- 73rd Day of 2013 / 293 Remaining
- Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:21
- Sunset:7:16
- 11 Hours 55 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:8:42am
- Moon Set:10:33pm
- Moon’s Phase:%
- The Next Full Moon
- March 27 @ 2:30am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Full Lenten Moon
- Full Crow Moon
- Full Sap 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:2:05am/2:52pm
- Low:8:18am/8:16pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:14.59
- Last Year:9.18
- Normal To Date:19.89
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Pi Day
- National Potato Chip Day
- Commonwealth Day-United Kingdom
- Constitution Day-Andorra
- White Day-Japan
- International Book Day
- New Year’s Day-Sikhism
- On This Day In …
- 1743 --- The first recorded town meeting in America was held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
- 1794 --- Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin.
- 1900 --- Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act.
- 1903 --- President Theodore Roosevelt established the first U.S. national bird sanctuary to protect pelicans and herons nesting on Pelican Island, near Sebastian, Florida.
- 1904 --- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the governments claim that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal merger between the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railway companies.
- 1914 --- Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes.
- 1950 --- The Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the "toughest guys" the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so much public attention that the "Ten Most Wanted" list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year. As of 2011, 465 of the criminals included on the list have been apprehended or located, 153 as a result of tips from the public. The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) of the FBI asks all fifty-six field offices to submit candidates for inclusion on the list. The CID in association with the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs then proposes finalists for approval of by the FBI's Deputy Director. The criteria for selection is simple, the criminal must have a lengthy record and current pending charges that make him or her particularly dangerous. And the the FBI must believe that the publicity attendant to placement on the list will assist in the apprehension of the fugitive.
- 1958 --- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the first gold record. It was Perry Como’s Catch a Falling Star on RCA Victor Records. The tune became the first to win million-seller certification, though other songs dating as far back as the 1920s may have sold a million records or more. Due to lack of a certification organization like the RIAA, they weren’t awarded the golden platter. The next three gold records that were certified after Perry Como’s million seller were the 45 rpm recordings of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands by Laurie London, Patricia, an instrumental by the ‘Mambo King’, Perez Prado and Hard Headed Woman by Elvis Presley. The first gold-album certification went to the soundtrack of the motion picture, Oklahoma!, featuring Gordon MacRae.
- 1964 --- Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald--the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy--is found guilty of the "murder with malice" of Oswald and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history. On November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed he was distraught over the president's assassination. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder. The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee's findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.
- 1968 --- After two seasons on television, ABC-TV showed the last episode of Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as Robin. The first Batman episode was Hi Diddle Riddle, shown on January 12, 1966. The pilot program for Batman cost $300,000 -- quite expensive by 1966 standards. Through the two seasons, the ‘Dynamic Duo’ welcomed these stars to the cast: Art Carney (The Archer), Tallulah Bankhead (Black Widow), Eartha Kitt (Catwoman), Julie Newmar (Catwoman), Lee Meriwether (Catwoman), Liberace (Chandell), Vincent Price (Egghead), Cesar Romero (The Joker), Rudy Vallee (Lord Phogg), Milton Berle (Louie the Lilac), Shelley Winters (Ma Parker), David Wayne (The Mad Hatter), Zsa Zsa Gabor (Minerva), Van Johnson (The Minstrel), Otto Preminger (Mr. Freeze), Burgess Meredith (The Penguin), John Astin (The Riddler), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Cliff Robertson (Shame), Joan Collins (The Siren) and Anne Baxter (Zelda the Great).
- 1989 --- Imported assault guns were banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush.
- 1990 --- The Congress of People's Deputies elects General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union. While the election was a victory for Gorbachev, it also revealed serious weaknesses in his power base that would eventually lead to the collapse of his presidency in December 1991.
- 1991 --- In the face of widespread questioning of their guilt, British authorities release the so-called "Birmingham Six," six Irish men who had been sent to prison 16 years earlier for the 1974 terrorist bombings of two Birmingham, England, pubs. On November 21, 1974, two Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs exploded in two separate Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring hundreds. The bombing attacks were part of the ongoing conflict between the British government and the IRA over the status of Northern Ireland. Days after the Birmingham bombings, the British government outlawed the IRA in all the United Kingdom, and authorities rushed to arrest and convict the IRA members responsible. Six Irish suspects were arrested and sent to interrogation, where four of them signed confessions. The IRA, which claimed responsibility for the Birmingham bombings, declared that the six were not members of its organization. During the subsequent trial, the defendants maintained their innocence, claiming that police had beaten the confessions out of them. Prosecutors denied this and also came up with forensic evidence that apparently proved that the Birmingham Six had handled explosives shortly before their arrest. They were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. In 1985, the forensic evidence was exposed by scientists as unreliable at best, and in 1987 an appeals judge conceded that the same results could be obtained from testing people who recently touched playing cards or cigarette paper. However, it was not until March 1991, with people across Britain and Ireland calling for their release, that the Birmingham Six were freed after years in prison. Seven years later, a British court of appeals formally overturned their sentences, citing serious doubts about the legitimacy of the police evidence and the treatment of the suspects during their interrogation.
- 2004 --- Opposition Socialists scored a dramatic upset win in Spain's general election, unseating conservatives stung by charges they'd provoked the Madrid terror bombings by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
- 2005 --- A judge in San Francisco ruled that California's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.
- Birthdays
- Albert Einstein
- Quincy Jones
- Billy Crystal
- Michael Caine
- Frank Borman
- Johann Strauss
- Casey Jones
- Lucy Hobbs Taylor
- Les Brown
- Hank Ketcham