- 71st Day of 2015 294 Remaining
- Spring Begins in 8 Days
- Sunrise:7:24
- Sunset:7:14
- 11 Hours 50 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:59am
- Moon Set:11:29am
- Phase:60%
- Full Moon April 4 @ 5:07am
The name Full Pink Moon came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:3:34am/5:20pm
- Low:10:29am/10:11pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.04
- Last Year:8.68
- Avg YTD:19.67
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Girl Scout Day
- National Baked Scallops Day
- Employee Day
- World Kidney Day
- Arbor Day-China
- Independence Day-Mauritius
- Moshoeshoe’s Day-Lesotho
- Renovation Day-Gabon
- Youth Day-Zambia
- On This Day
- 1664 --- New Jersey became a British colony. King Charles II granted land in the New World to his brother James (The Duke of York).
- 1789 --- The U.S. Post Office was established.
- 1888 --- The most severe winter storm ever to hit the New York City region reaches blizzard proportions, costing hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property damage. Although the storm also struck New England, New York was the hardest hit, with the 36-hour blizzard dumping some 40 inches of snow on the city. For several weeks, the city was virtually isolated from the rest of the country by the massive snowdrifts. Messages north to Boston had to be relayed via England.
- 1894 --- Coca Cola was first bottled by Joseph A. Biedenham of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Before that it was only mixed to order at the soda fountain.
- 1903 --- New York Highlanders are given the go-ahead by team owners to join baseball’s American League. The Highlanders had recently moved from Baltimore, where they were called the Orioles and had a winning tradition dating back to the 1890s. Called the “Yankees” by fans, the team officially changed its name to the New York Yankees in 1913, and went on to become the most dominant franchise in American sports.
- 1912 --- The Girl Guides, the forerunner of the Girl Scouts of America, was founded.
- 1917 --- After being called out to quell workers’ demonstrations on the streets of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), regiment after regiment of soldiers in the city’s army garrison defect to join the rebels on March 12, forcing the resignation of the imperial government and heralding the triumph of the February Revolution in Russia.
- 1923 --- Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated phonofilm. It was his technique for putting sound on motion picture film.
- 1930 --- Mahatma Gandhi began a 200 mile march to the coastal village of Dandi, to protest the British salt monopoly.
- 1933 --- Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the first of his radio-broadcast fireside chats. FDR used the informal radio addresses to explain his policies to the American public.
- 1938 --- Adolf Hitler announces an “Anschluss” (union) between Germany and Austria, in fact annexing the smaller nation into a greater Germany. Union with Germany had been a dream of Austrian Social Democrats since 1919. The rise of Adolf Hitler and his authoritarian rule made such a proposition less attractive, though, which was an ironic twist, since a union between the two nations was also a dream of Hitler’s, a native Austrian.
- 1947 --- President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War.
- 1951 --- The cartoon "Dennis the Menace" by Hank Ketcham made its syndicated debut in 16 newspapers.
- 1955 --- The Dave Brubeck Quartet appeared for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
- 1969 --- The London drug squad appears at house of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Boyd immediately used the direct hotline to Beatles headquarters and George returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers “You needn’t have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything.” Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him. Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972.
- 1974 --- Nilsson and John Lennon were ejected from the Troubador Club in Los Angeles for heckling the Tom Smothers' comedy act.
- 1982 --- Live on the Sunset Strip, the latest concert film recorded by the provocative comedian Richard Pryor, arrives in movie theaters.
- 1985 --- Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced that he planned to drop Secret Service protection and hire his own bodyguards in an effort to lower the deficit by $3 million.
- 1987 --- The musical "Les Miserables" opened on Broadway.
- 1988 --- A sudden hail storm prompts fans at a soccer match in Katmandu, Nepal, to flee. The resulting stampede killed at least 70 people and injured hundreds more. Approximately 30,000 people were watching the game between the Nepalese home team, Janakpur, and Muktijodha, of Bangladesh, at the National Stadium. A storm approached quickly and hail stones began pelting the spectators. When the fans panicked and rushed to the exits, they found the gates locked, apparently to keep people without tickets from entering the stadium. As fans continued to push forward toward the exits, there was no space for them to go. The victims of the stampede, unable to breathe, were literally crushed to death.
- 1993 --- Following her confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Janet Reno is sworn in as the first female attorney general of the United States.
- 1994 --- A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster was confirmed to be a hoax. The photo was taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached.
- 1999 --- The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO.
- 2003 --- 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart is finally found in Sandy, Utah, nine months after being abducted from her family’s home. Her alleged kidnappers, Brian David Mitchell, a drifter who the Smarts had briefly employed at their house, and his wife, Wanda Barzee, were charged with the kidnapping, as well as burglary and sexual assault.
- 2008 --- New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned two days after reports had surfaced that he was a client of a prostitution ring.
- 2009 --- Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history.
- Birthdays
- Liza Minelli
- Jack Kerouak
- Clement Studebaker
- Adolph Simon Ochs (NYT)
- Vaslav Nijinski
- Elaine de Kooning
- Wally Schirra
- Gordon MacRae
- Al Jarreau
- Andrew Young
- Barbara Feldon
- Mitt Romney
- Bill Payne
- Marlon Jackson
- Julia Campbell
