- 63rd Day of 2013 / 302 Remaining
- 16 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:6:36
- Sunset:6:07
- 11 Hours 31 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:47am
- Moon Set:10:58am
- Moon’s Phase: Last Quarter
- The Next Full Moon
- March 27 @ 2:30am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Full Lenten Moon
- Full Crow Moon
- Full Sap 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:4:12am/6:20pm
- Low:11:03am/10:57pm
- Holidays
- Courageous Followers Day
- March Forth - Do Something Day
- National Day of Unplugging
- National Grammar Day
- Old Inauguration Day
- Admission Day-Vermont
- Hug A G.I. Day
- National Pound Cake Day
- World Day Of Prayer
- On This Day In …
- 1766 --- The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, which had caused bitter and violent opposition in the U.S. colonies.
- 1778 -- The Continental Congress voted to ratify the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. The two treaties were the first entered into by the U.S. government.
- 1789 --- The first Congress of the United States met in New York and declared that the U.S. Constitution was in effect.
- 1791 --- Vermont, the 14th state, was admitted to the union on this day. It sits way up in the northeast corner of the United States, adjacent to New York, nestled in the Green Mountains. No wonder it’s known as the Green Mountain State! Coincidentally, that’s what the French phrase ‘vert mont’ means. Montpelier is Vermont’s capital city. Hail Vermont is the state song which goes right along with the state motto: Vermont, Freedom and Unity. The hermit thrush stands alone as the state bird; and the red clover is the colorful state flower which attracts the state insect, the honeybee. The Morgan horse is the state animal, and the state tree ... you guessed it ... is the one that makes all that famous Vermont maple syrup, the sugar maple tree. Every now and then some of these state symbols make sense.
- 1829 --- Andrew Jackson upholds an inaugural tradition begun by Thomas Jefferson and hosts an open house at the White House. After Jackson's swearing-in ceremony and address to Congress, the new president returned to the White House to meet and greet a flock of politicians, celebrities and citizens. Very shortly, the crowd swelled to more than 20,000, turning the usually dignified White House into a boisterous mob scene. Some guests stood on furniture in muddy shoes while others rummaged through rooms looking for the president--breaking dishes, crystal and grinding food into the carpet along the way. (White House staff reported the carpets smelled of cheese for months after the party.) In an attempt to draw partygoers out of the building, servants set up washtubs full of juice and whiskey on the White House lawn. The White House open-house tradition continued until several assassination attempts heightened security concerns. The trend ended in 1885 when Grover Cleveland opted instead to host a parade, which he viewed in safety from a grandstand set up in front of the White House.
- 1877 --- The Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" debuted.
- 1877 --- Emile Berliner, the man behind so many inventions, came up with a thing called the microphone. Good thing, too, because the Bell System, run by Alexander Graham Bell, was in desperate need of something to save it from financial ruin -- and to help the progress of the telephone. So, the Bell Labs came up with a compact way to put Mr. Berliner’s microphone on a wooden box, with a crank, an earpiece, a cradle hook for the earpiece and some wires, and called it the telephone.
- 1974 --- The 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress. The Amendment limited the jurisdiction of the federal courts to automatically hear cases brought against a state by the citizens of another state. Later interpretations expanded this to include citizens of the state being sued, as well.
- 1837 --- The Illinois state legislature granted a city charter to Chicago.
- 1902 --- The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.
- 1917 --- Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
- 1933 --- At the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. In his famous inaugural address, delivered outside the east wing of the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt outlined his "New Deal"--an expansion of the federal government as an instrument of employment opportunity and welfare--and told Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Although it was a rainy day in Washington, and gusts of rain blew over Roosevelt as he spoke, he delivered a speech that radiated optimism and competence, and a broad majority of Americans united behind their new president and his radical economic proposals to lead the nation out of the Great Depression.
- 1950 --- Walt Disney’s “Cinderella” was released. It was the first full-length, animated, feature film in eight years from the man who brought us Mickey Mouse.
- 1952 --- Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel “The Old Man and the Sea” He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his bestselling works. The novella, which was first published in Life magazine, was an allegory referring to the writer's own struggles to preserve his art in the face of fame and attention. Hemingway had become a cult figure whose four marriages and adventurous exploits in big-game hunting and fishing were widely covered in the press. But despite his fame, he had not produced a major literary work in a decade before he wrote “The Old Man and the Sea”. The book would be his last significant work of fiction before his suicide in 1961.
- 1966 --- In England, no one took much notice of the John Lennon quotation that later set off a media frenzy in America. Chalk it up to a fundamental difference in religious outlook between Britain and America, or to a fundamental difference in sense of humor. Whatever the reason, it was only after the American press got hold of his words some five months later that the John Lennon comment that first appeared in the London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966, erupted into the "Bigger than Jesus" scandal that brought a semi-official end to the giddy phenomenon known as Beatlemania. In their original context, Lennon's remarks were clearly meant not as a boast, but as a sardonic commentary on the waning importance of religion. "Christianity will go," Lennon said. "It will vanish and shrink....We're more popular than Jesus now." It was only one comment in an interview that covered such wide-ranging topics as gorilla suits and car phones, but it was this comment alone that made its way into the American teenybopper magazine DATEbook several months later, boiled down to the straightforward line, "We're more popular than Jesus." From there, a handful of Bible Belt disc jockeys took over, declaring Lennon's remarks blasphemous and vowing an "eternal" ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future. "Our fantastic Beatle boycott is still in effect," announced two DJs on WACI Birmingham in August 1966: "Don't forget to take your Beatle records and your Beatle paraphernalia to any one of our 14 pickup points in Birmingham, Alabam, and turn them in this week." The plan in Birmingham, as in various other cities around the South, was to burn the Beatles records turned in by angry listeners. Though it is unclear how many such events really took place, the story of the burnings definitely reached the Beatles. "When they started burning our records...that was a real shock," said John Lennon years later. "I couldn't go away knowing I'd created another little piece of hate in the world. So I apologized." The apology Lennon offered was not for the message he was trying to convey, but for conveying it in a way that confused its meaning. At a press conference in Chicago, John explained: "I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I'm sorry I said it, really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing.”
- 1987 --- President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging his overtures to Iran had "deteriorated" into an arms-for-hostages deal.
- 1997 --- U.S. President Clinton barred federal spending on human cloning.
- 1998 --- The U.S. Supreme Court said that federal law banned on-the-job sexual harassment even when both parties are the same sex.
- Birthdays
- Antonio Vivaldi
- Knute Rockne
- Gov. Rick Perry
- Chaz Bono
- Bobby Womack
- Emilio Estefan
- Catherine O’Hara
- Landon Donovan
- Henry the Navigator
- Miriam Makeba
- John Garfield
- Margaret Osborne DuPont
- Barbara McNair
- Paula Prentiss