- 93rd Day of 2013 / 272 Remaining
- 79 Days Until The First Day of Summer
- Sunrise:6:50
- Sunset:7:35
- 12 Hours 45 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:2:30am
- Moon Set:1:00pm
- Moon’s Phase:43 %
- The Next Full Moon
- April 25 @ 12:59pm
- Full Pink Moon
- Full Sprouting Grass Moon
- Full Egg Moon
- Full Fish Moon
This moon’s 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:4:55am/7:11pm
- Low:11:58am
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:15.77
- Last Year:12.88
- Normal To Date:21.61
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Tweed Day
- Anniversary - Pony Express Mail Service
- National Chocolate Mousse Day
- Whole Grain Sampling Day
- Mothering Sunday-United Kingdom
- On This Day In …
- 1829 --- James Carrington patented the coffee mill.
- 1860 --- The first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet's arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America's imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph or an efficient transcontinental railroad.The Pony Express debuted at a time before radios and telephones, when California, which achieved statehood in 1850, was still largely cut off from the eastern part of the country. Letters sent from New York to the West Coast traveled by ship, which typically took at least a month, or by stagecoach on the recently established Butterfield Express overland route, which could take from three weeks to many months to arrive. Compared to the snail's pace of the existing delivery methods, the Pony Express' average delivery time of 10 days seemed like lightning speed.
- 1866 --- Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld of Yonkers, New York patented a blocking and shaping machine for hats.
- 1882 --- Jesse James, one of America's most notorious outlaws, is shot to death by Robert Ford, a member of his gang who hoped to collect the bounty on Jesse's head. Jesse James, born in Clay County, Missouri, in 1847, joined a Confederate guerrilla band led by William Quantrill at the age of 15. After the war's end in 1865, Jesse, his brother Frank, and brothers Cole, James, and Robert Younger decided to team up and use their military raiding skills for armed robbery. In February 1866, 18-year-old Jesse planned their first target: a bank in Liberty, Missouri. On February 13, Frank James led a group of about a dozen men, including Cole Younger and other former Confederate guerrillas, in the first recorded daylight bank robbery in the United States. They left the bank with $60,000 in gold and silver coins, paper money, and government securities.
- 1933 --- First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized "3.2" beer.
- 1948 --- Even the most ardent non-fans of country music can probably name the weekly live show and radio program that is regarded as country music's biggest stage: the Grand Ole Opry, out of Nashville, Tennessee. Yet even many committed country fans are unfamiliar with a program that, during its 1950s heyday, eclipsed even the Opry in terms of its impact on country music itself. From its premiere on this day in 1948 to its final weekly show in 1960, The Lousiana Hayride, out of Shreveport, Louisiana, launched the careers not only of several country-music giants, but also of a young, genre-crossing singer named Elvis Presley, the future King of Rock and Roll. In many ways, The Louisiana Hayride was a straightforward knock-off of the Grand Ole Opry, but with two key differences. While both programs focused on country music and targeted the same geographic area with their 50,000-watt signals, The Louisiana Hayride embraced new artists and new musical innovations that the staunchly traditionalist Grand Ole Opry would never consider. While the Opry would rarely if ever feature a performer who had not yet had a hit record, the Hayride often featured up-and-coming artists who had yet to find an audience. And while the Opry banned the electric guitar, the Hayride embraced the instrument that would help transform one strain of "hillbilly music" into the new, hybrid form called rock and roll.
- 1955 --- The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges. The U.S. Customs Department had seized some 520 copies of the book several weeks earlier as the book entered the U.S. from England, where it had been printed. Poet Allen Ginsberg had first read the title poem, Howl, at a poetry reading in the fall of 1956 to enormous acclaim from his fellow Beat poets. The poem's racy language, frank subject matter, and lack of form offended some conservative readers, but to young people in the 1960s, it sounded a call to revolt against convention.
- 1956 --- Elvis Presley performed on "The Milton Berle Show." The show was broadcast live from the aircraft carrier USS Hancock. Elvis played the songs "Heartbreak Hotel," "Money, Honey," and "Blue Suede Shoes."
- 1965 --- Bob Dylan appeared on the pop music charts for the first time. Subterranean Homesick Blues entered the Top 40 at number 39. The song stayed on the charts for eight weeks. Dylan would chart a total of 12 singles on the pop charts between 1965 and 1979. He appeared in the films Don’t Look Back, Eat the Document and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He made the film Renaldo and Clara in 1978. Dylan co-starred in the film Hearts of Fire in 1987. He became a member of the Traveling Wilburys and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Dylan won the Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.
- 1968 --- Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., less than 24 hours before he was assassinated.
- 1974 --- The Super Tornado Outbreak. 148 tornadoes in 13 states in 26 hours. The world's largest tornado outbreak in recorded history. It included six F5 tornadoes and 30 F4 tornadoes. The first tornado hit at 1 p.m. and the final tornado hit at 2 a.m. the following morning.
- 1979 --- Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago.
- 1982 --- The temperature in Lamberton, Minnesota dropped from 78 degrees F to 7 degrees F in 24 hours. The 71 degree drop in temperature is a Minnesota record.
- 1996 --- At his small wilderness cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Theodore John Kaczynski is arrested by FBI agents and accused of being the Unabomber, the elusive terrorist blamed for 16 mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 during an 18-year period. Kaczynski, born in Chicago in 1942, won a scholarship to study mathematics at Harvard University at age 16. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Although celebrated as a brilliant mathematician, he suffered from persistent social and emotional problems, and in 1969 abruptly ended his promising career at Berkeley. Disillusioned with the world around him, he tried to buy land in the Canadian wilderness but in 1971 settled for a 1.4-acre plot near his brother's home in Montana. For the next 25 years, Kaczynski lived as a hermit, occasionally working odd jobs and traveling but mostly living off his land. He developed a philosophy of radical environmentalism and militant opposition to modern technology, and tried to get academic essays on the subjects published. It was the rejection of one of his papers by two Chicago-area universities in 1978 that may have prompted him to manufacture and deliver his first mail bomb. Indicted on more than a dozen federal charges, he appeared briefly in court in 1996 to plead not guilty to all charges. During the next year and a half, Kaczynski wrangled with his defense attorneys, who wanted to issue an insanity plea against his wishes. Kaczynski wanted to defend what he saw as legitimate political motives in carrying out the attacks, but at the start of the Unabomber trial in January 1998 the judge rejected his requests to acquire a new defense team and represent himself. On January 22, Kaczynski pleaded guilty on all counts and was spared the death penalty. He showed no remorse for his crimes and in May was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years.
- Birthdays
- Herb Caen
- Gertrude “Ma” Rainey
- Washington Irving
- Henry R Luce
- Marlon Brando
- Eddie Murphy
- Alec Baldwin
- Jane Goodall
- Helmut Kohl
- Wayne Newton
- Tony Orlando
- Richard Thompson
- David Hyde Peirce
- Jenny Garth
- William Marcy “Boss” Tweed
- Bud Fischer
- Virgil Grissom
- Doris Day
- Jimmy McGriff
- Marsha Mason