Party. Yeltsin’s action was a serious blow to Gorbachev’s efforts to keep the struggling Soviet Union together….

During the next year and a half, Gorbachev’s power gradually waned, while Yeltsin’s star rose. In December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union officially dissolved. Yeltsin, however, retained his position of power as president of Russia. In their own particular ways, both men had overseen the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Yeltsin remained president of Russia until December 31, 1999, when he resigned. Despite his attempts at economic reform, his tenure in office saw the country’s economy falter badly, including a near-complete collapse of its currency. His administration was also marked by rampant corruption, an invasion of Chechnya and a series of bizarre incidents involving Yeltsin that were reputedly a result of his alcoholism. Yeltsin’s opponents twice tried to impeach him. With his resignation, Prime Minsiter Vladimir Putin became acting president until new elections could be held. On March 26, 2000, Putin became Russia’s new president.

On this day in 1995, a deadly heatwave afflicts Wisconsin:

From July 12-15, 1995, the Midwest was subjected to a deadly outbreak of hot and humid weather responsible for 141 deaths in Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, this was the “greatest single event of weather-related deaths in Wisconsin history.” Most of the fatalities happened in the urban southeast counties of the state, and at one point several Milwaukee-area hospitals were unable to admit more patients.

Milwaukee Temperatures (from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel): July 12: Hi=91, Lo=65 July 13: Hi=103*, Lo=78 July 14: Hi=102, Lo=84 July 15: Hi=92, Lo=69 July 16: Hi=88, Lo=68 *Some communities reported highs as high as 108. Heat Index values were 120-130 degrees.

NOAA’s Natural Disaster Survey Report on the outbreak is available at http://www.weather.gov/os/assessments/pdfs/heat95.pdf [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Puzzability‘s Fruit Salad series concludes today:

Fruit Salad
For a refreshing summer dessert this week, just mix and serve. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a kind of fruit, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the new word followed by the fruit name.

Example:
Citrus fruit turned to a lava-like liquid

Answer:
Molten lemon

Here’s the puzzle for Friday:

Treating a citrus fruit with worshipful respect fit for a saint

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny and warm, with a high of eighty.

It’s Family Fun Night at the Cravath Lakefront from 5:30 – 7 PM tonight.

On this day in 1804, Aaron Burr shoots Alexander Hamilton in a duel:

In a duel held in Weehawken, New Jersey, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shoots his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day….

Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder in New York and New Jersey, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.

In 1805, Burr, thoroughly discredited, concocted a plot with James Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, to seize the Louisiana Territory and establish an independent empire, which Burr, presumably, would lead. He contacted the British government and unsuccessfully pleaded for assistance in the scheme. Later, when border trouble with Spanish Mexico heated up, Burr and Wilkinson conspired to seize territory in Spanish America for the same purpose.

In the fall of 1806, Burr led a group of well-armed colonists toward New Orleans, prompting an immediate U.S. investigation. General Wilkinson, in an effort to save himself, turned against Burr and sent dispatches to Washington accusing Burr of treason. In February 1807, Burr was arrested in Louisiana for treason and sent to Virginia to be tried in a U.S. court. In September, he was acquitted on a technicality. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe. He later returned to private life in New York, the murder charges against him forgotten. He died in 1836.

On this day in 1839, the U.S. Patent Office issues the first patent to a Wisconsinite:

1839 – First patent issued to Wisconsin resident
On this day Ebenezar G. Whiting of Racine was issued patent #1232 for his improved plow, the first patent issued to someone from Wisconsin. Whiting’s improvements consisted of making the mold-board straight and flat which, when united in the center with the curvilinear part of the mold-board, would require less power to drag through the dirt. Whiting went on to serve as Vice President of the J.I. Case Plow Company and received another patent for a steel plow in 1876. [Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office]

Puzzability‘s series, called Fruit Salad, continues:

Fruit Salad
For a refreshing summer dessert this week, just mix and serve. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a kind of fruit, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the new word followed by the fruit name.

Example:
Citrus fruit turned to a lava-like liquid

Answer:
Molten lemon

Here’s the puzzle for Thursday:

Often-dried fruit that sings like Renée Fleming

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-nine, with northwest winds at 10 to 15 mph.

Revival of the Passenger Pigeon? is a post over at the History Channel’s website. Sarah Pruitt writes about the possibility of reviving that now-extinct species:

The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once one of North America’s most abundant bird species, numbering some 3 to 5 billion at the time European settlers first set foot on the continent. Early explorers and settlers wrote of their sheer numbers; the 17th-century Massachusetts minister Cotton Mather once described a flock stretching one mile across and taking more than an hour to pass by. Yet thanks to rampant overhunting in the 1800s, as well as loss of its natural forest habitats, the pigeon had disappeared from the wild by 1900. The last known passenger pigeon, named for Martha Washington, died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914….

Now, nearly a century after Martha’s death, scientists believe they can bring her species back to life, using techniques worthy of the 1990s science-fiction/action blockbuster “Jurassic Park.” With funding from Revive and Restore, a group dedicated to the de-extinction of recently lost species, the young biologist Ben J. Novak is spearheading efforts to use DNA taken from passenger pigeon specimens in museums and fill it in with fragments from a living species, the band-tailed pigeon. The reconstituted genome would then be inserted into a band-tailed pigeon stem cell, creating a germ cell (an egg-and-sperm precursor). When the germ cell is injected into young band-tailed pigeons and these pigeons reproduce, their offspring would come as close as possible to expressing the passenger pigeon genes. The “de-extinction” process is different from cloning, in that it uses a variety of DNA from different passenger pigeons, meaning that the offspring produced would be as unique as any bird from an original passenger pigeon flock.

Most experts acknowledge that recreating the passenger pigeon in this way is technically possible, based on the success scientists have had mapping the woolly mammoth genome by using elephant DNA, among other experiments. But significant challenges still exist, particularly when it comes to reintroducing the passenger pigeon into the wild, given the vastly different ecosystem it would encounter in the modern world….

There will never be flocks as there once were, but it’s still an effort, I think, worth undertaking to revive even small numbers of the species.

On this day in 1832, General Atkinson begins construction of a fort during the Black Hawk War:

On this date General Henry Atkinson and his troops built Fort Koshkonong after being forced backwards from the bog area of the “trembling lands” in their pursuit of Black Hawk. The Fort, later known as Fort Atkinson, was described by Atkinson as “a stockade work flanked by four block houses for the security of our supplies and the accommodation of the sick.” It was also on this date that Atkinson discharged a large number of Volunteers from his army in order to decrease stress on a dwindling food supply and to make his force less cumbersome.

One of the dismissed volunteers was future president, Abraham Lincoln, whose horse was stolen in Cold Spring, Wisconsin, and was forced to return to New Salem, Illinois by foot and canoe. [Sources: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride and Along the Black Hawk Trail by Willilam F. Stark]

Puzzability‘s series this week is called Fruit Salad:

Fruit Salad
For a refreshing summer dessert this week, just mix and serve. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a kind of fruit, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the new word followed by the fruit name.

Example:
Citrus fruit turned to a lava-like liquid

Answer:
Molten lemon

Here’s the puzzle for Wednesday:

Burn up a peach-like fruit