Friday February 28, 2014

• 59^th Day of 2014 / 306 Remaining
• 20 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:6:41
• Sunset:6:02
• 11 Hours 21 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:6:01am
• Moon Set:5:46pm
• Moon’s Phase: 3 %

• The Next Full Moon
• March 16 @ 10:10am
• Full CrowMoon
• Full Crust Moon
• Full Sap Moon
• Full Lenten Moon

As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.

• Tides
• High:9:37am/10:40pm
• Low:3:32am/4:05pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:6.58
• Last Year:14.35
• Average Year to Date:18.08

• Holidays
• Floral Design Day
• National Tooth Fairy Day
• National Chocolate Souffle Day

• Andalusia Day-Spain
• Peace Memorial Day-Taiwan

• On This Day In …
• 1827 --- The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first railroad incorporated for commercial transportation of people and freight.

• 1849 --- If one wanted to make the trip from the U.S. East Coast to the West Coast by steamboat, one had best be prepared for a long journey. Regular steamboat service to California via Cape Horn arrived in San Francisco for the first time. The SS California left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, making the trip in four months, 21 days.

• 1854 --- The Republican Party was organized in Ripon, WI. About 50 slavery opponents began the new political group.

• 1885 --- AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) was incorporated. The company was capitalized on only $100,000 and provided long distance service for American Bell.

• 1935 --- At the DuPont Corporation, Dr. Wallace Hume Carothers invented nylon. A patent was issued in 1937, and nylon stockings soon followed.
  

  

• 1940 --- College basketball was televised for the first time as station W2XBS aired the Pittsburgh-Fordham and Georgetown-NYU games from Madison Square Garden in New York.
  

  

• 1948 --- Bud Gartiser set a world record when he cleared the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.

• 1953 --- Cambridge University scientists James D. Watson and Frances H.C. Crick announce that they have determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. Though DNA--short for deoxyribonucleic acid--was discovered in 1869, its crucial role in determining genetic inheritance

  

  wasn't demonstrated until 1943. In the early 1950s, Watson and Crick were only two of many scientists working on figuring out the structure of DNA.

• 1954 --- In San Francisco "Birth of a Planet" was aired. It was the first American phase-contrast cinemicrography film to be presented on television.

• 1959 --- "Cash Box" magazine began using a red 'bullet' on its record charts to indicate the records that have the strongest upward movement each week.

• 1960 --- The U.S. Olympic hockey team won the gold medal, defeating Czechoslovakia 9-4 at Squaw Valley, Calif.
  

  

• 1964 --- Beatlemania was at its peak in the winter of 1964, but not every music fan had the Beatles' brand of rock and roll on their turntable. In fact, it was jazz music—vital, innovative, contemporary jazz music—that captured the imagination of a significant proportion of American music fans in 1964, and no jazz musician at that time

  

  was more vital, innovative and contemporary than Thelonious Sphere Monk. So important was jazz on the American cultural scene, and so important was Monk in the world of jazz, that his portrait graced the cover of Time magazine February 28, 1964.

• 1972 --- President Richard M. Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the conclusion of

  

  Nixon's historic visit to China, a step toward the eventual normalization of relations between the two countries.

• 1975 --- A subway crash in London kills 43 people. The driver of the train apparently made no effort to brake as the train headed toward a dead end. The reason for his inaction remains a mystery.
  

  

• 1982 --- The J. Paul Getty Museum becomes the most richly endowed museum on earth when it receives a $1.2 billion bequest left to it by the late J. Paul Getty. The American oil billionaire died in 1976, but legal wrangling over his fortune by his children and

  

  ex-wives kept his will in probate until 1982. During those six years, what was a originally a $700 million bequest to the museum nearly doubled. By 2000, the endowment was worth $5 billion--even after the trust spent nearly $1 billion in the 1990s on the construction of a massive museum and arts education complex in Los Angeles.

• 1983 --- The album "War" by U2 was released.
  

  

• 1983 --- M*A*S*H became the most watched television program in history, as the final original episode of the fictitious, but uncommonly real, 4077th M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) unit of the Korean conflict aired. An estimated 125-million people in the U.S. tuned in to see the broadcast on CBS. The program earned a 60.3 rating and a 77 percent share. According to Nielsen Media Research, the 60.3 rating was the average audience rating or the

  

  percent tuned to M*A*S*H during the average minute, while the share measured the percentage of TV households whose sets were turned on that night and were tuned to the 2 1/2 hour special of M*A*S*H.

• 1984 --- It was Michael Jackson Night at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The gloved one set a record for most wins by taking home eight of the gramophone statuette honors. He broke the previous record of six awards set by Roger Miller in 1965. The

  

  reason: the biggest selling album of all time, Thriller, which sold more than 35-million copies around the world soon after its release in 1983.

• 1987 --- In a surprising announcement, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev indicates that his nation is ready to sign "without delay" a treaty designed to eliminate U.S. and Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe. Gorbachev's offer led to a breakthrough in negotiations and, eventually, to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in December 1987.

• 1993 --- U.S. Federal agents shot it out with members of an armed religious cult near Waco, Texas and didn’t fare very well. Four agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and two cult members were killed and another 12 agents were wounded. The agents had planned to arrest Branch Davidian cult leader, David

  

  Koresh on federal firearms charges, but were surprised when the cult members opened fire with heavy weapons. The assault was a failure, and the 51-day siege by the Feds began.

• 1997 --- The headline read, “Botched L.A bank heist turns into bloody shootout.” Two robbers, masked and wearing body armor, bungled a bank heist in North Hollywood, CA. As the pair left the bank, they unleashed an arsenal of weapons on police, bystanders, cars and TV choppers before they were killed. Fifteen people were injured, including ten policemen.

• 2001 --- The Northwest region of the U.S., including the state of Washington, was hit by an earthquake that measured 6.9 on the Richter Scale. There were no deaths reported.

• 2002 --- Sotheby's auction house announced that it had identified Peter Paul Reubens as the creator of the painting "The Massacre of the Innocents." The painting was previously thought to be by Jan van den Hoecke.
  

  

• Birthdays
• Rae Dawn Chong
• Bernadette Peters
• Linus Pauling
• Gavin MacLeod
• Tommy Tune
• Sam the Sham
• Mario Andretti
• Gilbert Gottfried
• John Turturro
• Cindy Wilson
• Michel de Montaigne
• Geraldine Farrar
• Bugsy Siegel
• Vincente Minnelli
• Zero Mostel
• Svetlana Allilueva
• Brian Jones
• Mercedes Ruehl