Good morning.

Our week begins with cloudy skies and a high of thirty five. We’ll have 9h 2m of sunlight and 10h 6m of daylight, with tomorrow being one minute shorter.

On this day in 1903, the first success of one of the greatest inventions of all history, reported later with marked understatement in the New York Times:

The inventors of the airship which is said to have made several successful flights in North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, are anxious to sell the use of their device to the Government. They claim that they have solved the problem of aerial navigation, and have never made a failure of any attempt to fly.

Their machine is an adaptation of the box kite idea, with a propeller working on a perpendicular shaft to raise or lower the craft, and another working on a horizontal shaft to send it forward. The machine, it is said, can be raised or lowered with perfect control, and can carry a strong gasoline engine capable of making a speed of ten miles an hour.

The test made in North Carolina will be fully reported to the Ordnance Board of the War Department, and if the machine commends itself sufficiently, further tests will be made in the vicinity of Washington, and an effort made to arrange a sale of the device to the Government. The use to which the Government would put it would be in scouting and signal work, and possibly torpedo warfare.

From Google-a-Day, a question about American literature, and history: “What state holds a real life contest and celebration commemorating Mark Twain’s short story about the out-of-towner and the compulsive gambler?”

Good morning.

It’s a a cloudy day for us, with a high of forty-two, today.

On 12.16.1773, the original tea party:

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.

When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.

Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

Google-a-Day has a science question: “What is the name of the famous Scot, born in 1997, who was an identical twin to her mother, born six years earlier?”

Good morning.

We’ve a rainy Saturday ahead, with a high of forty-four, and rainfall in an amount between a quarter and half of an inch.

On this day in 1791, a triumph of American liberty:

…Virginia becomes the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Before theMassachusetts ratifying convention would accept the Constitution, which they finally did in February 1788, the document’s Federalist supporters had to promise to create a Bill of Rights to be amended to the Constitution immediately upon the creation of a new government under the document.

The Anti-Federalist critics of the document, who were afraid that a too-strong federal government would become just another sort of the monarchical regime from which they had recently been freed, believed that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government by outlining its rights but failing to delineate the rights of the individuals living under it. The promise of a Bill of Rights to do just that helped to assuage the Anti-Federalists’ concerns.

The newly elected Congress drafted the Bill of Rights on December 25, 1789. Virginia’s ratification on this day in 1791 created the three-fourths majority necessary for the ten amendments to become law…

The Washington Post showcases the recent Geminid meteor shower with a slideshow at the paper’s website.  They’ve some fine photos on display.

In 1847, our state’s second constitutional convention began:

1847 – Wisconsin’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes in Madison
On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage. [Source: Attainment of Statehood by Milo M. Quaife]

Google’s daily puzzle asks about geography and military history: “How many main islands comprise the only British territory that was occupied by Germany during WWII?”

Good morning.

Our work week in Whitewater ends with sunny skies, a high of 44, and winds from the southeast at 5 to 10 mph. Very pleasant.

On this day in 2003, the U.S. military captured Saddam Hussein, who had been in hiding since the fall of his regime.

In Wisconsin history from 12.14.64,

1964 – Parker Pen Traded on NY Stock Exchange
On this date, for the first time, shares of Janesville’s Parker Pen Co. were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. For its first 40 years, the company was a closed corporation. In 1928, Parker stock was offered on the Chicago Stock Exchange, which became the Midwest Stock Exchange in 1949. [Source:Janesville Gazette, December 14, 1964, p.1 ]

Parker and many other companies have since left Janesville.

Google-a-Day asks a since question: “What did the great-granddaughter of John “Crazy” Fitch invent as a way of reducing damage done by servants?”

Good morning.

Thursday in town will be breezy and mild, with a high of forty-eight, and mostly sunny skies.

On this day in 2000, Al Gore concedes the presidency to George W. Bush:

In a televised speech from his ceremonial office next to the White House, Gore said that while he was deeply disappointed and sharply disagreed with the Supreme Court verdict that ended his campaign, ”partisan rancor must now be put aside.”

“I accept the finality of the outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College” he said. “And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”

Gore had won the national popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, but narrowly lost Florida, giving the Electoral College to Bush 271 to 266.

Gore said he had telephoned Bush to offer his congratulations, honoring him, for the first time, with the title ”president-elect.”

”I promised that I wouldn’t call him back this time” Gore said, referring to the moment on election night when he had called Bush to tell him he was going to concede, then called back a half hour later to retract that concession.

Here’s a happy video to start the day, of a very happy (and squeaky clean) pup: (video now restored)

Google-a-Day asks a question of zoology: “Contrary to popular belief, a 2010 study showed what animal sleeps only about 10 hours, as opposed to the 18-20 previously thought to be the case?”

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Wednesday will be mostly sunny, with a high of forty, with a south winds at 5 to 15 MPH. We’ll see a sunrise at 7:17 AM, and sunset at 4:21 PM. Tomorrow will be roughly the same length as today, with 9h 4m of sunlight, and 10h 9m of daylight.

Downtown Whitewater’s board meets this morning at 8 AM.

On this day in 1901, a communications first:

Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less. The message–simply the Morse-code signal for the letter “s”–traveled more than 2,000 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada.

Born in Bologna, Italy, in 1874 to an Italian father and an Irish mother, Marconi studied physics and became interested in the transmission of radio waves after learning of the experiments of the German physicist Heinrich Hertz. He began his own experiments in Bologna beginning in 1894 and soon succeeded in sending a radio signal over a distance of 1.5 miles. Receiving little encouragement for his experiments in Italy, he went to England in 1896. He formed a wireless telegraph company and soon was sending transmissions from distances farther than 10 miles. In 1899, he succeeded in sending a transmission across the English Channel. That year, he also equipped two U.S. ships to report to New Yorknewspapers on the progress of the America’s Cup yacht race. That successful endeavor aroused widespread interest in Marconi and his wireless company.

Marconi’s greatest achievement came on December 12, 1901, when he received a message sent from England at St. John’s, Newfoundland. The transatlantic transmission won him worldwide fame. Ironically, detractors of the project were correct when they declared that radio waves would not follow the curvature of the earth, as Marconi believed. In fact, Marconi’s transatlantic radio signal had been headed into space when it was reflected off the ionosphere and bounced back down toward Canada. Much remained to be learned about the laws of the radio wave and the role of the atmosphere in radio transmissions, and Marconi would continue to play a leading role in radio discoveries and innovations during the next three decades.

In 1909, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics with the German radio innovator Ferdinand Braun. After successfully sending radio transmissions from points as far away as England and Australia, Marconi turned his energy to experimenting with shorter, more powerful radio waves. He died in 1937, and on the day of his funeral all British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stations were silent for two minutes in tribute to his contributions to the development of radio.

Google-A-Day has a question about literature: “In the 2000 translation of the oldest piece of English literature, who is the queen that is married to the Danish “ring-giver”?”