- 78th Day of 2016 288 Remaining
- Spring Begins in 2 Days
- Sunrise: 7:13
- Sunset: 7:20
- 12 Hours 7 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 3:11pm
- Moon Set: 4:27am
- Phase: 79% 10 Days
- Next Full Moon January 23 @ 5:46pm
- Full Wolf Moon Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides
- High: 7:49am/9:33pm
- Low: 2:03am/2:46pm
- Holidays
- National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day
- National Sloppy Joe Day
- Awkward Moments Day
- Forgive Mom & Dad Day
- Goddess OF Fertility Dasy
- National Biodiesel Day
- National Preschool Teachers Appreciation Day
- Supreme Sacrifice Day
- World Sleep Day
- Men’s Day-Mongolia
- National Flag & Anthem Day-Aruba
- On This Day
- 1850 --- Henry Wells & William Fargo founded American Express.
- 1881 --- Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Gardens.
- 1902 --- Enrico Caruso recorded 10 arias for the Gramophone Company. He was the first well-known performer to make a record.
- 1911 --- Theodore Roosevelt opened the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. It was the largest dam in the U.S. at the time.
- 1925 --- The worst tornado in U.S. history passes through eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana, killing 695 people, injuring some 13,000 people, and causing $17 million in property damage. Known as the “Tri-State Tornado,” the deadly twister began its northeast track in Ellington, Missouri, but southern Illinois was the hardest hit. More than 500 of the total 695 people who perished were killed in southern Illinois, including 234 in Murphrysboro and 127 in West Frankfort.
- 1931 --- Schick Inc. displayed the first electric shaver.
- 1937 --- Nearly 300 students in Texas are killed by an explosion of natural gas at their school. The 694 students and 40 teachers in attendance at the Consolidated School were looking forward to the final bell, which was to ring in 10 minutes. Instead, a huge and powerful explosion, which literally blew the roof off of the building, leveled the school. The blast was felt by people 40 miles away and killed most victims instantly.
- 1940 --- Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
- 1942 --- The War Relocation Authority is created to “Take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war.” Anger toward and fear of Japanese Americans began in Hawaii shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; everyone of Japanese ancestry, old and young, prosperous and poor, was suspected of espionage. This suspicion quickly broke out on the mainland; as early as February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that German, Italian, and Japanese nationals—as well as Japanese Americans—be barred from certain areas deemed sensitive militarily. California, which had a significant number of Japanese and Japanese Americans, saw a particularly virulent form of anti-Japanese sentiment, with the state’s attorney general, Earl Warren (who would go on to be the chief justice of the United States), claiming that a lack of evidence of sabotage among the Japanese population proved nothing, as they were merely biding their time. While roughly 2,000 people of German and Italian ancestry were interned during this period, Americans of Japanese ancestry suffered most egregiously. The War Relocation Authority, established on March 18, 1942, was aimed at them specifically: 120,000 men, women, and children were rounded up on the West Coast. Three categories of internees were created: Nisei (native U.S. citizens of Japanese immigrant parents), Issei (Japanese immigrants), and Kibei (native U.S. citizens educated largely in Japan). The internees were transported to one of 10 relocation centers in California, Utah, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
- 1950 --- In a surprise raid on the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC), military forces of the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan invade the mainland and capture the town of Sungmen. Because the United States supported the attack, it resulted in even deeper tensions and animosities between the U.S. and the PRC.
- 1965 --- Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to spacewalk when he left the Voskhod II space capsule while in orbit around the Earth. He was outside the spacecraft for about 20 minutes.
- 1969 --- U.S. B-52 bombers are diverted from their targets in South Vietnam to attack suspected communist base camps and supply areas in Cambodia for the first time in the war. President Nixon approved the mission–formally designated Operation Breakfast–at a meeting of the National Security Council on March 15. This mission and subsequent B-52 strikes inside Cambodia became known as the “Menu” bombings. A total of 3,630 flights over Cambodia dropped 110,000 tons of bombs during a 14-month period through April 1970. This bombing of Cambodia and all follow up “Menu” operations were kept secret from the American public and the U.S. Congress because Cambodia was ostensibly neutral. To keep the secret, an intricate reporting system was established at the Pentagon to prevent disclosure of the bombing.
- 1970 --- Returning to Cambodia after visits to Moscow and Peking, Prince Norodom Sihanouk is ousted as Cambodian chief of state in a bloodless coup by pro-western Lt. Gen. Lon Nol, premier and defense minister, and First Deputy Premier Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, who proclaim the establishment of the Khmer Republic. Sihanouk had tried to maintain Cambodian neutrality, but the communist Khmer Rouge, supported by their North Vietnamese allies, had waged a very effective war against Cambodian government forces. After ousting Sihanouk and taking control of the government, Lon Nol immediately set about to defeat the communists. Between 1970 and 1975, he and his army, the Forces Armees Nationale Khmer (FANK), with U.S. support and military aid, would battle the Khmer Rouge communists for control of Cambodia.
- 1992 --- Leona Helmsley was sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion.
- 1998 --- Michael Jackson and his son went shopping at a toy store in Munich, Germany. Jackson was dressed as an Arab woman.
- 2002 --- 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil dies, two days after being struck in the head by a puck at a Columbus Blue Jackets ice hockey game. Cecil’s death forced the National Hockey League to take new precautions regarding fan safety. Cecil was struck by a puck that had ricocheted into the stands off the stick of a defenseman and then off of another spectator.
- Birthdays
- Bonnie Blair
- Queen Latifah
- Ernest Gallo
- Grover Cleveland (24th President)
- Neville Chamberlain
- Vanessa Williams
- Rudolf Diesel
- Edward Everett Horton
- Peter Graves
- George Plimpton
- John Updike
- Frederick De Klerk
- Charlie Pride
- Irene Cara
Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day-KALW Almanac-3/18/2016
