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Wednesday April 1, 2015

  • 91st Day of 2015 274 Remaining
  • Summer Begins in 81 Days
  • Sunrise:6:53
  • Sunset:7:32
  • 12 Hours 39 Minutes
  • Moon Rise:5:18pm
  • Moon Set:5:27
  • Phase:93%
  • 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:9:52am/10:37pm
  • Low:4:00am/4:10pm
  • Rainfall:
  • This Year to Date:17.13
  • Last Year:11.23
  • Avg YTD:21.47
  • Annual Avg:23.80
  • Holidays
  • April Fool’s Day
  • Boomer Bonus Day
  • National Atheists Day
  • National Fun Day
  • National Day Of Hope
  • National Sourdough Bread Day
  • National Walking Day
  • Paraprofessional Day
  • Poetry and Creative Mind Day
  • Reading Is Funny Day
  • Whole Grain Sampling Day
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  • Republic Day-Iran
  • Youth Day-Benin
  • Captain Regents Day-San Marino
  • On This Day
  • 1582 --- Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.
  • 1621 --- At the Plymouth settlement in present-day Massachusetts, the leaders of the Plymouth colonists, acting on behalf of King James I, make a defensive alliance with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. The agreement, in which both parties promised to not “doe hurt” to one another, was the first treaty between a Native American tribe and a group of American colonists. According to the treaty, if a Wampanoag broke the peace, he would be sent to Plymouth for punishment; if a colonist broke the law, he would likewise be sent to the Wampanoags.
  • 1789 --- The first U.S. House of Representatives, meeting in New York City, reaches quorum and elects Pennsylvania Representative Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg as its first speaker.
  • 1800 --- The trial of Levi Weeks in New York City ends with his acquittal. The jury, either persuaded by the defense or extremely tired (the trial wrapped up after 2a.m.), returned with their verdict after only five minutes. The decision marked a large victory for Weeks and his attorneys, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Less than five years after defense attorneys Hamilton and Burr teamed up to save Levi Weeks, they fought each other in a duel that left Hamilton dead. Levi Weeks went on to become a respected architect in Natchez, Mississippi.
  • 1816 --- Jane Austen responds to a letter from the Prince Regent suggesting she write a historic romance, saying, “I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.” Austen’s correspondence with the Prince Regent, as well as literary figures of the day, was prompted by the success of her novels Sense and Sensibility, (1811) Pride and Prejudice, (1813) Mansfield Park, (1814) and Emma (1815).
  • 1853 --- Cincinnati, Ohio, became the first U.S. city to pay its firefighters a regular salary.
  • 1867 --- The International Exhibition opened in Paris.
  • 1877 --- Ignoring the taunts of fellow miners who say he will only find his own tombstone, prospector Edward Schieffelin begins his search for silver in the area of present-day southern Arizona. Later that year, Schieffelin was not only alive and well, but he had found one of the richest silver veins in the West. He named it the Tombstone Lode.
  • 1891 --- Wrigley Co. is founded in Chicago, Illinois by William Wrigley, Jr., selling soap and giving away baking powder as a premium. The baking powder was more popular, so he switched to selling baking powder, giving chewing gum as a premium with each can. The gum became more popular than the baking powder so he went into the chewing gum business.
  • 1893 --- The first dishwashing machine became an award winning success at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, which used Josephine Garis Cochran’s hand operated, mechanical dishwashers in its kitchens.  (She patented her original version on December 28, 1886.)  Her company eventually evolved into KitchenAid.
  • 1924 --- Adolf Hitler is sentenced for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of November 8, 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right-wing members of the army and the Nazi Party was foiled by the government, and Hitler was charged with high treason. Despite his conviction, Hitler was out of jail before the end of the year, with his political position stronger than ever.
  • 1929 --- Louie Marx introduced the Yo-Yo.
  • 1931 --- Jackie Mitchell became the first female in professional baseball when she signed with the Chattanooga Baseball Club.
    Mitchell, Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig
  • 1938 --- The Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, NY
  • 1946 --- An undersea earthquake off the Alaskan coast triggers a massive tsunami that kills 159 people in Hawaii. In the middle of the night, 13,000 feet beneath the ocean surface, a 7.4-magnitude tremor was recorded in the North Pacific. (The nearest land was Unimak Island, part of the Aleutian chain.) The quake triggered devastating tidal waves throughout the Pacific, particularly in Hawaii. Unimak Island was hit by the tsunami shortly after the quake. An enormous wave estimated at nearly 100 feet high crashed onto the shore. A lighthouse located 30 feet above sea level, where five people lived, was smashed to pieces by the wave; all five were killed instantly. Meanwhile, the wave 
      was heading toward the southern Pacific at 500 miles per hour. In Hawaii, 2,400 miles south of the quake’s epicenter, Captain Wickland of the United States Navy was the first to spot the coming wave at about 7 a.m., four-and-a-half hours after the quake. His position on the bridge of a ship, 46 feet above sea level, put him at eye level with a “monster wave” that he described as two miles long.
  • 1957 --- The BBC aired a spoof TV documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland, showing women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry. Many viewers called in asking where they could purchase their own spaghetti trees.
  • 1960 --- The first weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched from Cape Canaveral.
  • 1963 --- Workers of the International Typographical Union ended their strike that had closed nine New York City newspapers. The strike ended 114 days after it began on December 8, 1962. 
  • 1970 --- The "Woodstock" movie premiered in Hollywood.
  • 1970 --- U.S. President Nixon signed the bill, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act that banned cigarette advertisements to be effective on January 1, 1971. 
  • 1979 --- Iran was proclaimed to be an Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the fall of the Shah. 
  • 1984 --- Singer Marvin Gaye, 44, was shot to death by his father.
  • 1987 --- Steve Newman became the first man to walk around the world. The walk was 22,000 miles and took 4 years. 
  • 2001 --- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on corruption charges after a 26-hour armed standoff with police at his Belgrade villa.
  • Birthdays
  • Jimmy Cliff
  • Rachel Maddow
  • Toshiro Mifune
  • Debbie Reynolds
  • Sergei Rachmaninoff
  • Gordon Jump
  • Ali McGraw
  • Gil Scott Heron
  • Annette O’Toole
  • Rudolf Isley
  • Ronnie Laine
  • Florence Blanchfield
  • Otto von Bismarck
  • Edwin Abbey
  • Bijou Phillips
  • Edgar Wallace
  • Lon Chaney
  • Whittaker Chambers
  • Justice Sam Alito