- 91st Day of 2016 275 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 81 Days
- Sunrise: 6:54
- Sunset: 7:32
- 12 Hours 38 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 2:06am
- Moon Set: 12:30pm
- Phase: Last Quarter
- Next Full Moon April 21 @ 10:25pm
- Full Pink Moon, this name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High: 4:36am/7:07pm
- Low: 11:45am
- Holidays
- Cesar Chavez Day
- National Farm Workers Day
- National Tater Day
- Clams On The Half Shell Day
- Oranges And Lemons Day
- Crayola Crayon Day
- Dance Marathon Day
- Eiffel Tower Day
- National Bunsen Burner Day
- National She’s Funny That Way Day
- World Backup Day
- Culture Day-Micronesia
- National Day-Malta
- Transfer Day-U.S. Virgin Islands
- On This Day
- 1776 --- Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, urging him and the other members of the Continental Congress not to forget about the nation’s women when fighting for America’s independence from Great Britain. The future First Lady wrote in part, “I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
- 1836 --- The first monthly installment of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, by 24-year-old writer Charles Dickens, is published under the pseudonym Boz. The short sketches were originally commissioned as captions for humorous drawings by caricaturist Robert Seymour, but Dickens’ whimsical stories about the kindly Samuel Pickwick and his fellow club members soon became popular in their own right. Only 400 copies were printed of the first installment, but by the 15th episode, 40,000 copies were printed. When the stories were published in book form in 1837, Dickens quickly became the most popular author of the day.
- 1889 --- The Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers. In 1889, to honor of the centenary of the French Revolution, the French government planned an international exposition and announced a design competition for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. Out of more than 100 designs submitted, the Centennial Committee chose Eiffel’s plan of an open-lattice wrought-iron tower that would reach almost 1,000 feet above Paris and be the world’s tallest man-made structure. Eiffel, a noted bridge builder, was a master of metal construction and designed the framework of the Statue of Liberty that had recently been erected in New York Harbor.
- 1918 --- Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the U.S. for the first time.
- 1921 --- Great Britain declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.
- 1923 --- In New York City, the first U.S. dance marathon was held. Alma Cummings set a new world record of 27 hours.
- 1943 --- The financial risk of mounting a Broadway musical is so great that few productions ever make it to the Great White Way without a period of tryouts and revisions outside of New York City. This was as true in the 1940s as it is today, and especially so during the war years, when the producers of an innovative little musical called Away We Go had real concerns about their show’s commercial viability. Even with lyrics and music by two of theater’s leading lights, Away We Go was believed by many to be a flop in the making. This would prove to be one of the most off-base predictions in theater history when the slightly retooled show opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943 under a new title—Oklahoma!—and went on to set a Broadway record of 2,212 performances before finally closing more than 15 years later.
- 1945 --- "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.
- 1958 --- Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was released.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ROwVrF0Ceg
- 1959 --- The Dalai Lama, fleeing the Chinese suppression of a national uprising in Tibet, crosses the border into India, where he is granted political asylum. Born in Taktser, China, as Tensin Gyatso, he was designated the 14th Dalai Lama in 1940, a position that eventually made him the religious and political leader of Tibet. At the beginning of the 20th century, Tibet increasingly came under Chinese control, and in 1950 communist China invaded the country. One year later, a Tibetan-Chinese agreement was signed in which the nation became a “national autonomous region” of China, supposedly under the traditional rule of the Dalai Lama but actually under the control of a Chinese communist commission. The highly religious people of Tibet, who practice a unique form of Buddhism, suffered under communist China’s anti-religious legislation.
- 1968 --- In a televised speech to the nation, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces a partial halt of bombing missions over North Vietnam and proposes peace talks. He said he had ordered “unilaterally” a halt to air and naval bombardments of North Vietnam “except in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone, where the continuing enemy build-up directly threatens Allied forward positions.” He also stated that he was sending 13,500 more troops to Vietnam and would request further defense expenditures–$2.5 billion in fiscal year 1968 and $2.6 billion in fiscal year 1969–to finance recent troop build-ups, re-equip the South Vietnamese Army, and meet “responsibilities in Korea.” In closing, Johnson shocked the nation with an announcement that all but conceded that his own presidency had become another wartime casualty: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
- 1973 --- The Mississippi River reaches its peak level in St. Louis during a record 77-day flood. During the extended flood, 33 people died and more than $1 billion in damages were incurred. The roots of the 1973 flood go back to October 1972, when above-average rain began falling in the river basins that feed the Mississippi River. With more precipitation than normal coming down through the winter, the stage was set for flooding when hard rain came down in March. With most of the Midwest already saturated, the Mississippi began rising slowly to flood levels.
- 1975 --- The University of Southern California (UCLA) Bruins basketball team wins its 10th NCAA championship title under coach John Wooden. Following the game, in which UCLA defeated the University of Kentucky, Wooden, considered one of the greatest coaches in the history of college basketball, announced his retirement. In 27 seasons coaching the Bruins, he transformed UCLA into a basketball powerhouse and compiled a record of 620-147.
- 1989 --- Chefs from Japanese restaurants in New York have finally persuaded the FDA to allow them to import and serve fogu. The first shipment of Japanese blowfish (tora fugu) arrived today. The chefs had to attend special classes to protect their customers from poisoning.
- 1995 --- Singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club.
- 1995 --- Major League Baseball players are sent back to work after the longest strike in baseball history ends on this day in 1995. Because of the strike, the 1994 World Series was cancelled; it was the first time baseball did not crown a champion in 89 years.
- 1999 --- Four New York City police officers were charged with murder for killing Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, in a hail of bullets.
- 2000 --- In Uganda, officials set the number of deaths linked to a doomsday religious cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, at more than 900. In Kanungu, a March 17 fire at the cult's church killed more than 530 and authorities subsequently found mass graves at various sites linked to the cult.
- 2004 --- Four American civilian contractors were killed in Fallujah, Iraq; frenzied crowds dragged their burned, mutilated bodies and strung two of them from a bridge.
- 2014 --- The International Court of Justice rules that the Japanese government must halt its whaling program in the Antarctic. Japan said it would abide by the decision.
- Birthdays
- Cesar Chavez
- Mary Chestnut
- Richard Kiley
- Shirley Jones
- Richard Chamberlain
- Judith Rosner
- Christopher Walken
- Herb Alpert
- Al Gore
- Rhea Perlman
- Gabe Kaplan
- Angus Young
- Gordie Howe
- Lefty Frizzell
- William Waldorf Astor
- Rene Descartes
- Jack Johnson
- Octavio Paz
- Ewan McGregor
Cesar Chavez Day-KALW Almanac-3/31-2016
