- 34th Day of 2015 331 Remaining
- Spring Begins in 45 Days
- Sunrise:7:11
- Sunset:5:36
- 10 Hours 25 Minutes
- Moon Rise:5:45pm
- Moon Set:6:45am
- Full Moon @ 3:10pm
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:9:57am/11:34pm
- Low:4:10am/4:46pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:15.14
- Last Year:2.43
- Avg YTD:14.11
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- African American Coaches Day
- National Carrot Cake Day
- National Cordova Ice Worm Day
- Patient Recognition Day
- Setsubun-Japan
- Heroes Day-Mozambique
- On This Day
- 1488 --- The Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Diaz landed at Mossal Bay in the Cape, the first European known to have landed on the southern extremity of Africa.
- 1690 --- The first paper money in America was issued by the Massachusetts colony. The currency was used to pay soldiers that were fighting in the war against Quebec.
- 1815 --- The world's first commercial cheese factory was established in Switzerland.
- 1819 --- Stephen McCormick received a patent for a cast iron plow with replaceable parts.
- 1862 --- Thomas Edison printed the "Weekly Herald" and distributed it to train passengers traveling between Port Huron and Detroit. It was the first time a newspaper had been printed on a train.
- 1865 --- President Abraham Lincoln meets with a delegation of Confederate officials at Hampton Roads, Virginia, to discuss a possible peace agreement. Lincoln refused to grant the delegation any concessions, however, and the meeting ended within hours.
- 1889 --- The outlaw Belle Starr is killed when an unknown assailant fatally wounds the famous "Bandit Queen" with two shotgun blasts from behind.
- 1913 --- The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It gave Congress the power to levy taxes on income. In 1913 less than 1% of the population paid income tax at the rate of 1%.
- 1916 --- The Cafe Voltaire opened in Zurich, Switzerland. It became a meeting place for members of the Dada movement in art and literature.
- 1917 --- The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
- 1918 --- The Twin Peaks Tunnel began service. It is the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet.
- 1944 --- American forces invade and take control of the Marshall Islands, long occupied by the Japanese and used by them as a base for military operations. The Marshalls, east of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the "Japanese Mandated Islands" as determined by the League of Nations.
- 1947 --- Percival Prattis became the first black news correspondent admitted to the House and Senate press gallery in Washington, DC. He worked for "Our World" in New York City.
- 1950 --- Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb, is arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. Fuchs' capture set off a chain of arrests. Harry Gold, whom Fuchs implicated as the middleman between himself and Soviet agents, was arrested in the United States. Gold thereupon informed on David Greenglass, one of Fuchs' co-workers on the Manhattan Project. After his apprehension, Greenglass implicated his sister-in-law and her husband, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. They were arrested in New York in July 1950, found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and executed at Sing Sing Prison in June 1953.
- 1953 --- French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau publishes his most famous and lasting work, “The Silent World”. His other books include “The Living Sea” (1963), “Three Adventures: Galapagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes” (1973), and “Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World” (1985). He also produced several more award-winning films and scores of television documentaries about the ocean, making him a household name.
- 1959 --- "It was already snowing at Minneapolis, and the general forecast for the area along the intended route indicated deteriorating weather conditions," wrote the Civil Aeronautics Board investigators six months after the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson. "The ceiling and visibility were lowering...and winds aloft were so high one could reasonably have expected to encounter adverse weather during the estimated two-hour flight." All of this information was available to 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson, if only he had asked for it. Instead, he relied on an incomplete weather report and on the self-confidence of youth in making the decision to take off from Clear Lake, Iowa, shortly after midnight on February 3, 1959. Untrained and uncertified in instrument-only flight, Peterson was flying into conditions that made visual navigation impossible. "Considering all of these facts," the investigating authorities concluded, "the decision to go seems most imprudent."
- 1966 --- The Soviet Union accomplishes the first controlled landing on the moon, when the unmanned spacecraft Lunik 9 touches down on the Ocean of Storms. After its soft landing, the circular capsule opened like a flower, deploying its antennas, and began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. The 220-pound landing capsule was launched from Earth on January 31.
- 1971 --- Apollo 14 astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Edgar D. Mitchell landed on the lunar sufrace during the third successful manned mission to the moon.
- 1991 --- Sinead O'Connor announced that she wouldn't accept any Grammy Awards or attend the ceremony because the show reflects "false and destructive materialistic values."
- 1994 --- The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with a woman, Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins, in the pilot's seat for the first time.
- 1994 --- Nearly two decades after the fall of Saigon, U.S. President Bill Clinton announces the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam, citing the cooperation of Vietnam's communist government in helping the United States locate the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.
- 1998 --- A U.S. Marine jet flying low over the town of Cavalese in the Italian Alps severs a ski-lift cable, sending a tram crashing to the ground and killing 20 people. Cavalese is located in the Dolomite Mountains, about 20 miles northeast of Trento, Italy. In 1976, 42 people there, including 15 children, lost their lives when the cable holding up their ski-lift car snapped. The car fell 700 feet, with its overhead assembly landing on top of it.
- 2005 --- Alberto Gonzales won Senate confirmation as the nation's first Hispanic attorney general despite protests over his record on torture.
- 2009 --- Eric Holder was sworn in as attorney general. He was the first African-American to hold the post.
- Birthdays
- Gertrude Stein
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Norman Rockwell
- James Michener
- Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd
- Blythe Danner
- Victor Buono
- Melanie
- Nathan Lane
