- 117th Day of 2015 248 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 55 Days
- Sunrise:6:17am
- Sunset:7:56
- 13 Hours 39 Minutes
- Moon Rise:2:16pm
- Moon Set:2:56am
- Phase:67%
- Full Moon May 3 @ 8:44pm
- Full Flower Moon In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:6:34am/8:11pm
- Low:1:16am/1:15pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:18.44
- Last Year:12.62
- Avg YTD:22.84
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Matanzas Mule Day
- Morse Code Day
- National Prime Rib Day
- National Tell A Story Day
- Babe Ruth Day
- Freedom Day-South Africa
- Horse Day-Turkmenistan
- Independence Day-Sierra Leone
- Independence Day-Togo
- Day Of resistance-Slovenia
- On This Day
- 1521 --- After traveling three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines. Earlier in the month, his ships had dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu, and Magellan met with the local chief, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In the subsequent fighting, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.
- 1667 --- Poet John Milton sells the copyright to his masterpiece “Paradise Lost” (1667) for a mere 10 pounds. Blind, impoverished, and jobless, he began to dictate “Paradise Lost” to his family. When the poem was ready for publication, he sold it for 10 pounds. Once printed, the poem was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of the English language. In 1671, he wrote Paradise Regained, followed by Samson Agonistes. He died in 1674.
- 1773 --- The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea, after the act took effect.
- 1865 --- Days after the end of the Civil War, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurs when the steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,100 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing all but 400 of those aboard. The Mississippi, with its dikes and levees damaged by four years of war, stood at flood stage, and most of those who died were drowned in the surging river. All but 100 of those killed were Union veterans, and most were Yankee survivors of Andersonville and other brutal Confederate prisoner of war camps. Many mourned the loss of these men, who survived the deplorable conditions at the Confederate camps only to die during their long-awaited trip home. The Sultana, overloaded with passengers, exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee, in the early morning hours.
- 1871 --- The American Museum of Natural History in New York City was opened to the public.
- 1947 --- "Babe Ruth Day" at Yankee Stadium was held to honor the ailing baseball star.
- 1941 --- The German army enters the Greek capital, signaling the end of Greek resistance. All mainland Greece and all the Greek Aegean islands except Crete are under German occupation by May 11.
- 1953 --- The U.S. offered $50,000 and political asylum to any Communist North Korean pilot that delivered a MIG jet.
- 1953 --- Five people were killed and 60 injured when Mt. Aso erupted on the island of Kyushu.
- 1956 --- Rocky Marciano retires from boxing at age 31, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record–49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts.
- 1963 --- Margaret Annemarie Battavio’s very first single, “I Will Follow Him,” reached #1 on the U.S. pop charts. With her 15th birthday only six weeks behind her, and three more years of high school ahead of her, the singer better known as Little Peggy March became the youngest female performer ever to top the Billboard Hot 100.
- 1964 --- John Lennon's "In His Own Write", a collection of funny poems and drawings, was published in the U.S.
- 1965 --- R. C. Duncan was granted a patent for 'Pampers' disposable diapers.
- 1968 --- Vice President Hubert Humphrey announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an interview, he said he supported the current U.S. policy of sending troops “where required by our own national security.”
- 1978 --- Afghanistan President Sardar Mohammed Daoud is overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later.
- 1982 --- John W. Hinckley Jr. went on trial in Washington, D.C., in the shooting of President Ronald Reagan. (He was acquitted by reason of insanity.)
- 1983 --- Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros broke a 55-year-old major league baseball record when he struck out his 3,509th batter of his career.
- 1987 --- The Justice Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, saying he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
- 1994 --- More than 22 million South Africans turn out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government that included his African National Congress Party, former President F.W. de Klerk’s National Party, and Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party. In May, Mandela was inaugurated as president, becoming South Africa’s first black head of state.
- 2009 --- The struggling American auto giant General Motors (GM) says it plans to discontinue production of its more than 80-year-old Pontiac brand. Pontiac’s origins date back to the Oakland Motor Car, which was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, by Edward Murphy, a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer.
- 2011 --- More than 120 tornadoes raked the South and Midwest, resulting in 316 deaths across parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.
- Birthdays
- Cuba Gooding Jr
- Rogers Hornsby
- Ulysses S Grant
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Samuel Morse
- Walter Lantz
- Enos Slaughter
- Coretta Scott King
- Casey Kasem
- Kate Pierson
- Ace Frehley
- Sheena Easton
Monday April 27, 2015
