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Monday March 17, 2014

  • 76th Day of 2014 / 289 Remaining
  • 3 Days Until The First Day of Spring

  • Sunrise:7:16
  • Sunset:7:19
  • 12 Hours 3 Minutes of Daylight

  • Moon Rise:8:39pm
  • Moon Set:7:38am
  • Moon’s Phase: 99 %

  • The Next Full Moon
  • April 15 @ 12:45 am
  • Full Pink Moon
  • Full Sprouting Moon
  • Full Egg Moon
  • Full Grass Moon
  • 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 Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.

  • Tides
  • High:12:10pm
  • Low:6:02am/6:07pm

  • Rainfall
  • This Year:8.68
  • Last Year:14.59
  • Average Year to Date:20.20

  • Holidays
  • Absolutely Incredible Kid Day
  • Camp Fire USA/Founder's Day
  • Evacuation Day-Boston
  • St. Patrick's Day
  • National Green Beer Day

  • Ta'Anit Ester-Fast of Esther - Judaism
     
  • On This Day In …
  • 0461 --- Bishop Patrick, St. Patrick, died in Saul. In 432 A.D., Bishop Patrick left his home in England and returned to the country where he had once been enslaved. His purpose was to introduce Christianity to the Irish people. Many legends were told about Patrick, including the most famous, that he had charmed all the snakes into the sea, ridding Ireland of them. He was so loved that
    he was made the patron saint of all of Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in Ireland on March 17th, since the year 461. Today, Saint Patrick’s Day is still a legal, national holiday in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Irish people have traveled to all parts of the world bringing their holiday with them. In 1756 St. Patrick's Day was
    celebrated in New York City for the first time. The event took place at the Crown and Thistle Tavern. In 1762, those who came to New York formed the first of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parades; an annual event ever since. This year, 125,000 marchers walk the two-mile green stripe down NYC’s famed Fifth Avenue, with another 2,000,000 watching them, the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade anywhere.
  • 1776 --- British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following General George Washington's successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south.  During the evening of March 4, American Brigadier General John Thomas, under orders from Washington, secretly led a force of 800 soldiers and 1,200 workers to Dorchester Heights and began fortifying the area. To cover the sound of the construction, American cannons, besieging Boston from another location, began a noisy bombardment of the outskirts of the city. By the morning, more than a dozen cannons from Fort Ticonderoga had been brought within the Dorchester Heights fortifications. British General
    Sir William Howe hoped to use the British ships in Boston Harbor to destroy the American position, but a storm set in, giving the Americans ample time to complete the fortifications and set up their artillery. Realizing their position was now indefensible, 11,000 British troops and some 1,000 Loyalists departed Boston by ship on March 17, sailing to the safety of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  • 1864 --- Work began on a 2 mile long, 5 foot diameter, water supply tunnel for Chicago. It was completed in 1867.

  • 1884 --- In Otay, California, John Joseph Montgomery made the first manned, controlled, heavier-than-air glider flight in the United States.

  • 1897 --- Motion pictures of a championship prize fight were taken for the first time as ‘Sunny’ Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out ‘Gentleman’
    Jim Corbett for the world heavyweight title. Remember, too, that this was bareknuckle fighting.

  • 1901 --- Paintings by the late Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh are shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris. The 71 paintings,
    which captured their subjects in bold brushstrokes and expressive colors, caused a sensation across the art world. Eleven years before, while living in Auvers-sur-Oise outside Paris, van Gogh had committed suicide without any notion that his work was destined to
    win acclaim beyond his wildest dreams. In his lifetime, he had sold only one painting. One of his paintings--the Yasuda Sunflowers--sold for just under $40 million at a Christie's auction in 1987.

  • 1905 --- Franklin D. Roosevelt married his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in New York City. President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR's fifth cousin, gave his niece away.
  • 1914 --- Russia increased the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.

  • 1917 --- America’s first bowling tournament for women began in St. Louis, MO. Almost 100 bowlers participated in the event.

  • 1917 --- In the midst of Allied plans for a major spring offensive on the Western Front, the French government suffers a series of crises in its leadership, including the forced resignation, of Prime Minister Aristide Briand.

  • 1941 --- The National Gallery of Art was officially opened by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

  • 1956 --- Carl Perkins appeared on ABC-TV's "Ozark Jubilee" and performed "Blue Suede Shoes." It was his first television appearance. Elvis Presley performed the song the same night on CBS-TV's "Stage Show."

  • 1958 --- Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had created a new radioactive element. They named it "californium". It is also known as element 98.

  • 1958 --- Written on the spot and recorded as an afterthought near the end of a session at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, the song—"Tequila" —hit #1 on the Billboard pop chart. It was the
    Champs' one, and only, pop hit. Half a century later, this accidental, one-word classic still sounds as fresh and irresistible as it did to the long-forgotten Cleveland disk jockey who rescued it from the cutout bin of history.

  • 1959 --- The Dalai Lama (Lhama Dhondrub, Tenzin Gyatso) fled Tibet and went to India.
  • 1969 --- Golda Meir, a Milwaukee high school teacher, was sworn in as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel.
  • 1973 --- The first American prisoners of war (POWs) were released from the "Hanoi Hilton" in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
  • 1990 --- The former Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania steadfastly rejects a demand from the Soviet Union that it renounce its declaration of independence. The situation in Lithuania quickly became a sore spot in U.S.-Soviet relations.

  • 1995 --- Gerry Adams became the first leader of Sinn Fein to be received at the White House.
  • 1999 --- A panel of medical experts concluded that marijuana had medical benefits for people suffering from cancer and AIDS.

  • 2000 --- In Norway, Jens Stotenberg and the Labour Party took office as Prime Minister. The coalition government of
    Kjell Magne Bondevik resigned on March 9 as a result of an environmental dispute.

  • 2000 --- In Kanungu, Uganda, a fire at a church linked to the cult known as the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments killed more than 530. On March 31, officials set the
    number of deaths linked to the cult at more than 900 after authorities subsequently found mass graves at various sites linked to the cult.

  • Birthdays
  • Nat “King” Cole
  • Myrlie Evans-Williams
  • Anders Dahl
  • Gottlieb Daimler
  • John Sebastian
  • Bobby Jones
  • Rob Lowe
  • Paul Kantner
  • Kurt Russell
  • Vicki Lewis
  • Billy Corgan
  • Mia Hamm
  • Marisa Coughlin
  • Rudolph Nureyev
  • Gary Sinise
  • Bill Mueller