- 54th Day of 2012 / 312 Remaining
- 26 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:6:50
- Sunset:5:57
- 11 Hr 7 Min
- Moon Rise:7:23am
- Moon Set:8:05pm
- Moon’s Phase: 4 %
- The Next Full Moon
- March 8 @ 1:41 am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Sap Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Lenten 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:11:30am
- Low:5:30am/5:39pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.86
- Last Year:16.70
- Normal To Date:16.12
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Curling Is Cool Day
- Inconvenience Yourself Day
- Iwo Jima Day
- National Banana Bread Day
- National Chili Day
- National Introduce a Girl toEngineering Day
- Inconvenience Yourself Day
- International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day
- Army and Navy Day-Russia
- National Day-Brunei Darussalam
- Republic Day-Guyana
- On This Day In …
- 1792 --- The Humane Society of Massachusetts was incorporated.
- 1821 --- The Philadelphia College of Apothecaries was established. It was the first pharmacy college in the U.S. It became incorporated the following year as the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the first college of pharmacy in the Western Hemisphere. Remember those little glass bottles called apothecary jars -- the ones we now use as canisters and for decoration?
- 1822 --- Boston was incorporated as a city.
- 1839 --- In Boston, MA, William F. Harnden organized the first express service between Boston and New York City. It was the first express service in the U.S.
- 1861 --- President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington, D.C., amid secrecy and tight security. With seven states having already seceded from the Union since Lincoln's election, the threat of civil war hung in the air. Allen Pinkerton, head of a private detective agency, had uncovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln when he passed through Baltimore on his way to the capital. Lincoln and his advisors disagreed about how to respond to the threat. Some, including Pinkerton, wanted Lincoln to slip secretly into Washington, which would mean skipping an address to the Pennsylvania legislature in Harrisburg. Lincoln did not want to appear cowardly, but felt the threats were serious. Lincoln agreed to the covert arrival. With Pinkerton and Ward Hill Lamon, his former law partner, Lincoln slipped out of the hotel in Harrisburg on the evening of February 22. He wore a soft felt hat instead of his customary stovepipe hat, and draped an overcoat over his shoulders and hunched slightly to disguise his height. The group boarded a sleeper car and arrived in Baltimore in the middle of the night. They slipped undetected from the Calvert Street station to Camden station across town. There, they boarded another train and arrived without incident in Washington at 6 a.m. On the platform, the party was surprised when a voice boomed, "Abe, you can't play that on me." It was Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, a friend of Lincoln's from Illinois. Washburne escorted Lincoln to the Willard Hotel.
- 1886 --- Charles M. Hall completed his invention of aluminum.
- 1898 --- In France, Emile Zola was imprisoned for his letter, "J'accuse," which accused the government of anti-Semitism and wrongly jailing Alfred Dreyfus.
- 1915 --- Nevada passed a divorce law that made divorce possible after only six months of residency. It was the first easy divorce law in the United States.
- 1927 --- U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill into law that created the Federal Radio Commission, “to bring order out of this terrible chaos.” The president was speaking, of course, of the nation’s then unregulated radio stations. The commission assigned frequencies, hours of operation and power allocations for radio broadcasters across the U.S. The name was changed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on July 1, 1934.
