- 102nd Day of 2012 / 264 Remaining
- 70 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:39
- Sunset:7:43
- 13 Hr 4 Min
- Moon Rise:12:39am
- Moon Set:10:39am
- Moon’s Phase: 68 %
- The Next Full Moon
- May 5 @ 8:36pm
- Full Flower Moon
- Full Corn Planting Moon
- Full Milk Moon
In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:2:26am/4:37pm
- Low:9:27am/9:37pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:13.16
- Last Year:24.61
- Normal To Date:22.12
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Barbershop Quartet Day
- International "Louie Louie" Day
- National Cheese Fondue Day
- National Dandelion Day
- 8-Track Tape Day
- Liberation Day-Uganda
- National Heroes Day-Costa Rica
- On This Day In …
- 1814 --- Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.
- 1868 --- U.S. Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant was stopped for speeding in his horse-drawn buggy. Three months later he was stopped again and fined $5.00.
- 1882 --- U.S. patent #256,265 was issued for the Block Clock. It was an alarm clock mounted over the bed that, at a set time, dropped two dozen small wood blocks on the sleeper.
- 1919 --- In Paris, France, the International Labor Organization (ILO) is founded as an independent, affiliated agency of the League of Nations. The call for just and equal labor standards and improved working and living conditions for the world's workers had begun to be heard long before the outbreak of World War I. As the Industrial Revolution swept from France and Britain across the rest of Europe over the course of the 19th century, it completely altered the economic and social landscape of the continent (and eventually the world). Among the early advocates of an international organization to regulate labor were Robert Owen, a Welsh socialist and the founder of the first, short-lived British trade union in 1833; Charles Hindley (1800-1857), a cotton spinner and member of the British parliament from 1853 to 1857; and Daniel Legrand, a French industrialist, philanthropist, and writer.
- 1929 --- Popeye made his first appearance as a supporting character in a comic strip in Hearst's New York newspapers.
- 1938 --- The SPEBSQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) was founded by 26 singing, striped-shirted gentlemen. Now we know that’s 6½ quartets worth, but that’s what it took to get the organization humming. So, let’s head for the barbershop and ask for a “shave & a haircut, two bits!” or a refrain of Sweet Adeline. By the way, Sweet Adeline, the love song that became a favorite of barbershop quartets, was written in 1903 by Richard Gerard and Henry Armstrong; and there really was a sweet Adeline. She was opera singer Adelina Patti. Today, female barbershop quartets are called Sweet Adelines.
- 1945 --- The American Third Army liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that will be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners. As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp--including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true. The camp held thousands of prisoners, mostly slave laborers. There were no gas chambers, but hundreds, sometimes thousands, died monthly from disease, malnutrition, beatings, and executions. Doctors performed medical experiments on inmates, testing the effects of viral infections and vaccines. Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
- 1947 --- Jackie Robinson became the first black player in major-league history. He played in an exhibition game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
- 1956 --- James Brown debuted on Billboard's R&B chart with "Please, Please, Please." And Elvis Presley reached the top spot on the Billboard music chart with his first double-sided hit. The disk featured Heartbreak Hotel and I Was the One. The RCA Victor record stayed at number one for eight weeks. Elvis also made the country and R&B charts, as well.
- 1958 --- 'Tequila' by The Champs is #1 on the charts.
- 1961 --- Who knows how many other young men arrived in New York City in the winter of 1961 looking like James Dean and talking like Jack Kerouac? It would have been difficult to pick Bob Dylan out of the crowd at first, considering how much he had in common with the other Bohemian kids kicking around Greenwich Village. Artistic ambition? Check. Antipathy toward mainstream culture? Yes. A desire to put his middle-class identity behind him? Definitely. But the singular creative vision that would separate Dylan from the rest of his peers and change the face of popular music wasn't really in evidence yet. What Bob Dylan did have, though, in addition to his guitar and harmonica, was a unique stage presence and a vast library of American folk songs in his repertoire. On April 11, 1961, he got his first real chance to put those on display with his first major gig in New York City, opening for bluesman John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City.
- 1961 --- Carl Yastrzemski replaced Ted Williams in left field for the Boston Red Sox. The ‘Yaz’ was just 21 years old and had but two years experience in the minor leagues when he was called. In his first at-bat, he got a hit off Kansas City’s Ray Herbert. Yastrzemski retired in 1984, having played his entire major-league career in a Boston Red Sox uniform.
- 1962 --- The New York Mets played their first regular season game. The team, managed by Casey Stengel, lost its first ten games. The St. Louis Cardinals won by a score of 11-4 -- prompting Stengel to say, before a group of reporters and players, “Can anyone here play this game?”
- 1964 --- 8-Track tape was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford, Motorola and RCA Victor Records, and was made popular by the inclusion of 8-track players in Ford automobiles in 1965.
- 1970 --- Apollo 13 blasted off on a mission to the moon that was disrupted when an explosion crippled the spacecraft. The astronauts did return safely.
- 1979 --- Ugandan dictator Idi Amin flees the Ugandan capital of Kampala as Tanzanian troops and forces of the Uganda National Liberation Front close in. Two days later, Kampala fell and a coalition government of former exiles took power. Amin, chief of the Ugandan army and air force from 1966, seized control of the African nation in 1971. A tyrant and extreme nationalist, he launched a genocidal program to purge Uganda of its Lango and Acholi ethnic groups. In 1972, he ordered all Asians who had not taken Ugandan nationality to leave the country, and some 60,000 Indians and Pakistanis fled. These Asians comprised an important portion of the work force, and the Ugandan economy collapsed after their departure. In 1979, his eight years of chaotic rule came to an end when Tanzania and anti-Amin Ugandan forces invaded and toppled his regime. Amin had launched an unsuccessful attack on Tanzania in October 1978 in an effort to divert attention from Uganda's internal problems. He escaped to Libya, eventually settling in Saudi Arabia, where he died in August 2003. The deaths of 300,000 Ugandans are attributed to Idi Amin.
- 1980 --- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.
- 1986 --- Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan, stopped an 80-year tradition of tours of its breakfast-food plant, believing that spies from other companies were taking the tours to steal company secrets.
- 1989 --- The U.S. issued a patent (#4,821,247) to Reginald Grooms of Conway, South Carolina, for his Ear-Mounted Alarm Clock, a digital alarm clock so tiny it can be hidden in your ear and awaken you without bothering your spouse.
- 1996 --- American astronaut Shannon Lucid reported from the Russian space station Mir she was "absolutely, totally out" of M&Ms. Lucid spent 188 days aboard the Mir and asked only for regular re-supplies of M&Ms.
- Birthdays
- Louise Lasser
- Ellen Goodman
- Ethel Kennedy
- Joel Grey
- Mark Teixeira
- Neville Staple
- Jane Bolin
- Bill Irwin
- Dean Acheson
- Oleg Cassini
- Lillie P. Bliss
- Percy L. Julian