- 83rd Day of 2012 / 283 Remaining
- 89 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:7:07
- Sunset:7:25
- 12 Hr 18 Min
- Moon Rise:7:21am
- Moon Set:8:51pm
- Moon’s Phase: 1 %
- The Next Full Moon
- April 6 @ 2:20pm
- Full Pink Moon
- Full Fish Moon
- Full Sprouting Grass Moon
- Full 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 Full Fish Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:12:26pm
- Low:6:09am/6:07pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:
- Last Year:
- Normal To Date:
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Liberty Day
- National Puppy Day
- Near Miss Day
- National Chip and Dip Day
- Cuddly Kitten Day
- National Puppy Day
- UN World Meteorological Day
- Republic Day-Pakistan
- On This Day In …
- 1743 --- It was the first London performance of Handel’s Messiah, and King King George II was in the audience. In the middle of the Hallelujah Chorus, the King rose to his feet in appreciation of the great piece! The entire audience followed suit out of respect for the King. And so began the custom of standing during the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus.
- 1775 --- During a speech before the second Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry responds to the increasingly oppressive British rule over the American colonies by declaring, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Following the signing of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, Patrick Henry was appointed governor of Virginia by the Continental Congress.
- 1792 --- Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 94 in G Major (the "Surprise Symphony") was performed publicly for the first time, in London.
- 1806 --- Explorers Lewis and Clark, reached the Pacific coast, and began their return journey to the east.
- 1839 --- The initials "O.K." are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for "oll correct," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans. During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as "kewl" for "cool" or "DZ" for "these," the "in crowd" of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG" for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright"). Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the "O.K. Club," which referred both to Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of "OK" to denigrate Van Buren's political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation "OK" to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct." The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind "OK" was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of "OK," ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, "OK" has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America's greatest lingual exports.
- 1857 --- Elisha Otis installed the first modern passenger elevator in a public building. It was at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.
- 1868 --- The University of California was founded in Oakland, CA.
- 1912 --- The Dixie Cup was developed by Lawrence Luellen and Hugh Moore. Its original name was the 'Health Kup,' changed to 'Dixie Cup' in 1919. The name came from a line of dolls made by the Dixie Doll Company.
- 1925 --- An evolution law, enacted this day in the great State of Tennessee made it a crime for a teacher in any state-supported public school or college to teach any theory that contradicted the Bible’s account of man’s creation. Tennessee’s Governor Austin Peay said, “The very integrity of the Bible in its statement of man’s divine creation is denied by any theory that man descended or has ascended from any lower order of animals.” Opponents planned to challenge the law, denouncing it as a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. Within two months, a Dayton, Tennessee high school science teacher, John T. Scopes was indicted, and later convicted, in the famous ‘Monkey Trial’ for teaching his students the theory of evolution; that man descended from a lower order of animals ... or monkeys. Scopes was fined $100. Defense Attorney Clarence Darrow stated that this was “the first case of its kind since we stopped trying people for witchcraft.”
- 1965 --- America's first two-person space flight began as Gemini 3 blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard. Astronaut John Young became the first man to eat a corned beef sandwich in outer space. When it comes to events of progress, we will certainly add this to the record book, now won’t we? ...along with that golf club stunt of Alan Shepard’s from the surface of the moon years later. Young smuggled the sandwich on board in order to supplement the astronauts’ meals of dehydrated foods, including powdered fruit juice (Tang).
- 1981 --- CBS Television announced plans to reduce Captain Kangaroo to a 30-minute show each weekday morning. The reason, according to network brass, was to allow more time for its morning news programming. This move proved to be a huge mistake. The CBS Morning News was the weakest morning news program on the air, against NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America. The show was a ratings disaster that went through many changes and complete makeovers in an effort to find an audience. Secret plans to use Mr. Moose, Bunny Rabbit, Grandfather Clock and Mr. Green Jeans on the Morning News did not, however, become reality.
- 1983 --- In an address to the nation, President Ronald Reagan proposes that the United States embark on a program to develop antimissile technology that would make the country nearly impervious to attack by nuclear missiles. Reagan's speech marked the beginning of what came to be known as the controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Despite his vigorous anticommunist rhetoric, Reagan made nuclear arms control one of the keynotes of his administration. By 1983, however, talks with the Soviets were stalled over issues of what kinds of weapons should be controlled, what kind of control would be instituted, and how compliance with the controls would be assured. It was at this point that Reagan became enamored with an idea proposed by some of his military and scientific advisors, including Dr. Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb." What they proposed was a massive program involving the use of antimissile satellites utilizing laser beams or other means to knock Soviet nuclear missiles out of the sky before they had a chance to impact the United States. Reagan therefore called upon the nation's scientists to "turn their great talents" to this "vision of the future which offers hope." He admitted that such a highly sophisticated program might "not be accomplished before the end of this century." Reagan's speech formed the basis for what came to be known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, though pundits immediately dubbed it the "Star Wars Initiative." Some scientists indicated that even if the SDI were able to destroy 95 percent of Soviet missiles, the remaining five percent would be enough to destroy the entire planet. Nevertheless, Congress began funding the program, which ran up a bill of over $30 billion by 1993 (with little to show for the effort).
- 1989 --- A mountain-sized asteroid passed within 500,000 miles of earth, a close-call, according to NASA.
- 1989 --- The Dallas district attorney's office announced it would not retry Randall Dale Adams for the 1977 shooting death of a police officer. Adams had been convicted of the shooting and had served 12 years in prison before a film, The Thin BlueLine, reexamined his case and documented another man's confession.
- 2001 --- Russia's orbiting Mir space station ended its 15-year odyssey with a fiery plunge into the South Pacific.
- Birthdays
- Akira Kurosawa
- Chaka Khan
- Ric Ocasek
- Moses Malone
- Fannie Merritt Farmer
- Jason Kidd
- Joan Crawford
- Juan Gris
- Erich Fromm
- Wernher Von Braun
- Roger Bannister