- 103rd Day of 2012 / 263 Remaining
- 69 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:38
- Sunset:7:44
- 13 Hr 6 Min
- Moon Rise:1:32am
- Moon Set:11:44am
- Moon’s Phase: 57 %
- The Next Full Moon
- May 5 @ 8:36pm
- Full Flower Moon
- Full Corn Planting Moon
- Full Milk Moon
In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:3:27am/5:49pm
- Low:10:33am/11:01pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:
- Last Year:
- Normal To Date:
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- National Be Kind to Lawyers Day
- National Licorice Day
- Walk On Your Wild Side Day
- Children's Day-Florida
- Eat All Your Snacks Before the Movie Even Starts Day
- National D.E.A.R. Day/ Drop Everything and Read Day
- Support Teen Literature Day
- Cosmonaut's Day-Russia
- National Redemption Day-Liberia
- Corn Festival - Cochumatan Indians, Guatemala
- On This Day In …
- 1606 --- England adopted the Union Jack as its flag.
- 1633 --- C hief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola, appointed by Pope Urban VIII, begins the inquisition of physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. Standard practice demanded that the accused be imprisoned and secluded during the trial. This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe: In 1616, he had been forbidden from holding or defending his beliefs. In the 1633 interrogation, Galileo denied that he "held" belief in the Copernican view but continued to write about the issue and evidence as a means of "discussion" rather than belief. The Church had decided the idea that the Sun moved around the Earth was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, despite the fact that scientists had known for centuries that the Earth was not the center of the universe. This time, Galileo's technical argument didn't win the day. On June 22, 1633, the Church handed down the following order: "We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo... have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world." Along with the order came the following penalty: "We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once a week the Seven Penitential Psalms." Galileo agreed not to teach the heresy anymore and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than 300 years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and to clear his name of heresy.
- 1833 --- The American Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. The fort had been the source of tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months. After South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, the state demanded the fort be turned over but Union officials refused. A supply ship, the "Star of the West," tried to reach Fort Sumter on January 9, but the shore batteries opened fire and drove it away. For both sides, Sumter was a symbol of sovereignty. The Union could not allow it to fall to the Confederates, although throughout the Deep South other federal installations had been seized. For South Carolinians, secession meant little if the Yankees still held the stronghold. The issue hung in the air when Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, stating in his inauguration address: "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." Lincoln did not try to send reinforcements but he did send in food. This way, Lincoln could characterize the operation as a humanitarian mission, bringing, in his words, "food for hungry men." He sent word to the Confederates in Charleston of his intentions on April 6. The Confederate Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, had decided on February 15 that Sumter and other forts must be acquired "either by negotiation or force." Negotiation, it seemed, had failed. The Confederates demanded surrender of the fort, but Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, refused. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the Confederate guns opened fire. For thirty-three hours, the shore batteries lobbed 4,000 shells in the direction of the fort. Finally, the garrison inside the battered fort raised the white flag. No one on either side had been killed, although two Union soldiers died when the departing soldiers fired a gun salute, and some cartridges exploded prematurely. It was a nearly bloodless beginning to America's bloodiest war.
- 1877 --- The catcher for Harvard's baseball team, James Tyng, wore a modified fencing mask behind the plate. It is believed to be the first time a catcher's mask was used during a game.
- 1939 --- Woody Herman’s orchestra recorded the big band classic "Woodchopper’s Ball."
- 1954 --- Bill Haley and His Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock” for Decca Records. The song was recorded at the Pythian Temple, “a big, barnlike building with great echo,” in New York City. “Rock Around the Clock” was formally released a month later. Most rock historians feel the tune, featured in the 1955 film “Blackboard Jungle”, ushered in the era of rock ’n’ roll. It hit number one on June 29, 1955 and stayed there for eight weeks, remaining on the charts for a total of 24 weeks.
- 1961 --- A board the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, "Flight is proceeding normally; I am well." After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet Union and streets renamed in his honor. The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits in Friendship 7. By that time, the Soviet Union had already made another leap ahead in the "space race" with the August 1961 flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2. Titov made 17 orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space.
- 1983 --- Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first African-American mayor.
- 1984 --- Challenger astronauts made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning a healthy Solar Max satellite to space. The orbiting sun watcher had been circling the Earth for three years with all circuits dead before repairs were made.
- 1985 --- Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns, as the circus said, but goats with horns which had been surgically implanted. The circus was ordered to quit advertising the fake unicorns as anything else but goats.
- 1994 --- The Internet became commercial when two authors spammed 6,000 Usenet newsgroups with a commercial ad.
- 1998 --- A federal appeals court in San Francisco awarded the rights to the record "Louie Louie" to the Kingsmen, the group that recorded it in 1963. The court agreed that the group had missed out on decades of royalties on the top-selling record.
- 2002 --- A first edition version of Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" sold for $64,780 at Sotheby's. A signed first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" sold for $66,630. A copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," signed by J.K. Rowling sold for $16,660. A 250-piece collection of rare works by Charles Dickens sold for $512,650.
- 2011 --- Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale – the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – even as it insisted radiation leaks were declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.
- Birthdays
- Amy Ray
- Imogen Cunningham
- David Cassidy
- David Letterman
- Sally Rand
- Vince Gill
- Claire Danes
- Herbie Hancock
- John Kay
- Andy Garcia
- Scott Turow
- Lily Pons
- Henry Clay
- Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury)