Wednesday April 2, 2014

• 92^nd Day of 2014 / 273 Remaining
• 80 Days Until The First Day of Summer

• Sunrise:6:51
• Sunset:7:34
• 12 Hours 43 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:8:45am
• Moon Set:10:59pm
• Moon’s Phase: 11 %

• 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:12:51am/2:06pm
• Low:7:27am/7:28

• Rainfall
• This Year:11.23
• Last Year:15.77
• Average Year to Date:21.54

• Holidays
• National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
• National Love Our Children Day
• Reconciliation Day
• Tangible Karma Day
• Pascua Florida Day-Florida

• International Children's Book Day
• World Autism Awareness Day

• On This Day In …
• 1513 --- Ponce de Leon landed in Florida while searching for the Fountain of Youth. He thought it was just another island of the Bahamas.

• 1792 --- The U.S. Congress authorized the first U.S. mint. Which mint was first? The one in Philadelphia, PA.
  

  

• 1863 --- Shortages of food caused hundreds of angry women gathered in Richmond, Virginia to march on the governor's office and then on the government commissary to demand bread.  It ended in a

  

  riot when they broke into the commissary and then other shops & buildings and carried out anything they could carry.  Even the hospital reported losing over 300 pounds of beef.  Arrests were made, but at the request of authorities, the newspapers downplayed the incident, and records were later destroyed when the Confederate government fled and burned much of the town behind them.

• 1872 --- G.B. Brayton received a patent for the gas-powered streetcar.

• 1877 --- The first Easter Egg Roll was held on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC.
  

  

• 1902 --- The first motion picture theatre opened in Los Angeles. The Electric Theatre charged a dime to see an hour’s entertainment, including the films, The Capture of the Biddle Brothers and New York in a Blizzard. Now that’s entertainment!

• 1905 --- The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy.
  

  

• 1917 --- President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, "The world must be made safe for democracy."

• 1917 --- Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana.
  

  

• 1932 --- A $50,000 ransom was paid for the infant son of Charles and Anna Lindbergh. He child was not returned and was found dead the next month.
  

  

• 1958 --- The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics was renamed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA.
  

  

• 1963 --- Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, AL.

• 1967 --- Steve Winwood left the Spencer Davis Group to form Traffic.
  

  

• 1967 --- The Beatles finished recording the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

• 1968 --- The science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey" had its world premiere in Washington, D.C.
  

  

• 1972 --- Actor Burt Reynolds appeared nekkid as a jaybird in

  

  Cosmopolitan magazine. This issue of Cosmo became an instant collector’s item and an additional 700,000 copies had to be printed.

• 1979 --- The world's first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia (now Sverdlosk). By the time it ended six weeks later, 62 people were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also suffered livestock losses from the epidemic.

• 1982 --- Argentina seized British-owned Falkland Islands. The following June Britain took the islands back.
  

  

• 1984 --- John Thompson became the first black coach to lead his team to the NCAA college basketball championship. Georgetown’s Hoyas defeated Houston 84-75 in Seattle for the win.
  

  

• 1989 --- An editorial in the "New York Times" declared that the Cold War was over.

• 1989 --- In an effort to mend strained relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana to meet with Fidel Castro. Castro's suspicions regarding

  

  Gorbachev's economic and political reform measures in the Soviet Union, together with the fact that Russia's ailing economy could no longer support massive economic assistance to Cuba, kept the meetings from achieving any solid agreements.

• 1992 --- A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake of the conviction, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, James Fox, was quoted as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and every charge stuck.” On June 23 of that year, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, dealing a significant blow to organized crime. In December 1990, Gotti was arrested at the Ravenite Social Club, his headquarters in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. The ensuing trial, which started in January 1992, created a media frenzy.

  

  Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, one of Gotti’s top soldiers, made a deal with the government and testified in court against his boss. Gravano admitted to committing 19 murders, 10 of them sanctioned by Gotti. In addition, prosecutors presented secret taped conversations that incriminated Gotti. After deliberating for 13 hours, the jury, came back with a verdict finding Gotti guilty on all counts. He  was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was held in virtual solitary confinement. Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a Springfield, Missouri, medical center for federal prisoners in 2002.

• 1996 --- Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post-war democratic president

• 2002 --- Israel seized control of Bethlehem; Palestinian gunmen forced their way into the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, beginning a 39-day standoff.
  

  

• 2007 --- The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

• Birthdays
• Emmylou Harris
• Emile Zola
• Hans Christian Andersen
• Charlemagne
• Giovanni Casanova
• Catherine Macaulay
• Kurt Adler
• Rosalyn Sanchez
• Leon Russell
• Bill Romanowski
• Walter Chrysler
• Buddy Ebsen
• Herbert Mills
• Sir Alec Guinness
• Jack Webb
• Marvin Gaye