Tuesday March 18, 2014

• 77^th Day of 2014 / 288 Remaining
• 2 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:14
• Sunset:7:20
• 12 Hours 6 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:9:39pm
• Moon Set:8:12am
• Moon’s Phase: %

• The Next Full Moon
• April 15 @ 12:45 am
• Full Pink Moon
• Full Sprouting Moon
• Full Egg Moon
• Full Grass Moon
• Full Fish Moon

This name 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:12:27am/12:53pm
• Low:6:38am/6:39pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:8.68
• Last Year:14.59
• Average Year to Date:20.30

• Holidays
• Awkward Moments Day
• Forgive Mom and Dad Day
• National Biodiesal Day
• National Oatmeal Cookie Day

• Flag Day-Aruba
• Men’s Day-Mongolia

• On This Day In …
• 1123 --- The first Lateran Council (9th ecumenical council) opened in Rome.
  

  

• 1766 --- After four months of widespread protest in America, the British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act, a taxation measure enacted to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. The Stamp Act was passed on March 22, 1765, leading to an uproar

  

  in the colonies over an issue that was to be a major cause of the Revolution: taxation without representation. Enacted in November 1765, the controversial act forced colonists to buy a British stamp for every official document they obtained.

• 1813 --- David Melville of Newport, Rhode Island patented the gas streetlight. He celebrated by having the new lights installed in front of his house!
  

  

• 1818 --- The U.S. Congress approved the first pensions for government service.

• 1834 --- The first railroad tunnel in the U.S. was completed. The work was in Pennsylvania.

• 1852 --- Henry Wells and William G. Fargo join with several other investors to launch their namesake business. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 prompted a huge spike in the demand for cross-country shipping. Wells and Fargo decided to take advantage of these great opportunities. In July 1852, their company shipped its

  

  first loads of freight from the East Coast to mining camps scattered around northern California. The company contracted with independent stagecoach companies to provide the fastest possible transportation and delivery of gold dust, important documents and other valuable freight. It also served as a bank--buying gold dust, selling paper bank drafts and providing loans to help fuel California's growing economy.

• 1863 --- Women rioted in Salisbury, North Carolina, to protest the lack of flour and salt in the Confederacy.
  

  

• 1881 --- Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Gardens.
  

  

• 1891 --- Britain became linked to the continent of Europe by telephone.

• 1899 --- Phoebe, a moon of the planet Saturn, was discovered.

• 1902 --- Enrico Caruso recorded 10 arias for the Gramophone Company. The recording session took place in Milan, Italy and Caruso walked away with $500 for his effort.

• 1911 --- A century ago, even before the phonograph had become a common household item, there was already a burgeoning music industry in the United States based not on the sale of recorded musical performances, but on the sale of sheet music. It was in the medium of printed paper, and not grooved lacquer or vinyl discs, that songs gained popularity in the first two decades of the 20th century,

  

  and no song gained greater popularity in that era than Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Copyrighted on March 18, 1911, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" was the multimillion-selling smash hit that helped turn American popular music into a major international phenomenon, both culturally and economically.

• 1911 --- Theodore Roosevelt opened the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. It was the largest dam in the U.S. at the time.
  

  

• 1918 --- The first seagoing ship made of concrete was launched at Redwood City, CA, near San Francisco. The ship was named Faith

  

  and those who launched her had plenty of that. They had faith that the vessel wouldn’t sink. It didn’t. Faith cost $750,000 to build.

• 1922 --- Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced to prison in India for civil disobedience.
  

  

• 1933 --- American automaker Studebaker, then heavily in debt, goes into receivership. The company's president, Albert Erskine, resigned  
  

  

  and later that year committed suicide. Studebaker eventually rebounded from its financial troubles, only to close its doors for the final time in 1966.

• 1937 --- More than 400 people, mostly children, were killed in a gas explosion at a school in New London, TX.
  

  

• 1942 --- President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of interning Japanese-Americans.

• 1949 --- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was ratified.

• 1952 --- In Philadelphia, PA, the first plastic lenses were fitted for a cataract patient.

• 1953 --- Major-league baseball announced the first team relocation since 1903. The Boston Braves were moving west -- to Milwaukee. In 1965, the Braves moved again, this time they went south to Atlanta.

• 1965 --- Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to spacewalk when he left the Voskhod II space capsule while in orbit around the Earth. He was outside the spacecraft for about 20 minutes.

• 1974 --- Most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their five-month embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.

• 1989 --- A 4,400-year-old mummy was discovered at the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.
  

  

• 1990 -- Thirteen paintings were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The value was $100 million making it the largest art robbery in history.
  

  

• 1992 --- Leona Helmsley was sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion

• 1994 --- Four guns and 25 boxes of ammo were confiscated from Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) after his wife, Courtney Love, called police

  

  fearing he was going to commit suicide. He did commit suicide about 3 weeks later.

• 2005 --- Doctors in Florida, acting on orders of a state judge, removed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. (The brain-damaged woman died 13 days later.)

• Birthdays
• Queen Latifah
• Charley Pride
• F W de Klerk
• Irene Cara
• Vanessa Williams
• Bonnie Blair
• Grover Cleveland (22^nd & 24^th President)
• Neville Chamberlain
• Rudolph Diesel
• Edward Everett Horton
• Peter Graves
• George Plimpton
• Wilson Pickett