Today is Tuesday, March 14, 2017, the 73rd day of the year, with 292 remaining.
- Sunrise: 7:22am
- Sunset: 7:16pm
...giving us 11 hours and 54 minutes of daylight; 98% of the waning moon will be visible, rising at 9:33pm
Tides at the Golden Gate
- High: 1:38am/1:44pm
- Low: 7:24am/7:33pm
Special international celebrations today…
- Constitution Day - Andorra
- Day of Solidarity with South Lebanon - Lebanon
- Seor del Cautivo - Peru
- Pi Day- United States
- White Day - Japan
- World Book Day
- Sikh New Year
It’s also..
- International Ask A Question Day
- International Day of Action for Rivers
- Organize Your Home Office Day
- Potato Chip Day
- Save a Spider Day
On this day in…
1489 - Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, sold her kingdom to Venice. She was the last of the Lusignan dynasty.
1629 - A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1647 - During the Thirty Years War, France, Sweden, Bavaria and Cologne signed a Treaty of Neutrality.
1743 - First American town meeting was held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.
1757 - British Admiral John Byng was executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.
1794 - Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin.
1864 - Samuel Baker discovered another source of the Nile in East Africa. He named it Lake Albert Nyanza.
1891 - The submarine Monarch laid telephone cable along the bottom of the English Channel to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel.
1900 - U.S. currency went on the gold standard with the ratification of the Gold Standard Act.
1900 - In Holland, Botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovered Mendel's laws of heredity.
1901 - Utah Governor Heber M. Wells vetoed a bill that would have relaxed restrictions on polygamy.
1903 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Hay-Herran Treaty that guaranteed the U.S. the right to build a canal at Panama. The Columbian Senate rejected the treaty. A deal was signed on November 6, 1903 with the newly independent Panama.
1904 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the governments claim that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal merger between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies.
1905 - French bankers refused to lend money to Russia until after their war.
1905 - The British House of Commons cited a need to compete with Germany in naval strength.
1906 - The island of Ustica was devastated by an earthquake.
1912 - An anarchist named Antonio Dalba unsuccessfully attempted to kill Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III in Rome.
1914 - Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes.
1915 - The British Navy sank the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
1918 - An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified a peace treaty with the Central Powers.
1923 - President Harding became the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.
1932 - George Eastman, the founder of the Kodak company, committed suicide.
1936 - Adolf Hitler told a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.
1939 - Hungary occupied the Carpatho-Ukraine. Slovakia declared its independence.
1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office.
1945 - In Germany, a 22,000 pound "Grand Slam" bomb was dropped by the Royal Air Force Dumbuster Squad on the Beilefeld railway viaduct. It was the heaviest bomb used during World War II.
1947 - The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
1947 - Moscow announced that 890,532 German POWs were held in the U.S.S.R.
1951 - U.N. forces recaptured Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.
1958 - The U.S. government suspended arms shipments to the Batista government of Cuba.
1964 - A Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
1967 - John F. Kennedy's body was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one.
1976 - Egypt formally abrogated the 1971 Treaty Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.
1978 - An Israeli force of 22,000 invaded south Lebanon. The PLO bases were hit.
1979 - The Census Bureau reported that 95% of all Americans were married or would get married.
1979 - Near Peking, China, at least 200 people died when a Trident aircraft crashed into a factory.
1980 - A Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw. 87 people were killed. A 14-man U.S. boxing team was aboard the plane.
1981 - Three Pakistani airline hijackers surrendered in Syria after they had exchanged 100 passengers and crewmen for 54 Pakistani prisoners.
1983 - OPEC agreed to cut its oil prices by 15% for the first time in its 23-year history.
1989 - Imported assault guns were banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush.
1991 - The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, were set free after a court agreed that the police fabricated evidence.
1991 - Bolivian interior minister Guillermo Capobianco resigned after U.S. officials accused him of receiving money from drug traffickers.
1995 - American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket.
1996 - U.S. President Bill Clinton committed $100 million for an anti-terrorism pact with Israel to track down and root out Islamic militants.
1998 - An earthquake left 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran.
2002 - A Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A five-judge court ruled unanimously that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was guilty of bringing down the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.
2003 - Robert Blake was released from jail on $1.5 million bail. Blake had been jailed for the murder of his wife Bonny Lee Bakley.
Birthday celebrants today include (or included)...
- Lucy Hobbs Taylor 1833
- Paul Ehrlich 1854
- Casey Jones (John Luther) 1864
- Albert Einstein 1879
- Les Brown 1912
- Max Shulman 1919
- Hank Ketcham 1920
- Bill Rexford 1927
- Frank Borman II 1928 - Astronaut
- Bob Goalby
- Phil Phillips 1931
- Quincy Jones 1933
- Michael Caine 1933 - Actor
- Shirley Scott 1934
- Eugene Cernan 1934
- Bob Charles 1936
- Raymond J. Barry 1939 - Actor
- Rita Tushingham 1942
- Clyde Lee 1944
- Michael Martin Murphey 1945
- Walt Parazaider 1945 - Musician (Chicago)
- Wes Unseld 1946
- Steve Kanaly 1946
- Billy Crystal 1948 - Actor, comedian
- Rick Dees 1950
- Adrian Zmed 1954
- Jann Browne 1954
- Boon Gould 1955 - Musician (Level 42)
- Tessa Sanderson 1957
- Prince Albert 1958 - Member of Monaco's royal family
- Tamara Tunie 1959 - Actress ("Law & Order: SVU")
- Kevin Williamson 1965 - Producer ("Dawson's Creek")
- Kevin Brown 1965 - Baseball player
- Megan Follows 1968
- Jake Fogelnest 1979
- Chris Klein 1979 - Actor ("American Pie" movies)
- Kate Maberly 1982
- Taylor Hanson 1983 - Musician (Hanson)
