Tuesday January 28, 2014

• 28^th Day of 2013 / 337 Remaining
• 51 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:15
• Sunset:5:29
• 10 Hours 14 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:5:02am
• Moon Set:3:25pm
• Moon’s Phase: 6 %

• The Next Full Moon
• February 14 @ 3:54 pm
• Full Snow Moon
• Full Hunger Moon

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:7:56am/9:52pm
• Low:1:50am/2:57pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:2.12
• Last Year:13.50
• Average Year to Date:13.17

• Holidays
• National Blueberry Pancake Day
• Fun at Work Day

• Democracy Day-Rwanda

• On This Day In …
• 1521 --- The Diet of Worms began, at which Protestant reformer Luther was declared an outlaw by the Roman Catholic church.

• 1547 --- England's King Henry VIII died. He was succeeded by his 9 year-old son, Edward VI.

• 1807 --- London's Pall Mall became the first street to be lighted by gaslight.
  

  

• 1813 --- The novel "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen was first published anonymously in London.
  

  

• 1878 --- The first telephone switchboard was installed -- in New Haven, Connecticut. The phone company that owned the switchboard had 21 subscribers.

• 1902 --- The Carnegie Institution was established in Washington, DC. It began with a gift of $10 million from Andrew Carnegie.

• 1904 --- Enrico Caruso signed his first contract with Victor Records. He debuted at the Metropolitan Opera two months before.

• 1916 --- President Woodrow Wilson nominates Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court on this day in 1916. After a bitterly contested confirmation, Brandeis became the first Jewish judge on the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Brandeis quickly earned a reputation in Boston as the people's attorney for taking on cases pro bono. Brandeis advocated progressive legal reform to combat the social and economic ills caused in America by industrialization. He met Woodrow Wilson, who was impressed by Brandeis' efforts to hold business and political leaders accountable to the public, during Wilson's 1912 campaign against Theodore Roosevelt. Brandeis' early legal achievements included the establishment of savings-bank life insurance in Massachusetts and securing minimum wages for women workers. He also devised what became known as the Brandeis Brief, an appellate report that analyzed cases on economic and social evidence rather than relying solely on legal precedents. Brandeis emerged as the nation's foremost judicial leader in an age of growing American industrial power and helped articulate Wilson's New Freedom political platform. Wilson and Brandeis shared liberal views on economic and social policy and also agreed that the federal government should take a hands off approach to managing the economy. New Freedom policies encouraged the cultivation of healthy economic competition, rather than the government spending time and money trying to control monopolies. In contrast, Wilson's opponent, Roosevelt, urged the dismantling and direct regulation of monopolies.

• 1921 --- The National Football League franchise in Decatur, Illinois was transferred this day to Chicago. The team took the name, Chicago Staleys for the 1921 season. The following year, it was decided that since the team was playing in the stadium of the Chicago Cubs, it should be named the Chicago Bears

• 1934 --- Robert Royce’s famous invention was used for the first time in Woodstock, VT. Previously, snow skiers had no way to get to the

  

  top of the mountain conveniently. Remember the ski tow rope the next time you schuss the slopes and have to make it back to the top.

• 1956 --- Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national television. No, he didn’t appear on some teenage dance show; but

  

  rather, The Dorsey Brothers Show, starring Tommy and Jimmy. Elvis sang Blue Suede Shoes and Heartbreak Hotel. He was backed by the instruments of the Dorsey band, believe it or not.

• 1957 --- The Brooklyn Dodgers (‘da Bums’) announced this day that circus clown Emmett Kelly had been hired to entertain fans at

  

  baseball games. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles the following year.

• 1980 --- Six Americans who had fled the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, left Iran using false Canadian diplomatic

  

  passports. The Americans had been hidden at the Canadian embassy in Tehran.

• 1985 --- The special instruction Quincy Jones sent out to the several dozen pop stars invited to participate in the recording of "We Are the World" was this: "Check your egos at the door." Jones was the producer of a record that would eventually go on to sell more than 7 million copies and raise more than $60 million for African famine relief. But before "We Are the World" could achieve those feats, it had to be captured on tape—no simple feat considering the number of major recording artists slated to participate. With only one chance to get the recording the way he and songwriters Michael

  

  Jackson and Lionel Ritchie wanted it, Jones convened the marathon recording session of "We Are the World" at around 10 p.m. on the evening of January 28, 1985, immediately following the conclusion of the American Music Awards ceremony held just a few miles away. Singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte was the initiator of the events that led to the recording of "We Are the World." Among the 45 stars who sang on "We Are the World" that night were huge-in-the-80s figures like Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis; Country stars like Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson; pop icons like Smokey Robinson, Tina Turner and Paul Simon; and musical giants like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan. Also in the studio that night were half of the Jackson family, one  Irishman (Bob Geldof, co-organizer of Band Aid) and one party-crashing Canadian, comedian Dan Aykroyd. Egos fully in check, the group laid down the chorus and solos before sunrise on the 29th, and "We Are the World" was in the stores and on the airwaves just five weeks later.

• 1986 --- The space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger's launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of

  

  weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off. Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa's family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

• 1990 --- In Super Bowl XXIV at New Orleans, the 49ers beat the Broncos 55-10. The 49ers had won all three trips they had made to the Super Bowl. The Broncos had lost all three times they had been

  

  there. At the end of this game the 49ers were still winners and the Broncos were still looking for their first title. MVP: 49ers’ QB Joe Montana. Tickets: $125.00.

• 1997 --- In South Africa, four apartheid-era police officers, appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, admit to the 1977 killing of Stephen Biko, a leader of the South African "Black consciousness" movement. In 1969, Biko, a medical student, founded an organization for South Africa's black students to combat the minority government's racist apartheid policies and to promote black identity. In 1972, he helped organize the Black People's

  

  Convention and in the next year was banned from politics by the Afrikaner government. Four years later, in September 1977, he was arrested for subversion. While in police custody in Port Elizabeth, Biko was brutally beaten and then driven 700 miles to Pretoria, where he was thrown into a cell. On September 12, 1977, he died naked and shackled on the filthy floor of a police hospital. News of the political killing, denied by the country's white minority government, led to international protests and a U.N.-imposed arms embargo.

• 2009 --- In a swift victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House approved a $819 billion stimulus bill.

• Birthdays
• William S Burroughs
• Colette
• Sen. Jean Shaheen
• Arthur Rubenstein
• Alan Alda
• Elijah Wood
• Barbi Benton
• Sarah McLachlan
• Sir Henry Morton Stanley
• Jackson Pollock
• Susan Sontag