- 22nd Day of 2013 / 343 Remaining
- 57 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:20
- Sunset:5:23
- 10 Hours 3 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:1:50pm
- Moon Set:3:46am
- Moon’s Phase: 83 %
- The Next Full Moon
- January 26 @ 8:40pm
- Full Wolf Moon
Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides
- High: 7:59am/10:10pm
- Low: 1:56am/3:18pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:13.36
- Last Year:5.31
- Normal To Date:12.29
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Answer Your Cat's Question Day
- Celebration of Life Day
- National Blonde Brownie Day
- Ukrainian Day-Ukraine
- On This Day In …
- 1666 --- Shah Jahan, a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, died at the age of 74. He was the Mongul emperor of India that built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz-i-Mahal.
- 1905 --- Russian troops opened fired on marching workers in St. Petersburg, killing more than 100 in what became known as "Bloody Sunday."
- 1938 --- Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town" premiered in Princeton, N.J.
- 1953 --- The Arthur Miller drama "The Crucible" opened on Broadway.
- 1961 --- 1960’s Olympic gold medalist and track star Wilma Rudolph set a world indoor mark in the women’s 60-yard dash. She ran the race in a speedy 6.9 seconds in a meet held in Los Angeles on this day.
- 1968 --- “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”, debuted “from beautiful downtown Burbank”. (It received the official go-ahead after a successful pilot special that had aired in 1967.) The weekly show, produced by George Schlatter and Ed Friendly, then Paul Keyes, used 260 pages of jokes in each hour-long episode. The first 14 shows earned Laugh-In (as it was commonly called) 4 Emmys.Thanks to an ever-changing cast of regulars including the likes of Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, JoAnne Worley, Gary Owens, Alan Sues, Henry Gibson, Lily Tomlin, Richard Dawson, Judy Carne, President Richard Nixon (“Go ahead, sock it to me!”), the show became the highest-rated comedy series in TV history. Out of a list of 40, the only four to remain from the show’s inception to its finale were hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin; announcer, Gary Owens; and comedienne, Ruth Buzzi.
- 1973 --- The Supreme Court decriminalizes abortion by handing down their decision in the case of Roe v. Wade. Despite opponents' characterization of the decision, it was not the first time that abortion became a legal procedure in the United States. In fact, for most of the country's first 100 years, abortion as we know it today was not only not a criminal offense, it was also not considered immoral. In the 1700s and early 1800s, the word "abortion" referred only to the termination of a pregnancy after "quickening," the time when the fetus first began to make noticeable movements. The induced ending of a pregnancy before this point did not even have a name--but not because it was uncommon. Women in the 1700s often took drugs to end their unwanted pregnancies. In 1827, though, Illinois passed a law that made the use of abortion drugs punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. Although other states followed the Illinois example, advertising for "Female Monthly Pills," as they were known, was still common through the middle of the 19th century. Abortion itself only became a serious criminal offense in the period between 1860 and 1880. And the criminalization of abortion did not result from moral outrage. The roots of the new law came from the newly established physicians' trade organization, the American Medical Association. Doctors decided that abortion practitioners were unwanted competition and went about eliminating that competition. The Catholic Church, which had long accepted terminating pregnancies before quickening, joined the doctors in condemning the practice. By the turn of the century, all states had laws against abortion, but for the most part they were rarely enforced and women with money had no problem terminating pregnancies if they wished. It wasn't until the late 1930s that abortion laws were enforced. Subsequent crackdowns led to a reform movement that succeeded in lifting abortion restrictions in California and New York even before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. The fight over whether to criminalize abortion has grown increasingly fierce in recent years, but opinion polls suggest that most Americans prefer that women be able to have abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, free of any government interference.
- 1973 --- Joe Frazier lost the first fight of his professional career to George Foreman. He been the undefeated heavyweight world champion since February 16, 1970 when he knocked out Jimmy Ellis.
- 1989 --- Super Bowl XXIII (at Miami): San Francisco 49ers 20, Cincinnati Bengals 16. In the brand new Joe Robbie Stadium, it was coach Bill Walsh vs. coach Sam Wyche, QB Joe Montana vs. QB Boomer Esiason. The score at halftime: 3-3. In the end, the 49ers got past the Bengals, but just barely. MVP: 49ers’ WR Jerry Rice. 49ers won their third Super Bowl. Some said the Bengals lost “the best Super Bowl ever played.” Tickets: $100.00.
- 1997 --- The Senate confirmed Madeleine Albright as the nation's first female secretary of state.
- 1998 --- Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the "Unabomber." Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water. From this isolated location, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others. The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. After federal investigators set up the UNABOM Task Force (the name came from the words "university and airline bombing"), the media dubbed the culprit the "Unabomber." The bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses (depicted in an infamous 1987 police sketch). In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Recognizing elements of his brother's writings, David Kaczynski went to authorities with his suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996. In his cabin, federal investigators found ample evidence linking him to the bombings, including bomb parts, journal entries and drafts of the manifesto. Kaczynski was arraigned in Sacramento and charged with bombings in 1985, 1993 and 1995 that killed two people and maimed two others. (A bombing in New Jersey in 1994 also resulted in the victim's death.) Despite his lawyers' efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist's verdict helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill defendant. On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty to all federal charges; he also gave up the right to appeal any rulings in the case. Though Kaczynski later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski was remanded to a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving his life sentence.
- Birthdays
- George Ballanchine
- Beatrice Webb
- Joseph Wambaugh
- John Hurt
- Steve Perry
- Linda Blair
- Jazzy Jeff
- DW Griffith
- U Thant (U.N. Secretary General)
- Jim Jarmusch
- Sir Francis Bacon
- Piper Laurie
- Sam Cooke
- Bill Bixby
- Lord Byron (George Gordon)