- 78th Day of 2013 / 287 Remaining
- 1 Day Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:13
- Sunset:7:21
- 11 Hours 52 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:15pm
- Moon Set:2:07am
- Moon’s Phase:First Quarter
- The Next Full Moon
- March 27 @ 2:30am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Full Lenten Moon
- Full Crow Moon
- Full Sap Moon
As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.
- Tides
- High:4:24am/7:18pm
- Low:11:53am
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:14.59
- Last Year:10.32
- Normal To Date:20.40
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Quilting Day
- Perigean Spring Tides
- Purim (Jewish - begins at sundown)
- Save the Florida Panther Day
- Poultry Day
- National Agriculture Day
- National Chocolate Carmel Day
- Swallows Return to San Juan Capistrano Day (Every March 19th since 1776 - with very few exceptions - the birds come back to usher in spring in this Southern California seaside town. While their return is an annual tourist attraction, the community still is confronted with the mess left behind when the birds migrate in the fall (October 23rd, St. John’s Day). It is costing the quaint town of San Juan Capistrano, in Orange County, California, a lot of money to clean up historic, old buildings where the swallows return to roost year after year. )
- Feast of St. Joseph (patron of confectioners)-Catholicism
- On This Day In …
- 1628 --- The Massachusetts colony was founded by Englishmen.
- 1687 --- French explorer La Salle was murdered by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, in the Gulf of Mexico.
- 1822 --- The city of Boston, MA, was incorporated.
- 1831 --- The first bank robbery in America was reported. The City Bank of New York City lost $245,000 in the robbery.
- 1842 --- French writer Honore de Balzac's play Les Ressources de Quinola opens to an empty house thanks to a failed publicity stunt on this day in 1842. Hoping to create a buzz for the play, the writer circulated a rumor that tickets were sold out. Unfortunately, most of his fans stayed home. By this time, Balzac was already a well-known literary figure. Born in Tours, France, Balzac was educated in Paris, where he started writing plays at the age of 20 while working as a lawyer's apprentice. His plays bombed, and he took to writing thrillers under an assumed name. Needing money, he launched disastrous ventures in printing and silver mining and went bankrupt. While struggling under his debts, he resumed writing, and by 1929 he was publishing under his own name, convinced he was a genius. By 1830, he had become a celebrated writer who frequented literary salons. Balzac drove himself ruthlessly, working 14 to 16 hours at a stretch, aided by some 50 cups of coffee a day. He completed 90 novels, all part of a single series, "La Comedie Humaine," and died in Paris in 1850.
- 1859 --- The opera Faust by Charles Gounod premiered in Paris.
- 1895 --- The Los Angeles Railway was established to provide streetcar service.
- 1917 --- The Supreme Court upheld the eight-hour work day for railroads.
- 1918 --- Congress approved daylight-saving time.
- 1928 --- Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll left WGN radio in Chicago to head across town to WMAQ radio. They weren’t able to take their previously popular radio show names with them due to contract limitations. So Sam and Henry were no more. However, Gosden and Correll came up with a new name for the show that became even more popular than the first. A year later it was the national hit: Amos and Andy.
- 1931 --- In an attempt to lift the state out of the hard times of the Great Depression, the Nevada state legislature votes to legalize gambling. Located in the Great Basin desert, few settlers chose to live in Nevada after the United States acquired the territory at the end of the Mexican War in 1848. In 1859, the discovery of the "Comstock Lode" of gold and silver spurred the first substantial number of settlers into Nevada to exploit the territory's mining opportunities. Five years later, during the Civil War, Nevada was hastily made the 36th state in order to strengthen the Union. At the beginning of the Depression, Nevada's mines were in decline, and its economy was in shambles. In March 1931, Nevada's state legislature responded to population flight by taking the drastic measure of legalizing gambling and, later in the year, divorce. Established in 1905, Las Vegas, Nevada, has since become the gambling and entertainment capital of the world, famous for its casinos, nightclubs, and sporting events. In the first few decades after the legalization of gambling, organized crime flourished in Las Vegas. Today, state gambling taxes account for the lion's share of Nevada's overall tax revenues.
- 1951 --- The Caine Mutiny, a novel by Herman Wouk, was published for the first time. Wouk won a Pulitzer for the novel. He followed it with several more successes: Marjorie Morningstar, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.
- 1953 --- Audiences are able to sit in their living rooms and watch as the movie world’s most prestigious honors, the Academy Awards, are given out at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California.Organized in May 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was envisioned as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the film industry. The first Academy Awards were handed out in May 1929, in a ceremony and banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The level of suspense was nonexistent, however, as the winners had already been announced several months earlier. For the next 10 years, the Academy gave the names of the winners to the newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards ceremony; this changed after one paper broke the tacit agreement and published the results in the evening edition, available before the ceremony began. A sealed envelope system began the next year, and endures to this day, making Oscar night Hollywood’s most anticipated event of the year.
- 1977 --- The staff of WJM-TV had a going-away party, as the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was broadcast. Everyone was fired except the inept Ted Baxter. The show had been a popular hit for seven years. Syndication continues to keep Mary, Lou, Murray, Ted, Rhoda and the rest of the crew going with what was called “the best television of the 1970s.”
- 1979 --- The U.S. House of Representatives began broadcasting its daily business on TV.
- 1987 --- Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned as chairman of his PTL ministry organization amid a sex-and-money scandal involving a former church secretary, Jessica Hahn.
- 2001 --- California officials declared a power alert and ordered the first of two days of rolling blackouts.
- 2003 --- President George W. Bush addresses the nation via live television and announces that Operation Iraqi Freedom has begun. Bush authorized the mission to rid Iraq of tyrannical dictator Saddam Hussein and eliminate Hussein's ability to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Operation Iraqi Freedom illustrated the Bush administration's pledge to use unilateral, pre-emptive strikes if necessary against nations believed dangerous to American national security. Bush received harsh criticism for the war. Critics claimed his administration primarily sought control of Iraq's vast oil resources, or that the war was in retaliation for an attempt on former President George H.W. Bush's life, ordered by Hussein, in 1990. Revelations that intelligence regarding the Iraq/Niger yellowcake deal was faulty bolstered anti-war sentiment. Bush denied accusations that his administration manipulated intelligence to justify a war and insisted the paramount goal of the war was to rid Iraq of Hussein, stabilize the Middle East and bring democracy to Iraq. U.S. forces successfully captured Hussein, who had gone into hiding shortly after the start of war, on December 15, 2003. Although Bush announced "mission accomplished" and the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003, Iraq continued to experience ongoing deadly attacks by insurgents while U.S. and coalition troops and civilian contractors attempted to establish an Iraqi army and police force and establish a freely elected government. In the first four years of the war, American casualities stood at more than 3,000 with more than 23,000 wounded, while Iraqi civilian casualties were estimated at more than 50,000.
- Birthdays
- Glenn Close
- Wyatt Earp
- Jackie “Moms” Mabley
- Irving Wallace
- Ornette Coleman
- Clarence “Frogman” Henry
- Terry Hall
- Frederick Joliot-Curie
- John Sirica
- Brent Scowcroft
- Philip Roth
- Ruth Pointer
- Harvey Weinstein
- Justice Earl Warren
- William Jennings Bryan
- Edith Nourse Rogers