Friday February 21, 2014

• 52^nd Day of 2014 / 313 Remaining
• 27 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:6:50
• Sunset:5:55
• 11 Hours 5 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:12:48am(Saturday)
• Moon Set:10:28am
• Moon’s Phase: %

• The Next Full Moon
• February 14 @ 3:54 pm
• Full Snow Moon
• Full Hunger Moon

Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult.

• Tides
• High:2:38am/3:54pm
• Low:9:25am/8:57pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:5.89
• Last Year:14.32
• Average Year to Date:17.03

• Holidays
• National Sticky Bun Day

• International Mother Language Day
• Martyrs Day-Bangladesh

• On This Day In …
• 1828 --- The first printing press designed to use the newly invented Cherokee alphabet arrives at New Echota, Georgia. The General Council of the Cherokee Nation had purchased the press with the goal of producing a Cherokee-language newspaper. The press itself, however, would have been useless had it not been for the extraordinary work of a young Cherokee named Sequoyah, who invented a Cherokee alphabet. As a young man, Sequoyah had joined the Cherokee volunteers who fought under Andrew Jackson against the British in the War of 1812. In dealing with the Anglo soldiers and settlers, he became intrigued by their "talking leaves"-printed books that he realized somehow recorded human speech. In a brilliant leap of logic, Sequoyah comprehended the basic nature of symbolic representation of sounds and in 1809 began working on a similar system for the Cherokee language. Ridiculed and misunderstood by most of the Cherokee, Sequoyah made slow progress until he came up with the idea of representing each syllable in the language with a separate written character. By

  

  1821, he had perfected his syllabary of 86 characters, a system that could be mastered in less than week. After obtaining the official endorsement of the Cherokee leadership, Sequoyah's invention was soon adopted throughout the Cherokee nation. When the Cherokee-language printing press arrived on this day in 1828, the lead type was based on Sequoyah's syllabary. Within months, the first Indian

  

  language newspaper in history appeared in New Echota, Georgia. It was called the Cherokee Phoenix.

• 1848 --- Just as he stands up from his desk in the House of Representatives to defend his no vote on a bill, former President John Quincy Adams suddenly collapses from a cerebral hemorrhage. House members carried him to a bed in the Speaker of the House's private chambers and immediately summoned his wife Louisa. By the time she arrived, he was not able to recognize her. His last words supposedly were, This is the end of earth, but I am content.

• 1848 --- The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, is published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist

  

  League. The political pamphlet--arguably the most influential in history--proclaimed that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever.

• 1874 --- The Oakland Daily Tribune began publication.
  

  

• 1878 --- The first telephone directory was issued, by the District Telephone Co. of New Haven, Conn.
  

  

• 1885 --- The official dedication of the Washington Monument took place in Washington, D.C., although the monument did not open for

  

  another three years. In fact, the structure took a total of thirty-six years to finish. Construction took place in two major phases, 1848-1856, and 1876-1884.

• 1911 --- Gustav Mahler conducted his last concert. He collapsed immediately afterward from a severe streptococcal infection.

• 1925 --- The New Yorker magazine made its debut.
  

  

• 1931 --- Alka Seltzer was introduced.
  

  

• 1947 --- Edwin Land demonstrated a nifty new gadget to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take,

  

  develop and print a picture on photo paper (in black and white back then) all in about a minute. He called his invention the Polaroid Land Camera. It became an ‘instant’ success.

• 1948 --- The National Association for Stock Car Racing--or NASCAR, as it will come to be widely known--is officially incorporated. NASCAR racing will go on to become one of America's most popular spectator sports, as well as a multi-billion-dollar industry.
  

  

• 1952 --- Men’s figure skater Dick Button wins his second Olympic gold medal. Button captured his first gold prize at the 1948 Olympics, becoming the first American to ever take home the men’s

  

  title. After dominating men’s figure skating at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, Button retired from amateur competition and later became one of the sport’s leading television analysts.

• 1965 --- In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights.

• 1972 --- In an amazing turn of events, President Richard Nixon takes a dramatic first step toward normalizing relations with the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks. Nixon's historic visit began the slow process of the re-establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China.

• 1975 --- Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were

  

  sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.

• 1994 --- Whirlpool began manufacturing a refrigerator that was significantly more efficient, and did not use freon. Freon has been implicated in the destruction of ozone in the atmosphere.

• 1994 --- CIA operative Aldrich Ames is arrested for selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames had access to the names and identities of all U.S. spies in Russia, and by becoming a double agent he was directly responsible for jeopardizing the lives of CIA agents working in the Eastern bloc. At least 10 men were killed after Ames revealed their identities, and more were sent to Russian gulags. Maria del

  

  Rosario Casas Ames, Aldrich's wife, who had been a paid CIA source, was also charged for her role in accepting approximately $2.5 million (the most the Soviets ever paid a foreign spy) for providing highly confidential information to the KGB. It was the Ames' spending that finally led to their downfall, but for many years no one questioned their ability to buy expensive cars and homes (paid for with cash) on his government salary. Ames picked up the cash at secret drops in the Washington, D.C., area and in unauthorized travels to Colombia and Venezuela. Aldrich Ames was the biggest success of the Soviet Union's reinvigorated espionage program. After their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Russians decided that spying was their best bet for improving their strategic position vis-a-vis the United States. Dimitri Yakushkin headed up the effort, and put more emphasis and money into clandestine operations; his efforts were rewarded when Ames became a double agent. Ames, who had worked for the CIA full-time since 1962, and whose main duties had included contacting Soviet sources, was the crown jewel for Group North. His information destroyed almost the whole American intelligence program in Russia. Later, a Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report that harshly criticized the CIA leadership for their negligence in allowing Ames to get away with his subterfuge for so long.

• 1995 --- Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. He landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.
  

  

• Birthdays
• Erma Bombeck
• Andres Segovia
• Tyne Daly
• Kelsey Grammer
• David Geffen
• Alan Rickman
• Jerry Harrison
• Mary Chapin Carpenter
• Ranking Roger
• Pierre Lafitte
• Anais Nin
• Sam Peckinpah
• Nina Simone
• Rue McClanahan
• Vince Welnick