- 59th Day of 2012 / 307 Remaining
- 21 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:6:43
- Sunset:6:02
- 11 Hr 19 Min
- Moon Rise:10:02am
- Moon Set:12:01am(Wed)
- Moon’s Phase: 39 %
- 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:2:16am/4:11pm
- Low:9:25am/8:55pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.90
- Last Year:17.61
- Normal To Date:16.96
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Floral Design Day
- National Tooth Fairy Day
- National Chocolate Souffle Day
- Andalusia Day-Spain
- Peace Memorial Day-Taiwan
- World Spay Day
- On This Day In …
- 1827 --- The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first railroad incorporated for commercial transportation of people and freight.
- 1836 --- At the Alamo, Davy Crockett on fiddle and John McGregor on bagpipes tried to drown out the Mexican troops' song of death.
- 1849 --- If one wanted to make the trip from the U.S. East Coast to the West Coast by steamboat, one had best be prepared for a long journey. Regular steamboat service to California via Cape Horn arrived in San Francisco for the first time. The SS California left New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, making the trip in four months, 21 days.
- 1854 --- About 50 slavery opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to call for creation of a new political group that became the Republican Party.
- 1953 --- Scientists James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick, , at Cambridge University, discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that contains the human genes.
- 1964 -- Beatlemania was at its peak in the winter of 1964, but not every music fan had the Beatles' brand of rock and roll on their turntable. In fact, it was jazz music—vital, innovative, contemporary jazz music—that captured the imagination of a significant proportion of American music fans in 1964, and no jazz musician at that time was more vital, innovative and contemporary than Thelonious Sphere Monk. So important was jazz on the American cultural scene, and so important was Monk in the world of jazz, that his portrait graced the cover of Time magazine February 28, 1964. The piece inside the magazine, called "The Loneliest Monk," by writer Barry Farrell, gave Thelonious the credit he deserved for helping bring jazz out of the Swing era. "Monk presided at the birth of bop," Farrell wrote of Monk's legendary tenure as the resident piano player at Minton's Playhouse in New York City in the 1940s. "Rhythms scrambled forward at his touch; the oblique boldness of his harmonies forced the horn players into flights the likes of which had never been heard before....[But] when bop drifted out of Harlem and into wider popularity after the war, Monk was already embarked on his long and lonely scuffle." The "long and lonely scuffle" was Farrell's way not only of characterizing the iconoclastic musical path that Monk would follow through the 1950s, but also of alluding to Monk's well-known "eccentricity"—what his loved ones knew to be a longstanding but unnamed mental illness. In the brilliant, Clint Eastwood-produced documentary, Thelonious Monk: Straight no Chaser, Monk's manager, Harry Colomby, recalled that the first interview with Farrell coincided with the start of one of Monk's episodes of strange behavior. "By the time he got downstairs with me, he was already...he was already off somewhere." "I don't recall him being hospitalized for it until the mid- to late-60s," his son, Thelonious Monk, Jr., recalled, "But my mom, she would tell me that she saw the signs of it much, much earlier." For his part, Monk made light of the issue to Farrell, even joking about an incident in which he was briefly hospitalized after being found wandering alone and speaking incoherently: "I can't be crazy," he said, "'cause they had me in one of those places and they let me go." Thelonious Monk, composer of such jazz standards as "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk" and "Well, You Needn't" continued performing and pursuing a truly unique direction in jazz until his death on February 17, 1982.
- 1966 --- Liverpool's Cavern Club, made famous by The Beatles, closed with debts of $17,000. The stage was sawed into small pieces and sold.
- 1972 --- President Richard M. Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the conclusion of Nixon's historic visit to China, a step toward the eventual normalization of relations between the two countries.
- 1983 --- The concluding episode of the long-running television series "M*A*S*H" drew what was then the largest TV audience in U.S. history.
- 1993 --- Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raid the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas, prompting a gun battle in which four agents and six cult members are killed. The federal agents were attempting to arrest the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, on information that the religious sect was stockpiling weapons. A nearly two-month standoff ensued after the unsuccessful raid. The roots of the confrontation between the federal government and the Branch Davidians went back 10 years before the Waco siege. In 1983, a young man named Vernon Howell showed up at the Mt. Carmel headquarters of the sect. Lois Roden and her son, George, were competing for leadership of the commune at the time. Lois had an affair with Howell, but died shortly thereafter. George Roden attempted to take charge of Mt. Carmel, but Howell challenged his leadership, claiming that he was the Lamb from Revelation, and that his children would be descended from God. Roden responded by posing a contest to Howell: Whoever could resurrect an exhumed corpse would prove their worthiness to rule the cult. Howell declined the challenge, going instead to the sheriff to have Roden arrested for illegally digging up a body. When the police wanted no part of it, Howell and Roden ended up in a gunfight that left Roden injured. While Howell was awaiting trial for attempted murder, Roden was jailed for contempt for filing "the most obscene and profane motions that probably have ever been filed in a federal courthouse" in an unrelated case. Howell took over the cult and the Mt. Carmel compound in Roden's absence, and later got a mistrial on the attempted murder charge. Soon, Howell started his own harem, declaring himself the only one allowed to have wives. Reportedly his many wives included girls as young as 12. Howell changed his name to David Koresh in 1990. Not long after, he began filling the cult member's heads with apocalyptic warnings and insisting that they arm themselves. In 1992, a deliveryman accidentally dropped a package and saw that it was filled with grenades. It was against this background that the federal government obtained a warrant for Koresh's arrest. To Koresh, the failed raid served as proof that he really was being persecuted. When federal agents moved in to end the siege on April 19 with tear gas, a fire broke out. Koresh and about two dozen others shot themselves to death or were shot before the fire engulfed the entire compound. Others died in the fire or the rubble of collapsing buildings, bringing the death toll to 80 Branch Davidians. Only 11 Branch Davidians escaped with their lives. Ultimately, eight cult members were convicted of charges ranging from manslaughter to weapons violations.
- 2005 --- The animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming released results of a studies showing cows bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited by intellectual challenges. The research found cows were capable of strong emotions like pain, fear and even anxiety about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, cows could also feel great happiness. The studies found similar traits in pigs, goats and chickens.
- Birthdays
- Linus Pauling
- Bernadette Peters
- Steven Chu / Secretary of Energy
- Mario Andretti
- Tommy Tune
- Mercedes Ruehl
- Gilbert Gottfried
- John Turturro
- Cindy Wilson / B-52’s
- Michel de Montaigne
- Bugsy Siegel
- Vincente Minnelli
- Zero Mostel
- Charles Blondin
- Earl Scheib
- Svetlana Allilueva
- Gavin MacLeod
- Brian Jones
- Rae Dawn Chong