- 118th Day of 2014 247 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 54 Days
- Sunrise 6:16
- Sunset 7:57
- 13 Hours 41 Minutes
- Moon Rise 5:58am
- Moon Set 7:42pm
- New Moon @ 11:17pm
- Next Full Moon May14 @12:18pm
- High Tide 12:35pm
- Low Tide 5:58am/5:47pm
- Rainfall
- This Year 12.59
- Last Year 16.32
- Avg YTD 22.88
- Holidays
- Poem in Your Pocket Day
- Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
- Workers Memorial Day
- National Blueberry Pie Day
- National Day of Mourning-Canada
- Evacuation Day-Libya
- Hero’s Day-Barbados
- On This Day In …
- 1282 --- Villagers in Palermo led a revolt against French rule in Sicily.
- 1635 --- Virginia Governor John Harvey was accused of treason and removed from office.
- 1788 --- Maryland was one of the first of the United States of America, entering the Union as number seven. Maryland’s capital city, Annapolis, is famous as the home of the U.S. Naval Academy. Maryland, the Free State or Old Line State, calls the black-eyed Susan its state flower, and the Baltimore Orioles are the state’s baseball team, but also, the state bird/s. Using this same reasoning, you’d think that baseball would be the state sport. Silly almanac, Maryland’s state sport is jousting, state folk dance: square dancing, state boat: skipjack. Other Maryland symbols include: dog - Chesapeake Bay retriever; fish - rockfish; crustacean - Maryland blue crab; tree - white oak; insect - Baltimore checkerspot butterfly. "Maryland, My Maryland" is the official state song. Its state motto: Fatti maschii, parole femine. In English: Manly deeds, womanly words.
- 1789 --- A mutiny on the British ship Bounty took place when a rebel crew took the ship and set sail to Pitcairn Island. The mutineers left Captain W. Bligh and 18 sailors adrift.
- 1916 --- The British declared martial law throughout Ireland.
- 1925 --- Poet T.S. Eliot accepts a position as editor at Faber and Faber publishers. The job allows Eliot, who is already recognized as a major poet, to quit his job as a bank clerk at Lloyd's Bank in London. He holds the publishing position until his death, in 1965.
- 1926 --- American League baseball owners agreed to have home plate umpires carry resin onthe field for the benefit of pitchers with sweaty hands. However, it was mandated that pitchers were not to ask for the sticky powder. This scheme was scrapped when someone, possibly a disgruntled pitcher, came up with the idea of putting resin in absorbent bags to be left in the area of the pitching mound and used by the pitcher as needed.
- 1937 --- The first animated-cartoon electric sign was displayed on a building on Broadway in New York City. The sign was the creation of Douglas Leigh. It consisted of several thousand light bulbs and presented a four-minute show that featured a cavorting horse and ball-tossing cats.
- 1939 --- Small cars were offered for sale in the U.S. for the first time. Actually, these little cars would make today’s compact cars look like land yachts! Imagine a car that sold for $325, was 10-feet long, had an 80-inch wheelbase and a four-gallon gas tank. We just described “The Crosley” which became fairly popular back in 1939 -- but wouldn’t survive. Once the war effort got underway, auto manufacturing was cut back for defense needs. After World War II, people wanted luxury and size in their automobiles; considered better for family needs. The little Crosley fought an uphill battle and was replaced less than 15 years later by the Volkswagen Beetle.
- 1940 --- "Pennsylvania 6-5000," by Glenn Miller and his orchestra, was recorded.
1945 --- "Il Duce," Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country. He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered
by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.
- 1947 --- Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. The trip began in Peru and took 101 days to complete the crossing of the Pacific Ocean.
- 1961 --- Warren Spahn pitched his second no-hit game for the Milwaukee Braves. He beat the Giants 1-0. Not bad for a guy who was 41 years old at the time.
1967 --- Muhammad Ali, the former Cassius Clay, refused induction into the U.S. Army. Critics and supporters spent years discussing the boxing champ’s refusal to serve in the armed forces. In fact, Ali’s world heavyweight crown was later taken away from him as a result of his actions, which were based on religious grounds.
- 1969 --- In Santa Rosa, Charles M. Schulz's Redwood Empire Ice Arena opened.
- 1970 --- President Richard Nixon gives his formal authorization to commit U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against communist troop sanctuaries in Cambodia. Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a "higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam." Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting. Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia.
- 1987 --- On a plane that was returning to Boston, from Miami, Ozzy Osbourne bought three rounds of drinks and sang "Crazy Train" over the PA system.
- 1988 --- Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (a Boeing 737), from Hilo to Honolulu, landed safely after fatigue cracking caused the top portion of the fuselage to peel away. All on board survived except for a flight attendant who was sucked out of the plane and lost at sea. Scores of passengers and crew were injured. Yet the pilot managed to land the crippled jet on the island of Maui.
- 1990 --- The musical "A Chorus Line" closed after 6,137 performances on Broadway.
- 1992 --- The USDA unveiled its new Food Pyramid diet guideline chart.
- 1994 --- Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had given U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pled guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
- 1995 --- A gas explosion beneath a busy city street in Daegu, South Korea, kills more than 100 people on this day in 1995. Sixty children, some on their way to school, were among the victims of the blast.
- 1996 --- President Bill Clinton gave 4 1/2 hours of videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners.
- 2001 --- A Russian rocket launched from Central Asia with the first space tourist aboard. The crew consisted of California businessman Dennis Tito and two cosmonauts. The destination was the international space station.
- 2004 --- The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS' "60 Minutes II."
- Birthdays
- James Monroe-5th President
- Alice Waters
- Penelope Cruz
- Jay Leno
- Harper Lee
- Ann Margret
- Kim Gordon
- Justice Elena Kagan
- Barry Larkin
- John Daly
- Louise Homer
- Lionel Barrymore
- Carolyn Jones
- Bruno Kirby
- Jessica Alba
- Saddam Hussein
- Ferruccio Lamborghini
