- 43rd Day of 2015 322 Remaining
- Spring Begins in 36 Days
- Sunrise:7:01
- Sunset:5:45
- 10 Hours 44 Minutes
- Moon Rise:1:10am
- Moon Set:11:47am
- Phase: 43%
- Full Moon February 3 @ 3:10pm
- Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult.
- Tides
- High:4:15am/6:12pm
- Low:11:26am/10:50pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.01
- Last Year:5.84
- Avg YTD:15.59
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- NAACP Day
- Lincoln’s Birthday
- National Lost Penny Day
- National Plum Pudding Day
- Oglethorpe day
- Paul Bunyan Day
- International Darwin Day
- Youth Day-Venezuela
- On This Day
- 1541 --- The city of Santiago, Chile was founded.
- 1554 --- Lady Jane Grey, who had claimed the throne of England for nine days, was beheaded after being charged with treason.
- 1793 --- Congress passes the first fugitive slave law, requiring all states, including those that forbid slavery, to forcibly return slaves who have escaped from other states to their original owners.
- 1865 --- The Rev. Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, the first African American to address the U.S. House of Representatives, delivers a sermon to a crowded House chamber. His sermon commemorated the victories of the Union army and the deliverance of the country from slavery. Garnet, a former slave himself, was a pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. President Abraham Lincoln, with the unanimous consent of his Cabinet and the two congressional chaplains, had arranged for the special Sunday service to be held on February 12, the president's 56th birthday. Garnet escaped to the North in 1824, where he became a prominent abolitionist, famous for his radical appeal to slaves to rise up against their masters. In 1881, he was appointed U.S. minister to Liberia but died only two months after his arrival in the African nation.
- 1872 --- Silas Noble and James P. Cooley of Massachusetts patented a toothpick making machine.
- 1879 --- The first artificial ice rink opened in North America. It was at Madison Square Garden in New York City, NY.
- 1909 --- The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in New York.
- 1912 --- Hsian-T'ung, the last emperor of China, is forced to abdicate following Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution. A provisional government was established in his place, ending 267 years of Manchu rule in China and 2,000 years of imperial rule. The former emperor, only six years old, was allowed to keep up his residence in Beijing's Forbidden City, and he took the name of Henry Pu Yi.
- 1924 --- "The audience packed a house that could have been sold out at twice the size," wrote New York Times critic Olin Downes on February 13, 1924, of a concert staged the previous afternoon at the Aeolian Hall in New York City. Billed as an educational event, the "Experiment In Modern Music" concert was organized by Paul Whiteman, the immensely popular leader of the Palais Royal Orchestra, to demonstrate that the relatively new form of music called jazz deserved to be regarded as a serious and sophisticated art form. The program featured didactic segments intended to make this case—segments with titles like "Contrast: Legitimate Scoring vs. Jazzing." After 24 such stem-winders, the house was growing restless. Then a young man named George Gershwin, then known only as a composer of Broadway songs, seated himself at the piano to accompany the orchestra in the performance of a brand new piece of his own composition, called Rhapsody In Blue. "It starts with an outrageous cadenza of the clarinet," wrote Downes of the now-famous two-and-a-half-octave glissando that makes Rhapsody in Blue as instantly recognizable as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. "It has subsidiary phrases, logically growing out of it...often metamorphosed by devices of rhythm and instrumentation." The music critic of the New York Times was in agreement with Whiteman's basic premise: "This is no mere dance-tune set for piano and other instruments," he judged. "This composition shows extraordinary talent, just as it also shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk."
- 1931 --- 'Dracula' starring Bela Lugosi premiers in New York City.
- 1956 --- Screamin' Jay Hawkins recorded "I Put a Spell On You."
- 1967 --- Police raided Keith Richards’ home in West Wittering, Sussex England. The police found "various substances of a suspicious nature." Richards and Mick Jagger were arrested on May 10 on drug charges.
- 1968 --- "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver was published for the first time.
- 1973 --- The release of U.S. POWs begins in Hanoi as part of the Paris peace settlement. The return of U.S. POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 of 591 U.S. prisoners at Hanoi's Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation Homecoming, the first 20 POWs arrived to a hero's welcome at Travis Air Force Base in California on February 14. Operation Homecoming was completed on March 29, 1973, when the last of 591 U.S. prisoners were released and returned to the United States.
- 1976 --- The popular food coloring, Red Dye No. 2, was banned by the FDA because studies had shown it might cause cancer. Red M&Ms disappeared for 11 years because of the ban.
- 1986 --- After spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky is released. The amnesty deal was arranged by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan at a summit meeting three months earlier. Scharansky was imprisoned for his campaign to win the right for Russian Jews, officially forbidden to practice Judaism, to emigrate from the USSR. Convicted of treason and agitation, Soviet authorities also labeled him an American spy. After his release, he immigrated to Israel, where he was given a hero's welcome. Later, as a member of Israel's parliament, he was an outspoken defender of Russian Jews.
- 1988 --- Two Soviet warships bump two U.S. navy vessels in waters claimed by the Soviet Union. The incident was an indication that even though the Cold War was slowly coming to a close, old tensions and animosities remained unabated. The incident between the ships took place in the Black Sea, off the Crimean peninsula. The American destroyer Caron and cruiser Yorktown were operating within the 12-mile territorial limit claimed by the Soviet Union. They were challenged by a Soviet frigate and destroyer and told to leave the waters. Then, according to a Navy spokesman, the Soviet ships "shouldered" the U.S. ships out of the way, bumping them slightly. There was no exchange of gunfire, and the American ships eventually departed from the area.
- 1989 --- Tiny Tim declared himself a New York City mayoral candidate. He did not win in the election.
- 1999 – The Senate acquitted President Bill Clinton on two articles of impeachment, falling short of a majority vote on either of the charges against him: perjury and obstruction of justice.
- 2000 --- Charles M. Schulz died. American cartoonist, best known for the 'Peanuts' comic strip.
- 2002 --- Kenneth Lay, former Enron CEO, exercised his constitutional rights and refused to testify to the U.S. Congress about the collapse of Enron.
- 2002 --- Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial at The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Milosevic served as his own attorney for much of the prolonged trial, which ended without a verdict when the so-called "Butcher of the Balkans" was found dead at age 64 from an apparent heart attack in his prison cell on March 11, 2006.
- Birthdays
- Abraham Lincoln
- Charles Darwin
- Anna Pavlova
- Bill Russell (11/13)
- Judy Blume
- Maud Adams
- Josh Brolin
- Robert Griffin III
- Joe Garagiola
- Franco Zeffirelli
- Michael McDonald
- Arsenio Hall
- Chynna Phillips
- Christina Ricci
- John Lewis (founder C.I.O.)
- Omar Bradley
- Joe Alioto
- Lorne Greene
- Dom DiMaggio
- Forrest Tucker
Thursday February 12, 2015
