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Friday March 27, 2015

  • 86th Day of 2015 279 Remaining
  • Summer Begins in 86 Days
  • Sunrise:7:01
  • Sunset:7:28
  • 12 Hours 27 Minutes
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  • Moon Rise:12:46pm
  • Moon Set:2:20am
  • Phase:First Quarter
  • 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:4:54am/7:18pm
  • Low:12:09pm
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  • Rainfall:
  • This Year to Date:17.13
  • Last Year:9.40
  • Avg YTD:21.09
  • Annual Avg:23.80
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  • Holidays
  • Skyscraper Day
  • Celebrate Exchange Day
  • National Spanish Paella Day
  • Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
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  • Evacuation Day-Angola
  • Mount Arafat Day-Kuwait
  • On This Day
  • 1513 --- Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida.
  • 1775 --- Thomas Jefferson is elected to the second Continental Congress. Jefferson, a Virginia delegate, quickly established himself in the Continental Congress with the publication of his paper entitled A Summary View of the Rights of British America. 
  • 1836 --- In Goliad, TX, about 350 Texan prisoners, including their commander James Fannin, were executed under orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna. An estimated 30 Texans escaped execution. Ironically, rather than serving to crush the Texas rebellion, the Goliad Massacre helped inspire and unify the Texans. Now determined to break completely from Mexico, the Texas revolutionaries began to yell “Remember Goliad!” along with the more famous battle cry, “Remember the Alamo!” Less than a month later, Texan forces under General Sam Houston dealt a stunning blow to Santa Anna’s army in the Battle of San Jacinto, and Texas won its independence.
  • 1865 --- President Abraham Lincoln meets with Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman at City Point, Virginia, to plot the last stages of the Civil War. Lincoln went to Virginia just as Grant was preparing to attack Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s lines around Petersburg and Richmond, an assault that promised to end the siege that had dragged on for 10 months. Meanwhile, Sherman’s force was steamrolling northward through the Carolinas. The three architects of Union victory convened for the first time as a group–Lincoln and Sherman had never met—at Grant’s City Point headquarters at the general-in-chief’s request.
  • 1899 --- The first international radio transmission between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor Guillermo Marconi. 
  • 1904 --- Mary Jarris "Mother" Jones was ordered by Colorado state authorities to leave the state. She was accused of stirring up striking coal miners. 
  • 1912 --- Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, plant two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.
  • 1915 --- Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) was arrested and quarantined at Riverside Hospital on North Border Island in New York City, until her death in 1938.  She had previously been arrested and quarantined several times.  Immune to the disease herself, she was a carrier of the bacillus and spread it wherever she worked as a cook. She kept returning to her occupation as a cook even though repeatedly promising not to do so, and was responsible for major outbreaks of typhoid in New York in 1904, 1907 and 1914.
  • 1917 --- The Seattle Metropolitans, of the Pacific Coast League of Canada, defeated the Montreal Canadiens and became the first U.S. hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. 
  • 1931 --- Actor Charlie Chaplin received France’s Legion of Honor decoration. 
  • 1939 --- The University of Oregon defeats The Ohio State University to win the first-ever NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The Final Four, as the tournament became known, has grown exponentially in size and popularity since 1939. By 2005, college basketball had become the most popular sporting event among gamblers, after the Super Bowl.
  • 1945 --- Ella Fitzgerald and the Delta Rhythm Boys recorded "It’s Only a Paper Moon." 
  • 1946 --- Four-month long strikes at both General Electric and General Motors ended with a wage increase.
  • 1958 --- Nikita Khrushchev became the chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.
  • 1964 --- The strongest earthquake in American history, measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale, slams southern Alaska, creating a deadly tsunami. Some 125 people were killed and thousands injured. The massive earthquake had its epicenter in the Prince William Sound, about eight miles northeast of Anchorage, but approximately 300,000 square miles of U.S., Canadian, and international territory were affected. Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, sustained the most property damage, with about 30 blocks of dwellings and commercial buildings damaged or destroyed in the downtown area. 
      Fifteen people were killed or fatally injured as a direct result of the three-minute quake, and then the ensuing tsunami killed another 110 people. The tidal wave, which measured over 100 feet at points, devastated towns along the Gulf of Alaska and caused carnage in British Columbia, Canada; Hawaii; and the West Coast of the United States, where 15 people died. Total property damage was estimated in excess of $400 million. The day after the quake, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Alaska an official disaster area.
  • 1965 --- Following several days of consultations with the Cambodian government, South Vietnamese troops, supported by artillery and air strikes, launch their first major military operation into Cambodia.
  • 1973 --- Marlon Brando declines the Academy Award for Best Actor for his career-reviving performance in The Godfather. The Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather attended the ceremony in Brando’s place, stating that the actor “very regretfully” could not accept the award, as he was protesting Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans in film.
  • 1973 --- The White House announces that, at the request of Cambodian President Lon Nol, the bombing of Cambodia will continue until communist forces cease military operations and agree to a cease-fire.
  • 1977 --- Two 747 jumbo jets crash into each other on the runway at an airport in the Canary Islands, killing 582 passengers and crew members. Both Boeing 747s were charter jets that were not supposed to be at the Los Rodeos Airport on Santa Cruz de Tenerife that day. Both had been scheduled to be at the Las Palmas Airport, where a group of militants had set off a small bomb at the airport’s flower shop earlier that day. Thus, a Pan Am charter carrying passengers from Los Angeles and New York to a Mediterranean cruise and a KLM charter with Dutch tourists were both diverted to Santa Cruz on March 27. The Los Rodeos airport is known for its sudden fog problems and was not a favorite location for pilots. At 4:40 p.m. on a typically foggy afternoon, the KLM jet was cleared to taxi to the end of the single main runway. The Pan Am jet followed behind it and was to wait in side space while the KLM jet turned around to begin takeoff. However, in the fog, the Pan Am pilot was unable to keep the KLM jet in sight and did not move into the proper position. The Dutch crew of the KLM jet, apparently unable to understand the accented English spoken by the flight controllers, began to take off down the runway before the Pan Am jet was able to move to the side space.
  • 1990 --- The U.S. government begins the operation of TV Marti, which broadcast television programs into communist Cuba. The project marked yet another failed attempt to undermine the regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
  • 1997 --- Russian workers, nearly 2 million, held a nationwide strike to protest unpaid wages.
  • 2007 --- NFL owners voted to make instant replay a permanent officiating tool.
  • Birthdays
  • Buster Posey
  • Alfred-Victor Vigny
  • Patty Smith Hill
  • Sato Eisaku
  • Sarah Vaughn
  • Carl Banks
  • Gloria Swanson
  • David Janssen
  • Judy Carne
  • Michael York
  • Maria Schneider
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Mariah Carey
  • Fergie (Stacy Ann Ferguson)