- 34th Day of 2012 / 332 Remaining
- 46 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:12
- Sunset:5:36
- 10 Hr 18 Min
- Moon Rise:1:44pm
- Moon Set:3:51am
- Moon’s Phase: 82%
- The Next Full Moon
- February 7 @ 1:56pm
- Full Snow Moon
- Full Hunger Moon
Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides
- High:6:44am/9:16pm
- Low:12:57am/2:15pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.06
- Last Year:12.67
- Normal To Date:12.81
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Patient Recognition Day
- National Carrot Cake Day
- Bubble Gum Day
- African-American Coaches Day
- Rabi'I-Islamic (begins at sundown)
- Bean Throwing Festival (Setsubun)-Japan
- Heroes' Day-Mozambique
- On This Day In …
- 1488 --- The Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Diaz landed at Mossal Bay in the Cape, the first European known to have landed on the southern extremity of Africa.
- 1862 -- Thomas Edison, always looking for a way to do something new, came up with this idea: He printed the Weekly Herald and distributed it to train passengers traveling between Port Huron and Detroit, MI. Strange thing is ... it was the first time a newspaper had been printed on a train!
- 1913 --- The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It gave Congress the power to levy taxes on income. In 1913 less than 1% of the population paid income tax at the rate of 1%.
- 1917 --- President Woodrow Wilson speaks for two hours before a historic session of Congress to announce that the United States is breaking diplomatic relations with Germany. Due to the reintroduction of the German navy's policy of unlimited submarine warfare, announced two days earlier by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollwegg, Wilson announced that his government had no choice but to cut all diplomatic ties with Germany in order to uphold the honor and dignity of the United States. Though he maintained that We do not desire any hostile conflict with the German government, Wilson nevertheless cautioned that war would follow if Germany followed through on its threat to sink American ships without warning.
- 1951 --- Dick Button won the U.S. figure skating title for the sixth time. Button went on to become a fixture on figure-skating telecasts on ABC-TV.
- 1956 --- Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash held a recording session at Sun Studios in Memphis. The sessions were later named the "Million Dollar Quartet" and released.
- 1959 --- American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane crashes in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City on a flight headed for Moorehead, Minnesota. Investigators blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error. Holly and his band, the Crickets, had just scored a No. 1 hit with "That'll Be the Day." After mechanical difficulties with the tour bus, Holly had chartered a plane for his band to fly between stops on the Winter Dance Party Tour. However, Richardson, who had the flu, convinced Holly's band member Waylon Jennings to give up his seat, and Ritchie Valens won a coin toss for another seat on the plane.
- 1961 --- In New York, Bob Dylan made his first recording, taping "San Francisco Bay Blues".
- 1964 --- The Beatles, received their first gold record award for the single, I Want To Hold Your Hand. The group also won a gold LP award for Meet The Beatles. The album had been released in the United States only 14 days earlier.
- 1966 --- The Soviet Union accomplishes the first controlled landing on the moon, when the unmanned spacecraft Lunik 9 touches down on the Ocean of Storms. After its soft landing, the circular capsule opened like a flower, deploying its antennas, and began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. The 220-pound landing capsule was launched from Earth on January 31.
- 1971 --- Apollo 14 astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Edgar D. Mitchell landed on the lunar sufrace during the third successful manned mission to the moon.
- 1998 --- A U.S. Marine jet flying low over the town of Cavalese in the Italian Alps severs a ski-lift cable, sending a tram crashing to the ground and killing 20 people. Cavalese is located in the Dolomite Mountains, about 20 miles northeast of Trento, Italy. In 1976, 42 people there, including 15 children, lost their lives when the cable holding up their ski-lift car snapped. The car fell 700 feet, with its overhead assembly landing on top of it. There was only one survivor--a 14-year-old girl. On February 3, 1998, 20 Europeans, mostly Germans and Belgians, were taking a ski tram up Cermis Mountain when an EA-6B Prowler operated by the U.S. Marines suddenly flew by. The anti-radar aircraft sliced right through the steel cable holding up the tram and it plunged more than 250 feet to the ground. Everyone on board was killed instantly
- 2005 --- Alberto Gonzales won Senate confirmation as the nation's first Hispanic attorney general despite protests over his record on torture. The Senate approved his nomination on a largely party-line vote of 60-36, reflecting a split between Republicans and Democrats over whether the administration's counterterrorism policies had led to the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. Shortly after the Senate vote, Vice President Dick Cheney swore in Gonzales as attorney general in a small ceremony in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. President Bush, who was traveling, called to congratulate him.
- Birthdays
- Gertrude Stein
- Norman Rockwell
- James Michener
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Blythe Danner
- Fran Tarkenton
- Bob Griese
- Melanie
- Morgan Fairchild
- Nathan Lane
- Eli Manning
- Horace Greeley
- Helen Stephens
- Joey Bishop
- Victor Buono
- Emile Griffith
- Dave Davies (The Kinks)