Thursday February 6, 2014

• 37^th Day of 2014 / 328 Remaining
• Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:07
• Sunset:5:39
• 10 Hours 32 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:11:15am
• Moon Set:12:31am
• Moon’s Phase: First Quarter

• The Next Full Moon
• February 14 @ 3:54 pm
• Full Snow Moon
• Full Hunger Moon

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:3:37am/5:05pm
• Low:10:41am/10:11pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:2.43
• Last Year:13.50
• Average Year to Date:14.62

• Holidays
• National Frozen Yogurt Day

• Waitangi Day-New Zealand
• Bob Marley Day-Jamaica
• New Zealand Day-New Zealand

• On This Day In …
• 1778 --- The United States gained official recognition from France as the two nations signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris.

• 1788 --- Although the people of Massachusetts had already drafted their state constitution some eight years earlier, it wasn’t until this day that the state became the sixth to enter the United States of America. Those who live in the Bay State must have a strong constitution; theirs is the oldest state constitution to still be in effect. Massachusetts is derived from two Indian words meaning ‘great mountain place’. This great mountain place in New England was one of the most important of the 13 colonies in the nxew America, which gave it its other nickname, Old Colony State. Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, has been the center of activity in the state since those old colony days. Massachusetts state symbols include the chicadee, state bird; American elm, state tree; ladybug, state insect; All Hail to Massachusetts, state song; and mayflower, the state flower. Which arrived first, the ship or the flower? Unique to Massachusetts is a state beverage: cranberry juice and a state muffin ... corny but true, the corn muffin is official.

  

  It’s difficult to be serious after that, but the Massachusetts state motto is: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace; but peace only under liberty).

• 1820 --- The first organized immigration of freed slaves to Africa from the United States departs New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The immigration was largely the work of the American Colonization Society, a U.S. organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to return freed American slaves to Africa. However, the expedition was also partially funded by the U.S. Congress, which in 1819 had appropriated $100,000 to be used in returning displaced Africans, illegally brought to the United States after the abolishment of the slave trade in 1808, to Africa. The program was modeled after British's efforts to resettle freed slaves in Africa following England's abolishment of the slave trade in 1772.

• 1843 --- The first minstrel show in America, the Original Virginia Minstrels, opened at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.

• 1928 --- A woman calling herself Anastasia Tschaikovsky and claiming to be the youngest daughter of the murdered czar of Russia arrives in New York City. She held a press conference on the liner Berengaria, explaining she was here to have her jaw reset. It was broken, she alleged, by a Bolshevik soldier during her narrow escape from the execution of her entire family at Ekaterinburg,

  

  Russia, in July 1918. Tschaikovsky was welcomed to New York by Gleb Botkin, the son of the Romanov family doctor who was executed along with his patients in 1918. Botkin called her "Your Highness" and claimed that she was without a doubt the Grand Duchess Anastasia with whom he had played as a child. Between 1918 and 1928, more than half a dozen other women had come forward claiming to be a lost heir to the Romanov fortune, so some American reporters were understandingly skeptical of Tschaikovsky's claims.

• 1933 --- The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January, was declared in effect.

• 1937 --- John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, the story of the bond between two migrant workers, is published. He adapted the book into a three-act play, which was produced the same year. The

  

  story brought national attention to Steinbeck's work, which had started to catch on in 1935 with the publication of his first successful novel, Tortilla Flat.

• 1943 --- Frank Sinatra made his debut as vocalist on radio’s Your Hit Parade this night. Frankie had left the Tommy Dorsey Band just four months prior to beginning the radio program. He was described as, “...the biggest name in the business.”

• 1952 --- King George VI of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dies in his sleep at the royal estate at Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of the king's two daughters and next in line to succeed him, was in Kenya at the time of her father's death; she was crowned Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, at age 27.

• 1958 --- British European Airways flight crashes just after takeoff from the Munich Airport. Twenty-three people died in the crash,

  

  including eight players from the Manchester United soccer team, which had just qualified for the semifinals of the European Cup.

• 1967 --- Muhammad Ali retained his world heavyweight title and won the WBA heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ernest Terrell in the Houston Astrodome.
  

  

• 1968 --- Joan Whitney Payson was elected president of the New York Mets. She turned out to be a good luck charm. One year later, the ‘Miracle’ Mets became world champions.
  

  

• 1968 --- The Xth Winter Olympic games opened in Grenoble, France. Some 18,000 people participated in the opening ceremonies as the games were dedicated by General Charles de Gaulle.
  

  

• 1971 --- NASA Astronaut Alan B. Shepard took a six-iron that he had stashed away inside his spacecraft and swung at three golf balls on the surface of the moon. Shepard whiffed the first swing, so,

  

  he got a ‘Mulligan’ on that one. The others were good, crisp shots that went several hundred yards in the vacuum of space. Due to the bulkiness of his moonwalk suit, however, he didn’t quite get enough of a swing to launch the golf balls into orbit.

• 1981 --- Former Beatles, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison teamed up once again to record a musical tribute to John

  

  Lennon. The result of that session became All Those Years Ago. The song went to #2 on the pop music charts for three weeks. It was recorded on Harrison’s own Dark Horse label.

• 1985 --- Perrier introduced Perrier with 'a twist of lemon' - its first new product in 125 years.

• 1993 --- Tennis champion Arthur Ashe, the only African-American man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Opens, dies of

  

  complications from AIDS, at age 49 in New York City. Ashe's body later laid in state at the governor's mansion in Richmond, Virginia, where thousands of people lined up to pay their respects to the ground-breaking athlete and social activist.

• 1998 --- Washington National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.

• 1998 --- A judge reinstates the suspended sentence of school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and sends her back to prison for seven years after she is caught violating a no-contact order with her

  

  former student Vili Fualaau, when she is found in a vehicle with the boy. Letourneau first met Fualaau when she was a teacher at Shorewood Elementary School, in the Seattle suburb of Burien, Washington, and he was a second-grader. During the summer of 1996, Letourneau, then 34 and a married mother of four, began a sexual relationship with her former sixth-grade student, then 12.

• 2000 --- Russia's acting President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian forces had captured Grozny, Chechnya. The capital city had been under the control of Chechen rebels.

• 2002 --- A federal judge ordered John Walker Lindh to be held without bail pending trial. Lindh was known as the "American Taliban."

• 2004 --- An explosion ripped through a Moscow subway car during rush hour, killing 41 people in a terrorist attack blamed on Chechen separatists.
  

  

• Birthdays
• Bob Marley
• Natalie Cole
• Ronald Reagan (40th President)
• Babe Ruth
• Aaron Burr
• Axl Rose
• Zsa Zsa Gabor
• Rip Torn
• Mike Farrell
• Fabian
• Tom Brokaw
• Jeb Stuart
• Eva Braun
• Francois Tuffaut
• Patrick Macnee
• Mamie Van Doren
• Kathy Najimy