Wednesday February 19, 2014

• 50^th Day of 2014 / 315 Remaining
• 29 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:6:53
• Sunset:5:53
• 11 Hours of Daylight

• Moon Rise:10:46pm
• Moon Set:9:10am
• Moon’s Phase: 79 %

• The Next Full Moon
• February 14 @ 3:54 pm
• Full Snow Moon
• Full Hunger Moon

Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult.

• Tides
• High:1:16am/1:31pm
• Low:7:28am/7:19pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:5.88
• Last Year:14.32
• Average Year to Date:16.71

• Holidays
• National Chocolate Mint Day

• National Democracy Day-Nepal
• Flag Day-Turkmenistan
• Family Day-Saskatchewan, Canada

• On This Day In …
• 1807 --- Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, is arrested in Alabama on charges of treason, for plotting to annex Spanish

  

  territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic.

• 1846 --- The formal transfer of government between Texas and the United States took place. Texas had officially become a state on December 29, 1845.

• 1847 --- The first rescuers reach surviving members of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound emigrants stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the summer of 1846, in the midst of a Western-bound fever sweeping the United States, 89 people--including 31 members of the Donner and Reed families--set out in a wagon train from Springfield, Illinois. After arriving at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, the emigrants decided to avoid the usual route and try a new trail recently blazed by California promoter Lansford Hastings, the so-called "Hastings Cutoff." After electing George Donner as their captain, the party departed Fort Bridger in mid-July.  The

  

  shortcut was nothing of the sort: It set the Donner Party back nearly three weeks and cost them much-needed supplies. After suffering great hardships in the Wasatch Mountains, the Great Salt Lake Desert and along the Humboldt River, they finally reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains in early October. Despite the lateness of the season, the emigrants continued to press on, and on October 28 they camped at Truckee Lake, located in the high mountains 21 kilometers northwest of Lake Tahoe. Overnight, an early winter storm blanketed the ground with snow, blocking the mountain pass and trapping the Donner Party.

• 1851 --- An angry mob in San Francisco's business district "tries" two Australian suspects in the robbery and assault of C. J. Jansen. When the makeshift jury deadlocked, the suspects were returned to law enforcement officials. Vigilantes were fairly common during the

  

  Gold Rush boom in San Francisco. One committee spent most of its time rooting out Australian ne'er-do-wells. They hanged four and tossed another 30 out of town. In 1856, a 6,000-member vigilante group was assembled after a couple of high-profile shooting incidents. This lynch mob hanged the suspects and then directed their attention to politics.

• 1856 --- The tintype photographic process was patented by Professor Hamilton L. Smith of Gambier, OH.
  

  

• 1878 --- Thomas Alva Edison, famed inventor, patented a music player at his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. (This music device is the one we know as the phonograph.) Here’s the real skinny on the story: Edison paid his assistant $18 to make the device from a sketch Edison had drawn. Originally, Edison had set out to invent a telegraph repeater, but came up with the phonograph or, as he called it, the speaking machine.

• 1881 --- Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

• 1906 --- Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (W.K. Kellogg Company) was founded by Will Keith Kellogg to manufacture breakfast cereals (cornflakes).
  

  

• 1913 --- Cracker Jack began to put prizes in each box.
  

  

• 1942 --- Ten weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable." The military in turn defined the entire West Coast, home to the majority of Americans of Japanese ancestry or citizenship, as a military area. By June, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to remote internment camps built by the U.S. military in scattered locations around the country. For the next two and a half years, many of these Japanese Americans endured extremely difficult living conditions and poor treatment by their military guards.

• 1942 --- Approximately 150 Japanese warplanes attacked the Australian city of Darwin.

• 1945 --- During World War II, some 30,000 United States Marines landed on the Western Pacific island of Iwo Jima, where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The

  

  Americans took control of the strategically important island after a month-long battle.

• 1949 --- The first Bollingen Prize in Poetry ($5,000) was awarded to Ezra Pound. Mr. Pound was presented with the prize for his poetry collection, The Pisan Cantos. Unfortunately, this first award presentation by the Bollingen Foundation was filled with controversy. It seems that Ezra Pound, a talented poet, was also a pro-fascist, and had been charged with treason for broadcasting his political beliefs while in Italy during WWII. Pound was still given the award. The Bollingen Prize was presented annually through 1963 when Robert Frost was the recipient, after which it became a biennial award. The $5,000 award was upped to $10,000 in 1989 when Edgar Bowers was the prize winner, and to $25,000 in 1995. The $25,000 award went to poet, Kenneth Koch.

• 1958 --- The Miracles released their first single "Got A Job."

• 1963 --- "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan was published.
  

  

• 1964 --- Simon & Garfunkel completed the original acoustic version of "Sounds of Silence."

• 1972 --- Paul McCartney released "Give Ireland Back to the Irish." The song was immediately banned by the BBC.
  

  

• 1974 --- Alexander Solzhenitsyn awaits reunion with his family after exile from Russia. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a detailed history of the Soviet prison system, prompted Russia to exile the 55 year-old author. One of Russia's most visible and vocal dissidents, Solzhenitsyn once served an 11-year prison term.

• 1976 --- Rick Stevens (Tower of Power) was arrested and charged in the murders of three men the night before in San Jose, CA. The

  

  reason was believed to be drugs. Stevens and another were found guilty on two counts of murder the following November.

• 1981 --- George Harrison was ordered to pay ABKCO Music the sum of $587,000 for "subconscious plagiarism" between his song, "My Sweet Lord" and the Chiffons "He's So Fine."

• 1985 --- Cherry Coke was introduced by the Coca-Cola Company.
  

  

• 2003 --- In West Warwick, Rhode Island, 99 people were killed when fire destroyed the nightclub The Station. The fire started with sparks from a pyrotechnic display being used by Great White. Ty Longley, guitarist for Great White, was one of the victims in the fire.
  

  

• 2004 --- Former Enron Corp. chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was charged with fraud, insider trading and other crimes in connection with the energy trader's collapse. Skilling was later convicted and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.
  

  

• 2007 --- New Jersey became the third state to offer civil unions to gay couples.

• 2008 --- Fidel Castro resigned the Cuban presidency. His brother Raul was later named as his successor.
  

  

• Birthdays
• Smokey Robinson
• Nicoulas Copernicus
• Stan Kenton
• Amy Tan
• Hana Mandlikova
• Seal
• Justine Bateman
• Benecio Del Toro
• Merle Oberon
• Eddie Arcaro
• Lee Marvin
• Dave Wakeling