- 1939 --- At the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Walt Disney received eight Academy Awards for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: one regular-size Oscar and seven miniature ones
- 1940 --- Folk singer Woody Guthrie writes one of his best-known songs, "This Land is Your Land." Born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1912, Guthrie lived and wrote of the real West, a place of hard-working people and harsh environments rather than romantic cowboys and explorers. Though he was a son of a successful politician and businessman, during his early teens his mother fell ill and the family split apart. For several years, Guthrie spent his summers working as a migrant agricultural laborer. When he was 15, he left home to travel the country by freight train. Among his meager possessions were a guitar and harmonica. Guthrie discovered an eager audience among the hobos and migrant workers for the country-folk songs he had learned in Oklahoma. In 1937, he traveled to California where he hoped to become a successful western singer. He appeared on several West Coast radio shows, mostly performing traditional folk songs. Soon, though, he began to perform his own pieces based on his experiences living among the vast armies of the poor and dispossessed created by the Great Depression. While in California he also came into contact with the Communist Party and became increasingly sympathetic to its causes. Many of his songs reflected a strong commitment to the common working people, and he became something of a musical spokesman for populist sentiments. "This Land is Your Land," reflected not only Guthrie's support for the common folk, but also his deep love for his country. The verse celebrated the beauty and grandeur of America while the chorus drove home the populist sentiment that the nation belonged to all the people, not merely the rich and powerful. Probably the most famous of his more than 1,000 songs, "This Land is Your Land" was also one of his last. Later that year Guthrie moved to New York where his career was soon after interrupted by World War II. After serving in the Merchant Marines, he returned to New York, where he continued to perform and record his old material, but he never matched his earlier prolific output. Guthrie's career was cut short in 1954, when he was struck with Huntington's Disease, a degenerative illness of the nervous system that had killed his mother. His later years were spent in a New York hospital where he received visitors like the adoring young Bob Dylan, who copied much of his early style from Guthrie. Guthrie died in 1967, having lived long enough to see his music inspire a whole new generation and "This Land is Your Land" become a rallying song for the Civil Rights movement.
- 1942 --- A Japanese submarine fired 25 shells at the Elwood Oil Field refinery west of Santa Barbara, California, the first attack on the U.S. mainland. One shell caused minor damage on the rigging. President Roosevelt was involved in a fireside chat at the time of the attack.
- 1945 --- Four days of bitter battle had taken its toll on the 28th Regiment of the Fifth Marine Division of the U.S. Marines. Their task had been to neutralize the defenses and scale the heavily fortified Mount Surabachi. The volcanic peak, at the southern tip of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, was one of the first objectives of the Marines’ invasion of this small, strategic island, 750 miles south of Tokyo. Although losses were heavy, the Marine platoon succeeded in its mission and reached the top of Mount Surabachi on this day. Victory was triumphant -- as the famous photograph (by Joe Rosenthal) of these Marines raising the American flag portrayed. The photograph inspired the Marine Corps Memorial, Iwo Jima Statue which now stands near Arlington National Cemetery, the largest cast bronze statue in the world. This monument is dedicated to all U.S. Marines (since 1775) who have given their lives for their country.
- 1954 --- The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh
- 1960 --- Ebbets Field is torn down, the former home of the former Brooklyn Dodgers. They played their last game in Ebbets Field on September 4, 1957 and deserted to Los Angeles, California.
- 1974 --- The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $4 million more for the release of Patty Hearst. Hearst had been kidnapped on February 4th and her father, publisher Randolph Hearst, had already coughed up $2 million hoping for her freedom. Randolph said he would consider this request too.
- 1997 --- It had been considered ‘impossible’ until it was accomplished by Dr. Ian Wilmut in July of 1996, at the Roslin Institute, in Roslin, Scotland. Kept secret until this day, the story broke that Dolly, a seven-month old sheep, was the first clone of an adult mammal. Since July 1996, the institute had cloned “seven sheep, including three breeds from different cell types.” And they said the technology was “equally applicable to pigs, goats, rabbits and indeed, any mammal.”
- 1998 --- Officials were forced to shut down the entire 750-student school district in Spokane, Missouri, after skunks opened the mating season under the middle school. After turning on all the fans and calling in a skunk trapper, the smell was gone the following day.
- 1999 --- Eminem's first album, "The Slim Shady LP", was released.
- 2000 --- Carlos Santana won eight Grammy awards for his album ''Supernatural,'' tying the record set in 1983 by Michael Jackson.
- 2005 --- The New York, NY, city medical examiner's office annouced that it had exhausted all efforts to identify the remains of the people killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, due to the limits of DNA technology. About 1,600 people had been identified leaving more than 1,100 unidentified.
- 2011 --- The Obama administration said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.
- Birthdays
- W.E.B. DuBois
- George Frideric Handel
- Emily Blunt
- Dakota Fanning
- Peter Fonda
- Johnny Winter
- Fred Biletnikoff
- Cesar Ritz
- Agnes Arber
- Casimir Funk
- Emma Willard
- Sylvia Chase
- Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones
- William L. Shirer
- Elston (Gene) Howard
- Lee Calhoun