- 23rd Day of 2013 / 342 Remaining
- 56 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:19
- Sunset:5:24
- 10 Hours 5 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:45am (Fri)
- Moon Set:11:07am
- Moon’s Phase: Last 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:3:27am/4:01pm
- Low:10:08am/9:27pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:2.12
- Last Year:13.47
- Average Year to Date:12.43
- Holidays
- National Handwriting Day
- National Pie Day
- Snowplow Mailbox Hockey Day
- Women’s Healthy Weight Day
- Babin Den-Bulgaria
- On This Day In …
- 1556 --- An earthquake in Shaanxi, China, kills an estimated 830,000 people. Counting casualties is often imprecise after large-scale disasters, especially prior to the 20th century, but this disaster is still considered the deadliest of all time. The quake struck in late evening, with aftershocks continuing through the following morning. Later scientific investigation revealed that the magnitude of the quake was approximately 8.0 to 8.3, which isn't close to the strongest tremor on record. However, the quake struck in the middle of a densely populated area with poorly constructed buildings and homes, resulting in a horrific death toll.
- 1789 --- Georgetown University was established in present-day Washington, D.C.
- 1845 --- The U.S. Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
- 1849 --- Elizabeth Blackwell is granted a medical degree from Geneva College in New York, becoming the first female to be officially recognized as a physician in U.S. history.
- 1907 --- Charles Curtis, of Kansas, began serving in the United States Senate. He was the first American Indian to become a U.S. Senator. He resigned in March of 1929 to become U.S. President Herbert Hoover’s Vice President.
- 1922 --- At Toronto General Hospital, 14-year-old Canadian Leonard Thompson becomes the first person to receive an insulin injection as treatment for diabetes. Diabetes has been recognized as a distinct medical condition for more than 3,000 years, but its exact cause was a mystery until the 20th century. By the early 1920s, many researchers strongly suspected that diabetes was caused by a malfunction in the digestive system related to the pancreas gland, a small organ that sits on top of the liver. At that time, the only way to treat the fatal disease was through a diet low in carbohydrates and sugar and high in fat and protein. Instead of dying shortly after diagnosis, this diet allowed diabetics to live--for about a year.
- 1937 --- Seventeen people went on trial in Moscow during Soviet leader Josef Stalin's Great Purge.
- 1950 --- The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
- 1957 --- Machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs--now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees. The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling "Frisbie!" as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the "Flying Saucer" that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the "Pluto Platter"--an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). In 1958, a year after the toy's first release, Wham-O--the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle--changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc's surface--called the Rings--to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.
- 1962 --- Tony Bennett recorded "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" in New York for Columbia Records.
- 1963 --- Three million gallons of soybean oil flooded streets in Mankato, Minnesota when a storage tank ruptured. Eventually the oil ended up in the Mississippi River. In the spring, more than 10,000 ducks were found dead in the wetlands along the river. The spill at the Mankato plant, the largest oil-processing facility in the world, couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Just a month earlier, pipes at an oil plant in Savage had ruptured, sending about 1 million gallons of petroleum oil into the Minnesota River.
- 1964 --- The Milwaukee Braves’ legendary pitcher, Warren Spahn, signed a contract worth $85,000, making him the highest paid pitcher in baseball.
- 1964 --- The 24th amendment to the Constitution, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections, was ratified.
- 1968 --- USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, is engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast when it is intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. According to U.S. reports, the Pueblo was in international waters almost 16 miles from shore, but the North Koreans turned their guns on the lightly armed vessel and demanded its surrender. The Americans attempted to escape, and the North Koreans opened fire, wounding the commander and two others. With capture inevitable, the Americans stalled for time, destroying the classified information aboard while taking further fire. Several more crew members were wounded. Finally, the Pueblo was boarded and taken to Wonson. There, the 83-man crew was bound and blindfolded and transported to Pyongyang, where they were charged with spying within North Korea's 12-mile territorial limit and imprisoned. It was the biggest crisis in two years of increased tension and minor skirmishes between the United States and North Korea.
- 1971 --- It was a cold day in Prospect Creek Camp, Alaska. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the U.S. was reported as the mercury fell to a minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 1973 --- President Nixon announces that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, have initialled a peace agreement in Paris "to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia." Kissinger and Tho had been conducting secret negotiations since 1969. After the South Vietnamese had blunted the massive North Vietnamese invasion launched in the spring of 1972, Kissinger and the North Vietnamese had finally made some progress on reaching a negotiated end to the war. However, a recalcitrant South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu had inserted several demands into to the negotiations that caused the North Vietnamese negotiators to walk out of the talks with Kissinger on December 13.
- 1977 --- The TV mini-series "Roots," based on the Alex Haley novel, began airing on ABC.
- 1985 --- O.J. Simpson and Roger Staubach became the first Heisman Trophy winners to be elected to pro football’s Hall of Fame in Canton, OH.
- 1986 --- The first annual induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was held in New York City.
- 2002 --- John Walker Lindh returned to the U.S. under FBI custody. Lindh was charge with conspiring to kill U.S. citizens, providing support to terrorists and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban while a member of the al-Quaida terrorist organization in Afghanistan.
- Birthdays
- John Hancock
- Ernie Kovacs
- Mariska Hargitay
- Antonio Villaraisoga
- Chita Rivera
- Rutger Hauer
- Anita Pointer
- Richard Dean Anderson
- Princess Caroline
- Anita Baker
- Stendahl
- Edouard Manet
- Justice Potter Stewart