Friday March 21, 2014

• 80^th Day of 2014 / 285 Remaining
• 92 Days Until The First Day of Summer

• Sunrise:7:10
• Sunset:7:23
• 12 Hours 13 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:12:43am(Saturday)
• Moon Set:10:13am
• Moon’s Phase: 74 %

• The Next Full Moon
• April 15 @ 12:45 am
• Full Pink Moon
• Full Sprouting Moon
• Full Egg Moon
• Full Grass Moon
• Full Fish Moon

This name 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:2:13am/3:39pm
• Low:8:55am/8:43pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:8.68
• Last Year:14.73
• Average Year to Date:20.58

• Holidays
• Aries Begins
• Memory Day
• National French Bread Day
• California Strawberry Day

• International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
• Canberra Day-Australia
• Noruz (Nauroze)-Iranian/Persian New Year
• Naw-Ruz-Baha'i New Year
• Independence Day-Namibia
• Human Rights Day-South Africa
• Mother’s Day-Egypt/Syria
• Tree Planting Day-Lesotho

• On This Day In …
• 1556 --- Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
  

  

• 1788 --- Almost the entire city of New Orleans, LA, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were destroyed.
  

  

• 1790 --- Thomas Jefferson took office as America's first secretary of state.

• 1804 --- After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the "Napoleonic Code." The civil code gave

  

  post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights

• 1868 --- The first club for professional women was formed in New York City by writer, Jennie June Croly. The club was called Sorosos.

• 1902 --- In New York, three Park Avenue mansions were destroyed when a subway tunnel roof caved in.

• 1904 --- At Carnegie Hall, Richard Strauss conducted the world premiere of his Symphonia Domestica. It was his fifth of seven appearances at Carnegie Hall.

• 1939 --- God Bless America, written by Irving Berlin back in 1918 as a tribute by a successful immigrant to his adopted country, was recorded by Kate Smith for Victor Records.
  

  

• 1946 --- The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first black player to join a National Football League team since 1933.
  

  

• 1952 --- Breathless promotion on the local radio station. Tickets selling out in a single day. Thousands of teenagers, hours before show time, lining up outside the biggest venue in town. The scene outside the Cleveland Arena on a chilly Friday night in March more than 50 years ago would look quite familiar to anyone who has ever attended a major rock concert. But no one on this particular night had ever even heard of a "rock concert." This, after all, was the night

  

  of an event now recognized as history's first major rock-and-roll show: the Moondog Coronation Ball, held in Cleveland. Helped along by massive ticket counterfeiting and possibly by overbooking on the part of the event's sponsors, an estimated 20,000-25,000 fans turned out for an event being held in an arena with a capacity of only 10,000. Less than an hour into the show, the massive overflow crowd broke through the gates that were keeping them outside, and police quickly moved in to stop the show almost as soon as it began. On the radio the very next evening, Alan Freed offered an apology to listeners who had tried to attend the canceled event. By way of explanation, Freed said: "If anyone...had told us that some 20 or 25,000 people would try to get into a dance—I suppose you would have been just like me. You would have laughed and said they were crazy."

• 1960 --- Police fired on black demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing some 70 people.
  

  

• 1963 --- Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it's peak period of use in 1950s, "The Rock, or ""America's Devil Island" housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable. The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San

  

  Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times. The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism.

• 1964 --- Judy Collins made her debut in New York City's Carnegie Hall.

• 1965 --- In the name of African-American voting rights, 3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were on

  

  hand to provide safe passage for the march, which twice had been turned back by Alabama state police at Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge.

• 1970 --- Faces, with new lead singer Rod Stewart, released their first LP, "First Step."

• 1972 --- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require one year of residency for voting eligibility.

• 1976 --- Singer Claudine Longet, formerly the wife of Andy Williams, shot her boyfriend, world skiing champion Spider Sabich. Sabich

  

  had tried to throw her and her three children out of his house. Longet was arrested for manslaughter.

• 1984 --- A section of Central Park is renamed 'Strawberry Fields' to honor John Lennon.
  

  

• 1985 --- Police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators were killed.

• 1987 --- The album "The Joshua Tree" by U2 was released.
  

  

• 1989 --- Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison after his conviction was overturned. The documentary "The Thin Blue

  

  Line" had challenged evidence of Adams' conviction for killing a police officer.

• 1990 --- Australian businessman Alan Bond sold Van Gogh's "Irises" to the Getty Museum. Bond had purchased the painting for $53.9 million in 1987.
  

  

• 1994 --- Due to bad harvests, there is a shortage of Japanese grown rice.  Japan's Imperial Palace begins serving royal meals to the Emperor & Empress with rice grown in the U.S., China and Thailand.

• 1999 --- Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed in the Egyptian desert, having completed the 1st 'Around the World' hot air balloon flight.  According to the BBC, they carried fresh food, including bread, cheese and pre-cooked steaks to last for 6 or 7 days, after which they made due with dried foods such as cereals and powdered milk.  The flight began in the Swiss Alps, took 19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes, and covered 29,056 non-stop miles.

• 2002 --- In Paris, an 1825 print by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce was sold for $443,220. The print, of a man leading a horse, was the earliest recorded image taken by photographic means.
  

  

• Birthdays
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• Sabrina LaBeauf
• Julio Gallo
• Rosie O’Donnell
• Florenz Ziegfeld
• Cynthia Geary
• Matthew Broderick
• Timothy Dalton
• Maria Christine Barrault
• Gary Oldman
• Ronaldinho
• Phyllis McGinley
• John D Rockefeller III
• Rose Stone