- 58th Day of 2012 / 308 Remaining
- 22 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:6:45
- Sunset:6:01
- 11 Hr 16 Min
- Moon Rise:9:25am
- Moon Set:11:53pm
- Moon’s Phase: 30 %
- The Next Full Moon
- March 8 @ 1:41 am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Sap Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Lenten Moon
As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.
- Tides
- High:1:36am/2:49pm
- Low:8:26am/8:02pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.90
- Last Year:17.61
- Normal To Date:16.82
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Read Five Pages in the Dictionary Day
- National Kahlua Day
- Insipid Day(according to Jonathan Swift)
- Independence Day-Dominican Republic
- International Polar Bear Day
- On This Day In …
- 1801 --- The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.
- 1827 --- A group of masked and costumed students dance through the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, marking the beginning of the city's famous Mardi Gras celebrations.The celebration of Carnival--or the weeks between Twelfth Night on January 6 and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian period of Lent--spread from Rome across Europe and later to the Americas. Nowhere in the United States is Carnival celebrated as grandly as in New Orleans, famous for its over-the-top parades and parties for Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday), the last day of the Carnival season. hough early French settlers brought the tradition of Mardi Gras to Louisiana at the end of the 17th century, Spanish governors of the province later banned the celebrations. After Louisiana became part of the United States in 1803, New Orleanians managed to convince the city council to lift the ban on wearing masks and partying in the streets. The city's new Mardi Gras tradition began in 1827 when the group of students, inspired by their experiences studying in Paris, donned masks and jester costumes and staged their own Fat Tuesday festivities. he parties grew more and more popular, and in 1833 a rich plantation owner named Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville raised money to fund an official Mardi Gras celebration. After rowdy revelers began to get violent during the 1850s, a secret society called the Mistick Krewe of Comus staged the first large-scale, well-organized Mardi Gras parade in 1857.
- 1883 --- Oscar Hammerstein of New York City patented the first practical cigar-rolling machine. If Oscar’s name sounds familiar, it should. Hammerstein’s son later made his mark by writing some of the best-known music in the world, teaming up frequently with a guy named Richard Rodgers.
- 1922 --- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote.
- 1922 --- Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover convened the first National Radio Conference in Washington, DC. There, industry regulations were widely discussed.
- 1951 --- The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office, was ratified.
- 1955 --- Billboard magazine reported that for the first time 45 rpm records were outselling the larger, heavier 78 rpm platters.
- 1964 --- The Italian government announces that it is accepting suggestions on how to save the renowned Leaning Tower of Pisa from collapse. The top of the 180-foot tower was hanging 17 feet south of the base, and studies showed that the tilt was increasing by a fraction every year. Experts warned that the medieval building--one of Italy's top tourist attractions--was in serious danger of toppling in an earthquake or storm. Proposals to save the Leaning Tower arrived in Pisa from all over the world, but it was not until 1999 that successful restorative work began.
- 1970 --- Simon and Garfunkel received a gold record for the single, Bridge Over Troubled Water. The duo was so impressed with their deserved achievement that they played the gold disc on their stereo. But they heard Mitch Miller’s Bridge on the River Kwai instead, and on the same Columbia label they recorded for!
- 1973 --- On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, some 200 Sioux Native Americans, led by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupy Wounded Knee, the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. The AIM members, some of them armed, took 11 residents of the historic Oglala Sioux settlement hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation. AIM was founded in 1968 by Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and other Native leaders as a militant political and civil rights organization. From November 1969 to June 1971, AIM members occupied Alcatraz Island off San Francisco, saying they had the right to it under a treaty provision granting them unused federal land. In November 1972, AIM members briefly occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., to protest programs controlling reservation development. Then, in early 1973, AIM prepared for its dramatic occupation of Wounded Knee. In addition to its historical significance, Wounded Knee was one of the poorest communities in the United States and shared with the other Pine Ridge settlements some of the country's lowest rates of life expectancy. The day after the Wounded Knee occupation began, AIM members traded gunfire with the federal marshals surrounding the settlement and fired on automobiles and low-flying planes that dared come within rifle range. Russell Means began negotiations for the release of the hostages, demanding that the U.S. Senate launch an investigation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and all Sioux reservations in South Dakota, and that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hold hearings on the scores of Indian treaties broken by the U.S. government. The Wounded Knee occupation lasted for a total of 71 days, during which time two Sioux men were shot to death by federal agents and several more were wounded. On May 8, the AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after officials promised to investigate their complaints. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested, but on September 16, 1973, the charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government's unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.
- 1996 --- Britain passed the Wild Mammals Act to give wild animals like hedgehogs, foxes and squirrels the same legal protection from cruelty as domestic animals.
- 1997 --- Divorce became legal in Ireland.
- 1998 --- Britain's House of Lords agreed to give a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first-born son. This was the end to 1,000 years of male preference.
- Birthdays
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- John Steinbeck
- Joanne Woodward
- Howard Hesseman
- Ralph Nader
- Chelsea Clinton
- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
- Irwin Shaw
- Enrico Caruso
- Marian Anderson