- 93rd Day of 2012 / 273 Remaining
- 79 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:53
- Sunset:7:35
- 12 Hr 42 Min
- Moon Rise:3:20pm
- Moon Set:4:05am
- Moon’s Phase: 79 %
- 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:7:40am/9:07pm
- Low:2:02am/2:22pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:12.91
- Last Year:24.61
- Normal To Date:18.58
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- National Love Our Children Day
- Reconciliation Day
- Tangible Karma Day
- Pascua Florida Day-Florida
- National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
- International Children's Book Day
- UN World Autism Awareness Day
- Sizdah-bedar / National Picnic Day-Iran
- Feast of Acan-Mayan God of Wine
- On This Day In …
- 1513 --- Near present-day St. Augustine, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon comes ashore on the Florida coast, and claims the territory for the Spanish crown. Although other European navigators may have sighted the Florida peninsula before, Ponce de Leon is credited with the first recorded landing and the first detailed exploration of the Florida coast. The Spanish explorer was searching for the "Fountain of Youth," a fabled water source that was said to bring eternal youth. Ponce de Leon named the peninsula he believed to be an island "La Florida" because his discovery came during the time of the Easter feast, or Pascua Florida.
- 1739 --- Handel's "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" was performed for the first time.
- 1792 --- The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act to regulate the coins of the United States. The act authorized $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins & silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime to be minted.
- 1863 --- Shortages of food caused hundreds of angry women gathered in Richmond, Virginia to march on the governor's office and then on the government commissary to demand bread. It ended in a riot when they broke into the commissary and then other shops & buildings and carried out anything they could carry. Even the hospital reported losing over 300 pounds of beef. Arrests were made, but at the request of authorities, the newspapers downplayed the incident, and records were later destroyed when the Confederate government fled and burned much of the town behind them.
- 1896 --- Madison Square Garden in New York City hosted the season premiere of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The circus featured a Duryea horseless carriage.
- 1917 --- President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, "The world must be made safe for democracy."
- 1917 --- Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana. Born on a ranch near Missoula, Montana Territory, in 1880, Rankin was a social worker in the states of Montana and Washington before joining the women's suffrage movement in 1910. Working with various suffrage groups, she campaigned for the women's vote on a national level and in 1914 was instrumental in the passage of suffrage legislation in Montana. Two years later, she successfully ran for Congress in Montana on a progressive Republican platform calling for total women's suffrage, legislation protecting children, and U.S. neutrality in the European war. Following her election as a representative, Rankin's entrance into Congress was delayed for a month as congressmen discussed whether a woman should be admitted into the House of Representatives. Finally, on April 2, 1917, she was introduced in Congress as its first female member. The same day, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress and urged a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted for war by a wide majority, and on April 6 the vote went to the House. Citing public opinion in Montana and her own pacifist beliefs, Jeannette Rankin was one of only 50 representatives who voted against the American declaration of war. For the remainder of her first term in Congress, she sponsored legislation to aid women and children, and advocated the passage of a federal suffrage amendment.
- 1941 --- In pro football’s biggest trade, Bert Bell and Art Rooney traded the Philadelphia Eagles to Alexis Thompson for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Yep, they traded franchises.
- 1968 --- The science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey" had its world premiere in Washington, D.C.
- 1972 --- Actor Burt Reynolds appeared, um, nekkid as a jaybird in Cosmopolitan magazine. This issue of Cosmo became an instant collector’s item and an additional 700,000 copies had to be printed.
- 1974 --- Robert Opel streaked naked across the stage at the Academy Awards. Actor David Niven, who was on stage, adlibbed, "Just think, the only laugh that man will probably ever get is for stripping and showing his shortcomings."
- 1979 --- The world's first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia (now Sverdlosk). By the time it ended six weeks later, 62 people were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also suffered livestock losses from the epidemic. As people in Ekaterinburg first began reporting their illnesses, the Soviet government announced that the cause was tainted meat that the victims had eaten. Since the town was known in intelligence circles for its biological-weapons plant, much of the rest of the world was immediately skeptical of the Soviet explanation.
- 1992 --- A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake of the conviction, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, James Fox, was quoted as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and every charge stuck.” On June 23 of that year, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, dealing a significant blow to organized crime. John Joseph Gotti, Jr., was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 27, 1940. He rose through the ranks of the Gambino crime family and seized power after ordering the December 1985 murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside a Manhattan steakhouse. Behind closed doors, Gotti was a ruthless, controlling figure. Publicly, he became a tabloid celebrity, famous for his swagger and expensive suits, which earned him another nickname, the Dapper Don. During the 1980s, Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler won him acquittals three times. A jury member in one of those trials was later convicted of accepting a bribe to acquit the mob boss. In December 1990, Gotti was arrested at the Ravenite Social Club, his headquarters in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. The ensuing trial, which started in January 1992, created a media frenzy. Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, one of Gotti’s top soldiers, made a deal with the government and testified in court against his boss. Gravano admitted to committing 19 murders, 10 of them sanctioned by Gotti. In addition, prosecutors presented secret taped conversations that incriminated Gotti. After deliberating for 13 hours, the jury, which had been kept anonymous and sequestered during the trial, came back with a verdict on April 2, 1992, finding Gotti guilty on all counts. The mob boss was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was held in virtual solitary confinement. On June 10, 2002, Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a Springfield, Missouri, medical center for federal prisoners.
- 1996 --- Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post-war democratic president.
- Birthdays
- Emmylou Harris
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Charlemagne
- Emile Zola
- Giovanni Giacomo Casanova
- Leon Russell
- Max Ernst
- Don Sutton
- Ron Palillo
- Bill Romanowski
- Kurt Adler
- Buddy Ebsen
- Sir Alec Guinness
- Jack Webb
- Marvin Gaye
- Larry Coryell
- Linda Hunt
- Dana Carvey
- Walter Percy Chrysler