- 33rd Day of 2012 / 333 Remaining
- 37 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:13
- Sunset:5:35
- 10 Hr 22 Min
- Moon Rise:12:52pm
- Moon Set:2:59am
- Moon’s Phase: 74 %
- The Next Full Moon
- February 7 @ 1:56pm
- Full Snow Moon
- Full Hunger Moon
Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides
- High:5:50am/8:38pm
- Low:1:31pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.09
- Last Year:12.67
- Normal To Date13.13:
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Groundhog Day
- Legend says, if the groundhog comes out today and sees his shadow, it means six more weeks of winter. The most famous U.S. groundhog is Punxatwawney Phil of Pennsylvania. Canada’s official winter weather watcher is Wiarton Willie, an albino groundhog in Wiarton, Ontario, where the 5-day Willie Festival begins today. Hit songs include "Silly Willie" and "Don’t Touch My Willie."
- Hedgehog Day
- The ancient Roman tradition that inspired groundhog Day in the U.S. and Canada. If he Roman hedgehog came out at night and saw his shadow in the moonlight, it meant six more weeks of winter.
- Groundhog Job Shadow Day
- Brew Hog Day
- National Girls and Women In Sports Day
- California Kiwifruit Day
- National Heavenly Hash Day
- Imbolc-Wiccan
- Presentation of the Lord Day-Catholic/Orthodox
- Candlemas-Luxembourg
- Dia De La Candelaria-Mexico
- Festa de Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes Porto Allegre-Brazil
- KyndelsmÃssodagen-Sweden
- On This Day In …
- 1536 --- The Argentine city of Buenos Aires was founded
- 1653 --- New Amsterdam - now New York City - was incorporated.
- 1812 --- Staking a tenuous claim to the riches of the Far West, Russians establish Fort Ross on the coast north of San Francisco. As a growing empire with a long Pacific coastline, Russia was in many ways well positioned to play a leading role in the settlement and development of the West. The Russians had begun their expansion into the North American continent in 1741 with a massive scientific expedition to Alaska. Returning with news of abundant sea otters, the explorers inspired Russian investment in the Alaskan fur trade and some permanent settlement. By the early 19th century, the semi-governmental Russian-American Company was actively competing with British and American fur-trading interests as far south as the shores of Spanish-controlled California.
- 1847 --- The first woman of a group of pioneers commonly known as the Donner Party dies during the group's journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing 42 people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals. A total of 87 people joined up in South Pass, Wyoming, in October 1846 to make a trip through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California. Most of the pioneers were farmers who had little experience with wilderness travel. Two large families, the Donners and the Reeds, were at the heart of the traveling group, with 7 adults and 16 children. George Donner was the group's unofficial leader.
- 1848 --- The Mexican War was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty turned over portions of land to the U.S., including Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The U.S. gave Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed responsibility of all claims against Mexico by American citizens.
- 1848 --- The first Chinese emigrants arrived in San Francisco, CA.
- 1863 --- Samuel Langhorne Clemens decided to use a pseudonym for the first time on this very day. Now he is better remembered by the name, Mark Twain.
- 1876 --- Baseball’s National League was born. Eight competing baseball teams met in New York City’s Grand Central Hotel. The first president of the new league was Morgan Gardner Bulkeley, who later became a U.S. Senator. The eight original cities with teams were: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Louisville and Hartford. Two of the original teams are now in the American League (Boston and New York) while Louisville and Hartford are now minor-league baseball towns
- 1886 --- Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring. Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal--the hedgehog--as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
- 1936 --- The five charter members of the new Baseball Hall of Fame were announced at Cooperstown, New York. Of 226 ballots cast, Ty Cobb received 222 votes, Babe Ruth 215, Honus Wagner 215, Christy Matthewson 205, and Walter Johnson 189. At least 170 votes were required for induction.
- 1949 --- The first 45 RPM record was released
- 1971 --- One week after toppling the regime of Ugandan leader Milton Obote, Major General Idi Amin declares himself president of Uganda and chief of the armed forces. Amin, head of the Ugandan army and air force since 1966, seized power while Obote was out of the country.
- 1993 --- First lady Hillary Clinton banned smoking in the White House.
- 1993 --- The U.S. Internal Revenue Service agreed to accept nine million dollars from singer Willie Nelson to settle his $17-million tax debt. And the Feds said they would take proceeds from sales of Nelson’s “Who’ll Buy My Memories? - The IRS Tapes”, plus any judgment he might get in a lawsuit against his former accountant.
- 1997 --- Globo television announced that Brazilians were catching cockroaches by the thousands and selling them to a Rio de Janiero lab involved in allergy research. The lab needed 600-thousand cockroaches and was paying $120 a pound. It takes roughly 54,545 roaches to make a pound.
- 2009 --- Hillary Rodham Clinton was sworn in as U.S. secretary of state.
- Birthdays
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
- James Joyce
- Graham Nash
- Elaine Stritch
- Tom Smothers
- Christie Brinkley
- Ross Valory
- Ayn Rand
- George Halas
- Jascha Heifetz
- Stan Getz
- Farrah Fawcett