- 37th Day of 2012 / 329 Remaining
- 43 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:09
- Sunset:5:39
- 10 Hr 30 Min
- Moon Rise:4:48pm
- Moon Set:6:05am
- Moon’s Phase: 99 %
- The Next Full Moon
- February 7 @ 1:56pm
- Full Snow Moon
- Full Hunger 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:9:05am/10:48pm
- Low:3:15am/4:01pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.09
- Last Year:12.67
- Normal To Date13.77:
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- National Frozen Yogurt Day
- Federal No Smoking Day
- Waitangi Day-New Zealand
- Bob Marley Day-Jamaica
- Sami National Day-Finland, Norway & Sweden
- On This Day In …
- 1778 --- The United States gained official recognition from France as the two nations signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris
- 1788 --- Although the people of Massachusetts had already drafted their state constitution some eight years earlier, it wasn’t until this day that the state became the sixth to enter the United States of America. Those who live in the Bay State must have a strong constitution; theirs is the oldest state constitution to still be in effect. Massachusetts is derived from two Indian words meaning ‘great mountain place’. This great mountain place in New England was one of the most important of the 13 colonies in the new America, which gave it its other nickname, Old Colony State. Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, has been the center of activity in the state since those old colony days. Massachusetts state symbols include the chicadee, state bird; American elm, state tree; ladybug, state insect; All Hail to Massachusetts, state song; and mayflower, the state flower. Which arrived first, the ship or the flower? Unique to Massachusetts is a state beverage: cranberry juice and a state muffin ... corny but true, the corn muffin is official. It’s difficult to be serious after that, but the Massachusetts state motto is: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace; but peace only under liberty).
- 1843 --- "The Virginia Minstrels" opened at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City. It was the first minstrel show in America.
- 1918 --- Great Britain granted women 30 or older the right to vote.
- 1933 --- The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. It moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January
- 1937 --- John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, the story of the bond between two migrant workers, is published. He adapted the book into a three-act play, which was produced the same year. The story brought national attention to Steinbeck's work, which had started to catch on in 1935 with the publication of his first successful novel, Tortilla Flat. Steinbeck was born and raised in the Salinas Valley, where his father was a county official and his mother a former schoolteacher. A good student and president of his senior class in high school, Steinbeck attended Stanford intermittently in the early 1920s. In 1925, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a manual laborer and a journalist while writing stories and novels. His first two novels were not successful.
- 1943 --- Frank Sinatra made his debut as vocalist on radio’s Your Hit Parade this night. Frankie had left the Tommy Dorsey Band just four months prior to beginning the radio program. He was described as, “...the biggest name in the business.”
- 1952 --- King George VI of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dies in his sleep at the royal estate at Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of the king's two daughters and next in line to succeed him, was in Kenya at the time of her father's death; she was crowned Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, at age 27.
- 1971 --- NASA Astronaut Alan B. Shepard took a six-iron that he had stashed away inside his spacecraft and swung at three golf balls on the surface of the moon. Shepard whiffed the first swing, so, he got a ‘Mulligan’ on that one. The others were good, crisp shots that went, oh, a few hundred yards in the vacuum of space. Due to the bulkiness of his moonwalk suit, however, he didn’t quite get enough of a swing to launch the golf balls into orbit.
- 1981 --- Former Beatles, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison teamed up once again to record a musical tribute to John Lennon. The result of that session became All Those Years Ago. The song went to #2 on the pop music charts for three weeks. It was recorded on Harrison’s own Dark Horse label.
- 1985 --- Perrier introduced Perrier with 'a twist of lemon' - its first new product in 125 years.
- 1987 --- No smoking became the rule for 6,800 federal buildings across the U.S.
- 1990 --- The U.S. issued patented #4,898,345 to Dan Clayton of Rancho Cucamonga, California, for the Skyboard, a combination surfboard and parachute that allows the flyer to surf air currents in the sky for an extended period, then glide to a safe landing.
- 1993 --- Arthur Ashe, the only African-American man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Opens, dies of complications from AIDS, at age 49 in New York City. Ashe's body later laid in state at the governor's mansion in Richmond, Virginia, where thousands of people lined up to pay their respects to the ground-breaking athlete and social activist.
- 1998 --- President Clinton signed a bill changing the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
- 2002 --- A federal judge ordered John Walker Lindh to be held without bail pending trial. Lindh was known as the "American Taliban."
- Birthdays
- Ronald Reagan (40th President)
- Babe Ruth
- Bob Marley
- Aaron Burr
- Natalie Cole
- Axl Rose
- Zsa Zsa Gabor,
- Rip Torn
- Mike Farrell
- Tom Brokaw
- Kathy Najimy
- Fabian
- Jeb Stuart
- Eva Braun
- Francois Truffaut
- Patrick Macnee