- 79th Day of 2015 286 Remaining
- First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:11
- Sunset:7:21
- 12 Hours 10 Minutes
- Moon Rise:7:22am
- Moon Set:8:07pm
- New Moon
- Full Moon April 4 @ 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:11:37am
- Low:5:22am/5:40pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.04
- Last Year:8.68
- Avg YTD:20.49
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Alien Abduction Day
- Great American Meat Out Day
- National HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
- National Ravioli Day
- Proposal Day
- Kiss Your Fiance’ Day
- Snowman Burning Day
- Won’t You Be My Neighbor Day
- World Storytelling Day
- International Day Of Happiness
- Abolition day-Puerto Rico
- Independence Day-Tunisia
- Legba Zaou-Haiti
- Petroleum Day-Iran
- International Frog Day
- On This Day
- 1760 --- Fire in Boston, Massachusetts destroyed more than 350 homes, shops and warehouses, and spread down to the wharves where ten ships were left in ashes.
- 1778 --- Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee present themselves to France’s King Louis XVI as official representatives of the United States. Louis XVI was skeptical of the fledgling republic, but his dislike of the British eventually overcame these concerns and France officially recognized the United States in February 1778.
- 1815 --- Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris after his escape from Elba and began his "Hundred Days" rule.
- 1852 --- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”
- 1854 --- In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery.
- 1865 --- A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was ruined when Lincoln changed his plans and did not appear at the Soldier’s Home near Washington, DC.
- 1891 --- The first computing scale company was incorporated in Dayton, OH.
- 1897 --- The first intercollegiate basketball game that used five players per team was held. The contest was Yale versus Pennsylvania. Yale won by a score of 32-10.
- 1899 --- At Sing Sing prison, Martha M. Place became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. She was put to death for the murder of her stepdaughter.
- 1903 --- In Paris, paintings by Henri Matisse were shown at the "Salon des Independants".
- 1911 --- The National Squash Tennis Association was formed in New York City.
- 1914 --- The first international figure skating championship was held in New Haven, CT.
- 1932 --- The German dirigible, Graf Zepplin, made the first flight to South America on regular schedule.
- 1934 --- Mildrid “Babe” Didrikson pitches one inning of exhibition baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics in a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. She started the first inning, and allowed just one walk and no hits. Though Didrickson was not the first woman to play baseball with major league ballplayers, she had attained national-hero status with an unprecedented performance at the 1932 Olympics.
- 1953 --- The Soviet government announces that Nikita Khrushchev has been selected as one of five men named to the new office of Secretariat of the Communist Party. Khrushchev’s selection was a crucial first step in his rise to power in the Soviet Union—an advance that culminated in Khrushchev being named secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953, and premier in 1958.
- 1956 --- Tunisia gained independence from France.
- 1965 --- President Lyndon B. Johnson sends a telegram to Governor George Wallace of Alabama in which he agrees to send federal troops to supervise a planned African-American civil-rights march in Wallace’s home state. Later that day, from his ranch in Texas, LBJ read the telegram to reporters at a news conference. He told the press that he supported the constitutional rights of the marchers to walk peaceably and safely without injury or loss of life from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and expressed dismay at the governor’s refusal to provide them the protection of the Alabama police. Johnson’s March 20 telegram to Wallace contained a plea to all parties for civil order as well as a public warning to Wallace that over the next several days the eyes of the nation will be upon Alabama. Johnson told the governor that the march should be allowed to proceed in a manner honoring our heritage and honoring all for which America stands. In his closing comments to reporters, he urged Wallace to heed Abraham Lincoln’s advice to cater to the better angels of our nature on the day of the march. Hundreds of people joined what turned out to be a peaceful 54-mile march under the guard of Alabama state troopers and federal soldiers, as the conflict between Johnson and Wallace turned an even brighter spotlight on the need to address American race relations, particularly in the southern states.
- 1968 --- Retired U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Shoup, a chief military advisor to President Kennedy, estimates that up to 800,000 men would be required just to defend South Vietnamese population centers. He further stated that the United States could only achieve military victory by invading the North, but argued that such an operation would not be worth the cost.
- 1976 --- Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her role in the hold up of a San Francisco Bank.
- 1987 --- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AZT. The drug was proven to slow the progress of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).
- 1990 --- The Los Angeles Lakers retired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's #33.
- 1990 --- Imelda Marcos, widow of ex-Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, went on trial for racketeering, embezzlement and bribery.
- 1995 --- Several packages of deadly sarin gas are set off in the Tokyo subway system killing twelve people and injuring over 5,000. Sarin gas was invented by the Nazis and is one of the most lethal nerve gases known to man. Tokyo police quickly learned who had planted the chemical weapons and began tracking the terrorists down. Thousands of checkpoints were set up across the nation in the massive dragnet.The gas attack was instituted by the Aum Shinrikyo (which means Supreme Truth) cult. The Supreme Truth had thousands of followers all over Japan who believed in their doomsday prophecies.
- 1999 --- Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first men to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. The non-stop trip began on March 3 and covered 26,500 miles.
- Birthdays
- Fred Rogers
- Spike Lee
- Theresa Russell
- Holly Hunter
- Kathy Ireland
- Michael Rapaport
- Ovid
- Sir Michael Redgrave
- Henrik Ibsen
- Ozzie Nelson
- Dame Vera Lynn
- Marian McPartland
- Carl Reiner
- Ray Goulding
- Hal Linden
- Ted Bessell
- Jerry reed
- Brian Mulroney
- Marcia Ball
Friday march 20, 2015
