- 72nd Day of 2012 / 294 Remaining
- 8 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:24
- Sunset:7:15
- 11 Hr 51 Min
- Moon Rise:12:46am (tue)
- Moon Set:9:58am
- Moon’s Phase: 75 %
- 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:2:03am/3:24pm
- Low:8:45am/8:35pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:7.40
- Last Year:18.37
- Normal To Date18.49:
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Genealogy Day
- Girl Scouts Day
- National Baked Scallops Day
- National Napping Day
- Fiesta de las Fallas-Spain
- Independence Day-Mauritius
- Moshoeshoe's Day-Lesotho
- National Day-Gabon
- International Fanny Pack Day
- Arbor Day-China
- Youth Day-Zambia
- Brain Awareness Week
- On This Day In …
- 1789 --- The U.S. Post Office was established.
- 1889 --- Almon B. Strowger stepped up to the counter at the U.S. Patent Office to file for his invention, the automatic telephone system. The system was installed in Laporte, IN in 1892. It worked, but not well enough. Mr. Bell’s invention was deemed much more reliable. Good thing or we would have been complaining about Ma Stowger for years and years.
- 1894 --- Coca Cola was first bottled by Joseph A. Biedenham of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Before that it was only mixed to order at the soda fountain.
- 1904 --- After 30 years of drilling, the tunnel under the Hudson River was completed. The link was between Jersey City, NJ, and New York, NY.
- 1912 --- Gather ’round and munch a bunch of delicious Girl Scouts cookies, as we tell you the story of how the Girl Scouts of the USA was founded. Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia is the person credited with starting this group for young girls, figuring, of course, that if there were Boy Scouts, why not Girl Scouts, too? However, at first, the girls weren’t called Girl Scouts at all. They were called Girl Guides until the name was officially changed a short time after the group’s founding. Volunteer, help a friend, set an example and complete a project, then pass those chocolate mint and peanut butter-filled cookies, please, as we ‘guide’ you along the path when Those Were the Days.
- 1923 --- Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated phonofilm. It was his technique for putting sound on motion picture film.
- 1930 --- In India, political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi begins a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India. Britain's Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in the Indian diet. Citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from the British, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also exerted a heavy salt tax. Although India's poor suffered most under the tax, Indians required salt. Defying the Salt Acts, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently. He declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.
- 1933 --- Eight days after he was inaugurated, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first national radio address or "fireside chat," broadcast directly from the White House. Roosevelt began that first address simply: "I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking." He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation's banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investors worried about possible bank failures. The banks would be reopening the next day, Roosevelt said, and he thanked the public for their "fortitude and good temper" during the "banking holiday." At the time, the U.S. was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with between 25 and 33 percent of the work force unemployed. The nation was worried, and Roosevelt's address was designed to ease fears and to inspire confidence in his leadership. Roosevelt went on to deliver 30 more of these broadcasts between March 1933 and June 1944. They reached an astonishing number of American households, 90 percent of which owned a radio at the time. Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase "fireside chat" to describe Roosevelt's radio addresses, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room, speaking earnestly to the American people about his hopes and dreams for the nation. In fact, Roosevelt took great care to make sure each address was accessible and understandable to ordinary Americans, regardless of their level of education. He used simple vocabulary and relied on folksy anecdotes or analogies to explain the often complex issues facing the country.
- 1942 --- After first asking him to take a pay cut, the New York Yankees agreed to give Joe DiMaggio a $6,250 raise. In the previous season, Joltin’ Joe had hit in a record 56 consecutive games, batted .357, and driven in 125 runs, helping the Yankees win the pennant by 17 games.
- 1947 --- President Truman established what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
- 1948 --- The Hells Angels motorcycle group was created
- 1951 --- “Mr. Wiiiiillllssssson!” The comic strip, Dennis the Menace, appeared for the first time in 16 newspapers across the U.S. The strip became an international favorite in thousands of newspapers and spawned a CBS-TV program that starred Jay North as Dennis. The series lasted for several seasons and is still seen in syndicated re-runs. A somewhat popular movie starring Walter Matthau as Mr. Wilson and Christopher Lloyd as the bad guy was released in 1993.
- 1955 --- One of the great groups of jazz appeared for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The Dave Brubeck Quartet presented a magnificent concert for jazz fans. Joining with Brubeck, in what would become one of the most popular concert draws on college campuses, were names that would become legends in their own right, including Paul Desmond on alto sax, Joe Morello on drums and Eugene Wright on bass.
- 1969 --- The London drug squad appears at house of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Boyd immediately used the direct hotline to Beatles headquarters and George returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers "You needn't have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything." Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the London street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him. Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972.
- 1987 --- "Les Miserables" opened on Broadway.
- 1993 --- Janet Reno was sworn in as the nation's first female attorney general.
- 2002 --- In Leuven, Belgium, a cyclist beat a Ferrari in a 12-mile race through rush-hour traffic. Bert Meulemans, a local councilor, finished 15 minutes in front of the car. He drove along cycle paths while his motoring colleague struggled through congested streets. The councilor wanted to encourage cycling.
- 2003 --- The Chinese government ordered the Rolling Stones to eliminate four songs from their upcoming performances in Shanghai and Beijing. The banned songs were "Brown Sugar," "Honky Tonk Women," "Beast of Burden," and "Let's Spend the Night Together."
- 2009 --- Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history.
- Birthdays
- Jack Kerouac
- Adolph Simon Ochs
- Mitt Romney
- Al Jarreau
- Barbara Feldon
- Liza Minnelli
- James Taylor
- Marlon Jackson
- Darryl Strawberry
- Clement Studebaker
- Vaslav Nijinsky
- Elaine de Kooning
- Wally Schirra
- Gordon MacRae