- 39th Day of 2012 / 327 Remaining
- 41 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:07
- Sunset:5:41
- 10 Hr 34 Min
- Moon Rise:7:03pm
- Moon Set:7:16am
- Moon’s Phase: 99 %
- The Next Full Moon
- March 8 @ 1:41 am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Crust Moon
- Full Sap Moon
- Lenten Moon
As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.
- Tides
- High:10:35am/11:50pm
- Low:4:39am/5:10pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.32
- Last Year:12.67
- Normal To Date:14.07
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Boy Scouts Day
- Laugh and Get Rich Day
- National Molasses Bar Day
- Extraterrestrial Culture Day
- Extraterrestrial Culture Day-New Mexico
- Culture Day (Preseren’s Day)-Slovenia
- Needle Mass (Ha-ri-ku-yo)-Japan
- Youth Day-Republic Of Congo
- On This Day In …
- 1587 --- Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.
- 1693 --- A charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
- 1900 --- In South Africa, British troops under Gen. Buller were beaten at Ladysmith. The British fled over the Tugela River
- 1910 --- Chicago businessman William D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. He didn’t, however, conceptualize the scouting movement -- the Boy Scouts were originated by Englishman, Sir Robert S.S. Baden-Powell. It seems that Mr. Boyce was visiting England and one foggy day in London town, he lost his way. A young boy guided him, but refused any monetary reward. A surprised Mr. Boyce queried as to why. The boy replied that he was a Scout and Scouts did not accept a reward for doing a good turn. This gesture of good will so inspired Boyce that he searched out Baden-Powell to learn more about the British Scouts. Upon his return to the United States, he formed the Boy Scouts of America.
- 1915 --- D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. The silent film was America's first feature-length motion picture and a box-office smash, and during its unprecedented three hours Griffith popularized countless filmmaking techniques that remain central to the art today. However, because of its explicit racism, Birth of a Nation is also regarded as one of the most offensive films ever made. Actually titled The Clansman for its first month of release, the film provides a highly subjective history of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Studied today as a masterpiece of political propaganda, Birth of a Nation caused riots in several cities and was banned in others but was seen by millions. Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, tells the turbulent story of American history in the 1860s, as it followed the fictional lives of two families from the North and the South. Throughout its three hours, African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous. In the film's climax, the Ku Klux Klan rises up to save the South from the Reconstruction Era-prominence of African Americans in Southern public life. Riots and protests broke out at screenings of Birth of a Nation in a number of Northern cities, and the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) embarked on a major campaign to have the film banned. It eventually was censored in several cities, and Griffith agreed to change or cut out some of the film's especially offensive scenes. Nevertheless, millions of people happily paid to witness the spectacle of Birth of a Nation, which featured a cast of more 10,000 people and a dramatic story line far more sophisticated than anything released to that date. For all the gross historical inaccuracies, certain scenes, such as meetings of Congress, Civil War battles, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, were meticulously recreated, lending the film an air of legitimacy that made it so effective as propaganda.
- 1922 --- President Warren Harding had the first radio installed in the White House.
- 1956 --- Buddy Holly signed a recording contract with Decca Records. He left the "e" out of his last name (Holley) and dropped it from his stage name as well.
- 1960 --- Congress opened an investigation into widespread charges of "payola" that disc jockeys were being paid to play certain records. The accused included deejays Alan Freed and Dick Clark. Clark came through the scandal unscathed, but Freed never worked in radio again.
- 1963 --- The Kennedy administration prohibited travel to Cuba and made financial and commercial transactions with Cuba illegal for U.S. citizens.
- 1968 --- The film "Planet of the Apes," starring Charleton Heston, Roddy McDowell, and Kim Hunter, opened through the U.S.
- 1983 --- Gunmen steal the champion Irish race horse Shergar from a stud farm owned by the Aga Khan in County Kildare, Ireland. The five-year-old thoroughbred stallion, named European horse of the year in 1981, was worth $13.5 million and commanded stud fees of approximately $100,000. On the night of the heist, armed men arrived at the home of one of Shergar’s grooms, James Fitzpatrick, and forced him to lead them to the horse and help load him onto a trailer. The kidnappers dropped Fitzpatrick on a remote road later that night and then demanded a ransom of more than $2 million for Shergar’s return. Negotiations with the kidnappers were short-lived and fruitless. Despite a highly publicized search by authorities, Shergar was never seen again and no ransom was paid. The case was never solved, although there were a variety of theories about the identity of the kidnappers.
- 1986 --- Spud Webb, who at 5’7” was one of the shortest players in the history of professional basketball, wins the NBA slam dunk contest, beating his Atlanta Hawks teammate and 1985 dunk champ, the 6’8” Dominique Wilkins.
- 1989 --- A reedited version of the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" opened in New York City. Director David Lean revealed that due to an earlier editing mistake, for 20 years the camels had been moving in the wrong direction and nobody noticed.
- 1993 --- General Motors sued NBC, alleging that "Dateline NBC" had rigged two car-truck crashes to show that some GM pickups were prone to fires after certain types of crashes. The suit was settled the following day by NBC.
- 1996 --- An agreement was reached between the city of Cleveland, the NFL and Art Modell, permitting Modell to move his football franchise, the Cleveland Browns, to Baltimore. As part of the agreement, the name Browns, its team colors, and storied history would remain in the proud city of Cleveland.
- Birthdays
- James Dean
- Jules Verne
- Mary Steenburgen
- John Williams
- Nick Nolte
- Jack Lemmon
- Ted Koppel
- Robert Klein
- Seth Green
- Jacques Cassini
- William Tecumseh Sherman
- Elizabeth Bishop
- Dame Edith Evans
- Lana Turner
- Alejandro Rey
- John Grisham