Friday February 7, 2014

• 38^th Day of 2014 / 327 Remaining
• 41 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:06
• Sunset:5:40
• 10 Hours 34 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:11:57am
• Moon Set: 1:28am
• Moon’s Phase: 60 %

• 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:4:32am/6:35pm
• Low:11:52am/11:21pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:3.17
• Last Year:13.60
• Average Year to Date:14.79

• Holidays
• Ballet Day
• Wave All Your Fingers At Your Neighbors Day
• National Fettucine Alfredo Day
• Bubble Gum Day

• Independence Day-Grenada

• On This Day In …
• 1785 --- The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

• 1812 --- The most violent of a series of earthquakes near Missouri causes a so-called fluvial tsunami in the Mississippi River, actually making the river run backward for several hours. The series of tremors, which took place between December 1811 and March 1812, were the most powerful in the history of the United States.

• 1882 --- The last bareknuckle fight for the heavyweight boxing championship took place in Mississippi City.
  

  

• 1893 --- Elisha Gray of Highland Park, IL patented a machine called the telautograph. It automatically signed autographs to documents,

  

  freeing up those who would be autographing these things so that they could take care of other matters.

• 1898 --- French writer Emile Zola is brought to trial for libel for "J'Accuse," his newspaper editorial attacking the French army over the Dreyfus affair. On January 13, Zola had published his editorial in the newspaper L'Aurore. The letter exposed a military cover-up regarding Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain, had been accused of espionage in 1894 and sentenced in a secret military

  

  court-martial to imprisonment in a South American penal colony. Two years later, evidence of Dreyfus' innocence surfaced, but the army suppressed the information. Zola's letter exposed the military's mistaken conviction.

• 1904 --- In Baltimore, Maryland, that engulfs a large portion of the city by evening. The fire is believed to have been started by a

  

  discarded cigarette in the basement of the Hurst Building. When the blaze finally burned down after 31 hours, an 80-block area of the downtown area, stretching from the waterfront to Mount Vernon on Charles Street, had been destroyed. More than 1,500 buildings were completely leveled, and some 1,000 severely damaged, bringing property loss from the disaster to an estimated $100 million. Miraculously, no homes or lives were lost, and Baltimore's domed

  

  City Hall, built in 1867, was preserved. The Great Baltimore Fire was the most destructive fire in the United States since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed most of the city and caused an estimated $200 million in property damage.

• 1914 --- The silent film Kid Auto Races at Venice premieres in theaters, featuring the actor Charlie Chaplin in his first screen appearance as the “Little Tramp,” the character that would become his best-known onscreen alter ego.

• 1940 --- Movie fans watched the world premiere of the Walt Disney animation, Pinocchio, at the Center Theatre in Manhattan. The

  

  showing followed that of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as Disney’s second feature-length film. One critic called the show, “The happiest event since the war.”

• 1964 --- Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport--and "Beatlemania" arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." At Kennedy, the "Fab Four"--dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts--were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a

  

  near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil. Two days later, Paul McCartney, age 21, Ringo Starr, 23, John Lennon, 23, and George Harrison, 20, made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage

  

  girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million U.S. television viewers, or about 40 percent of the U.S. population, tuned in to watch.

• 1969 --- "This Is Tom Jones" premiered on ABC-TV.

• 1970 --- Louisiana State University basketball star Pete Maravich scores 69 points in a game against Alabama, setting a Division I record that would stand for 21 years. Maravich dazzled crowds with his performance on the freshman team (at the time, NCAA rules prevented first-year students from competing at the varsity level), scoring 43.6 points per game. During his three years as a member

  

  of LSU’s varsity squad, Maravich set a number of NCAA records, some of which still stand today, including most career points (3,667) and highest career scoring average (44.2 points per game). Nicknamed “Pistol Pete,” he was known for his big numbers and his incredible ball-handling skills and showmanship, as well as his droopy socks.

• 1979 --- The Clash kick off their first American tour at the Berkeley Community Theatre outside San Francisco.
  

  

• 1984 --- While in orbit 170 miles above Earth, Navy Captain Bruce McCandless becomes the first human being to fly untethered in space when he exits the U.S. space shuttle Challenger and maneuvers freely, using a bulky white rocket pack of his own

  

  design. McCandless orbited Earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour and flew up to 320 feet away from the Challenger. After an hour and a half testing and flying the jet-powered backpack and admiring Earth, McCandless safely reentered the shuttle.

• 1986 --- Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled his country ending 28 years of family rule.
  

  

• 1989 --- It was reported that a rain of sardines fell in Ipswich, Australia.

• 1990 --- The Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party agrees to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev's recommendation that the party give up its 70-year long monopoly of political power. The Committee's decision to allow political challenges to the party's dominance in Russia was yet another signal of the impending collapse of the Soviet system.

• 1991 --- Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti's first democratically elected president.

• 1998 --- The XVIIIth Winter Olympic games opened at Nagano, Japan. Wind, rain, fog and lightning, with a mild earthquake thrown

  

  in, played havoc with Alpine skiing during the first five days. Then, good weather moved in and, when the games ended, the Japanese hosts were hailed for their excellent show.

• 2000 --- California's legislature declared that February 13 would be "Charels M. Schulz Day."
  

  

• Birthdays
• Frederick Douglass
• Charles Dickens
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Sinclair Lewis
• John Deere
• Yutaka Ishinabe
• Chris Rock
• James Spader
• Gay Talese
• Miguel Ferrer
• Garth Brooks
• Eddie Izzard
• Ashton Kutcher
• Eubie Blake
• Buster Crabbe
• Ruth Sager
• Sir Thomas More