- 93rd Day of 2015 272 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 79 Days
- Sunrise:6:50
- Sunset:7:34
- 12 Hours 44 Minutes
- Moon Rise:7:08pm
- Moon Set:6:28am
- Full Moon @ 5:07am
- The name Full Pink Moon 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:11:14am/11:27pm
- Low:5:09am/5:12pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.13
- Last Year:11.92
- Avg YTD:21.61
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Find A Rainbow Day
- Hospital Admitting Clerks Day
- National Chocolate Mousse Day
- Don’t Go To Work Unless It’s Fun Day
- National Tweed Day
- National Walk To Work Day
- Pony Express Day
- Fish Fingers And Custard Day
- Good Friday-Christianity
- Passover/Pesach-Judaism
- World Party Day
- On This Day
- 1776 --- Because it lacked sufficient funds to build a strong navy, the Continental Congress gives privateers permission to attack any and all British ships. In a bill signed by John Hancock, its president, and dated April 3, 1776, the Continental Congress issued, INSTRUCTIONS to the COMMANDERS of Private Ships or vessels of War, which shall have Commissions of Letters of Marque and Reprisal, authorizing them to make Captures of British Vessels and Cargoes. Congress informed American privateers on this day that, YOU may, by Force of Arms, attack, subdue, and take all Ships and other Vessels belonging to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, on the high seas, or between high-water and low-water Marks, except Ships and Vessels bringing Persons who intend to settle and reside in the United Colonies, or bringing Arms, Ammunition or Warlike Stores to the said Colonies, for the Use of such Inhabitants thereof as are Friends to the American Cause, which you shall suffer to pass unmolested, the Commanders thereof permitting a peaceable Search, and giving satisfactory Information of the Contents of the Ladings, and Destinations of the Voyages.
- 1860 --- The first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America’s imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system.
- 1865 --- The Rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia, falls to the Union, the most significant sign that the Confederacy is nearing its final days. For ten months, General Ulysses S. Grant had tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate the city. After Lee made a desperate attack against Fort Stedman along the Union line on March 25, Grant prepared for a major offensive. He struck at Five Forks on April 1, crushing the end of Lee’s line southwest of Petersburg. On April 2, the Yankees struck all along the Petersburg line, and the Confederates collapsed.
- 1882 --- Jesse James, one of America’s most notorious outlaws, is shot to death by Robert Ford, a member of his gang who hoped to collect the bounty on Jesse’s head. Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden offered a reward for the capture of the James brothers, dead or alive. James Gang member Robert Ford chose the former.
- 1933 --- First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized "3.2" beer.
- 1936 --- Bruno Hauptmann was electrocuted in Trenton, N.J., for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby.
- 1942 --- The Japanese infantry stage a major offensive against Allied troops in Bataan, the peninsula guarding Manila Bay of the Philippine Islands. The invasion of the Japanese 14th Army, which began in December 1941 and was led by General Masaharu Homma, had already forced General Douglas MacArthur’s troops from Manila, the Philippine capital, into Bataan, in part because of poor strategizing on MacArthur’s part. By March, after MacArthur had left for Australia on President Roosevelt’s orders and been replaced by Major General Edward P. King Jr., the American Luzon Force and its Filipino allies were half-starved and suffering from malnutrition, malaria, beriberi, dysentery, and hookworm. Homma, helped by reinforcements and an increase in artillery and aircraft activity, took advantage of the U.S. and Filipinos’ weakened condition. The Japanese attack signaled the beginning of the end and would result, six days later, in the surrender of the largest number of U.S. troops in U.S. military history.
- 1948 --- President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries.
- 1949 --- Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debuted on radio on the "Martin and Lewis Show". The NBC program ran until 1952.
- 1955 --- The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges. The U.S. Customs Department had seized some 520 copies of the book several weeks earlier as the book entered the U.S. from England, where it had been printed.
- 1955 --- Fred Astaire appeared on television for the first time on "The Toast of the Town" with Ed Sullivan.
- 1956 --- Elvis Presley performed on "The Milton Berle Show." The show was broadcast live from the aircraft carrier USS Hancock. Elvis played the songs "Heartbreak Hotel," "Money, Honey," and "Blue Suede Shoes." An estimated 25% of the American population tuned in to hear him.
- 1959 --- The BBC banned the Coasters song "Charlie Brown" because of the word "spitball." Two weeks later the BBC changed its position on the song.
- 1968 --- Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., less than 24 hours before he was assassinated.
- 1972 --- Charlie Chaplin returned to the U.S. after a twenty-year absence.
- 1974 --- 148 tornadoes hit the United States heartland within 16 hours. By the time the deadly storm ended, 330 people had died. This was the largest grouping of tornadoes recorded in its time, affecting 11 states and Ontario, Canada. At any one moment during the storm, there were as many as 15 separate tornadoes touching the ground. The storm began over the Ohio River Valley. The first twister hit Lincoln, Illinois, at about 2 p.m. and, within hours, others made landfall over a range of hundreds of miles across several states. The deadly storm did not end until early the next morning. In all, it caused 22 F4 tornadoes, with winds over 207 mph, and six F5 tornadoes, with winds over 261 mph.
- 1983 --- It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia.
- 1993 --- The Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, MA.
- 1996 --- At his small wilderness cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Theodore John Kaczynski is arrested by FBI agents and accused of being the Unabomber, the elusive terrorist blamed for 16 mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 during an 18-year period.
- 1996 --- Ronald H. Brown, the U.S. secretary of commerce, is killed along with 32 other Americans when their U.S. Air Force plane crashes into a mountain near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Brown was leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore business opportunities that might help rebuild the war-torn region.
- 2009 --- Iowa's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
- Birthdays
- Herb Caen
- Eddie Murphy
- Richard Thompson
- Alec Baldwin
- David Hyde Pierce
- Amanda Byrnes
- Washington Irving
- Miyoshi Umeki
- Helmut Kohl
- Marlon Brando
- Richard Manuel
- Mary Carpenter
- Henry Luce
- Virgil Grissom
- William “Boss” Tweed
- Gertrude “Ma” Rainey
- George Jessel
- Marsha Mason
- Wayne Newton
- Tony Orlando
Friday April 3, 2015
