- 69th Day of 2015 196 Remaining
- Spring Begins in 10 Days
- Sunrise:7:27
- Sunset:7:12
- 11 Hours 45 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:01am Wednesday
- Moon Set:10:06am
- Phase:78%
- Full Moon April 4 @ 5:07am
The name Full Pink Moon came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:2;09am/2:54pm
- Low:8:36am/8:23pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.01
- Last Year:8.68
- Avg YTD:19.45
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Harriet Tubman Day
- National Blueberry Popover Day
- Organize Your Home Office Day
- Salvation Army Day
- U.S. Paper Money Day
- Pack Your Lunch Day
- Middle Name Pride Day
- International Day Of Awesomeness
- On This Day
- 49 B.C. --- Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy.
- 1785 --- Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
- 1814 --- In France, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a combined Allied Army at the battle of Laon.
- 1849 --- Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent for a device to lift vessels over shoals by means of inflated cylinders.
- 1864 --- Local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism. Slade stood out even among the many rabble-rousers who inhabited the wild frontier-mining town of Virginia City, Montana. When he was sober, townspeople liked and respected Slade, though there were unconfirmed rumors he had once been a thief and murderer. When drunk, however, Slade had a habit of firing his guns in bars and making idle threats. Though Slade’s rowdiness did not injure anyone, Virginia City leaders anxious to create a more peaceable community began to lose patience. They began giving more weight to the claims that he was a potentially dangerous man. Finally fed up with his drunken rampages and wild threats, a group of vigilantes took Slade into custody and told him he would be hanged. Slade, who had committed no serious crime in Virginia City, pleaded for his life, or at least a chance to say goodbye to his beloved wife. Before Slade’s wife arrived, the vigilantes hanged him.
Jack Slade (far left) and Mark Twain - 1876 --- The first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.
- 1893 --- New Mexico State University canceled its first graduation ceremony because the only graduate was robbed and killed the night before.
- 1906 --- A devastating mine disaster kills over 1,000 workers in Courrieres, France. An underground fire sparked a massive explosion that virtually destroyed a vast maze of mines. The Courrieres Colliery in northern France was a complex series of mines near the Pas-de-Calais Mountains. Tunnels into the mines issued forth from several towns in the area and more than 2,000 men and boys worked the mines, digging for coal that was used mostly in the manufacture of gas. At about 3 p.m. on the afternoon of March 9, a fire began 270 meters underground in what was known as the Cecil pit. Unable to immediately extinguish it, workers decided to close the pit’s outlets and starve the fire of air. The following morning, with 1,795 workers inside the mine’s deep tunnels, a huge explosion issued forth from the Cecil pit. Apparently, fissures in the pit’s walls had allowed in flammable gases that were then sparked by the still-smoldering fire. It was 7 a.m. when debris rocketed out of the tunnels’ openings. Several people on the surface were killed by the blast and the roof a mine office was blown right off the building.
- 1914 --- At the National Gallery in London, a suffragette slashed Diego Velázquez's 'Rokeby Venus' with a meat cleaver.
- 1940 --- W2XBS-TV in New York City aired the first televised opera as it presented scenes from "I Pagliacci".
- 1944 --- The Irish refused to oust all Axis envoys and denied the accusation of spying on Allied troops.
- 1945 --- 300 American bombers continue to drop almost 2,000 tons of incendiaries on Tokyo, Japan, in a mission that had begun the previous day. The attack destroyed large portions of the Japanese capital and killed 100,000 civilians.
- 1949 --- Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, also known as "Axis Sally," was convicted in Washington, DC. Gillars was convicted of treason and served 12 years in prison.
- 1955 --- Aaron 'Bunny' Lapin received U.S. patent No. 2,704,172 for pressurized containers designed to dispense his 'Reddi-Wip' whipped cream topping (which he developed in 1948).
- 1959 --- Tibetans band together in revolt, surrounding the summer palace of the Dalai Lama in defiance of Chinese occupation forces. China’s occupation of Tibet began nearly a decade before, in October 1950, when troops from its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country, barely one year after the Communists gained full control of mainland China. The Tibetan government gave into Chinese pressure the following year, signing a treaty that ensured the power of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the country’s spiritual leader, over Tibet’s domestic affairs. Resistance to the Chinese occupation built steadily over the next several years, including a revolt in several areas of eastern Tibet in 1956. By December 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, the capital, and the PLA command threatened to bomb the city if order was not maintained.
- 1965 --- Neil Simon's play "The Odd Couple", starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney opened on Broadway.
- 1969 --- James Earl Ray pled guilty in Memphis, TN, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Ray later repudiated the guilty plea and maintained his innocence until his death in April of 1998.
- 1970 --- The U.S. Army accuses Capt. Ernest Medina and four other soldiers of committing crimes at My Lai in March 1968. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to rape and the “maiming” of a suspect under interrogation. Medina was the company commander of Lt. William Calley and other soldiers charged with murder and numerous crimes at My Lai 4 in Song My village.
- 1975 --- The North Vietnamese surround and attack the city of Ban Me Thuot, as heavy fighting erupts in the Central Highlands. This action, initiated in late January 1975, just two years after a cease-fire was established by the Paris Peace Accords, was part of what the North Vietnamese called Campaign 275. The battle for Ban Me Thuot began on March 4, when North Vietnamese encircled the city with five main force divisions and effectively cut it off from outside support. The South Vietnamese 23rd Division was vastly outnumbered and quickly succumbed to the forces from the North.
- 1979 --- James Brown played at the Grand Ole Opry.
- 1993 --- Dr. David Gunn is shot and killed during an anti-abortion protest at the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic.
- 1997 --- Warner Brothers (WB) television network airs the inaugural episode of what will become its first bona-fide hit show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy‘s creator, Joss Whedon, developed the series from an original script he had written for the big screen a number of years earlier.
- 2006 --- The Cuban national baseball team plays Puerto Rico in the first round of the inaugural World Baseball Classic. While the Puerto Rican team was made up of major league All-Stars, the Cuban team was largely unknown to the world. Puerto Rico beat Cuba 12-2 that day, but the Cuban team would soon have its revenge.Five days after being trounced by the Puerto Ricans, Cuba bounced back with immaculate play. They beat Puerto Rico 4-3 to move into the semifinals against a powerful and heavily favored Dominican team that featured major league MVPs Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Tejada and superstars David Ortiz and Adrian Beltre. The Cubans prevailed 3-1. In the final, however, Cuba lost to Japan–led by star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and Seattle Mariner outfielder Ichiro Suzuki–which played the same style of game as the Cubans, relying on good hustle, situational hitting, strong pitching and team defense.
- Birthdays
- Harriet Tubman
- Clare Booth Luce
- Bix Beiderbeck
- Barry Fitzgerald
- Pamela Mason
- Dean Torrance
- Jasmine Guy
- Neneh Cherry
- Edie Brickell
- Timberland
- Carrie Underwood
