- 74th Day of 2012 / 292 Remaining
- 6 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:21
- Sunset:7:17
- 11 Hr 56 Min
- Moon Rise:1:50am
- Moon Set:11:47am
- Moon’s Phase: Last Quarter
- The Next Full Moon
- April 6 @ 2:20pm
- Full Pink Moon
- Full Fish Moon
- Full Sprouting Grass Moon
- Full 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 Full Fish Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:3:51am/6:09pm
- Low:11:00am/10:58pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:7.72
- Last Year:18.63
- Normal To Date:18.73
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Moth-er Day(a day to honor moth collectors)
- Pi Day
- National Potato Chip Day
- Ten Most Wanted Day
- Commonwealth Day-UK
- Constitution Day-Andorra
- White Day-Japan
- New Year-Sikhism
- On This Day In …
- 1489 --- Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, sold her kingdom to Venice. She was the last of the Lusignan dynasty.
- 1629 --- A Royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
- 1743 --- The first recorded town meeting in America was held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
- 1794 --- Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin, making it possible to clean 50 pounds of cotton a day, compared to a pound a day before Whitney’s invention.
- 1891 --- The submarine Monarch laid telephone cable along the bottom of the English Channel to prepare for the first telephone links across the Channel.
- 1914 --- Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes.
- 1937 --- Fred Allen and Jack Benny met on radio in one of the biggest publicity gags ever. It was called, “The Battle of the Century.” The two comedians locked horns in the ballroom of the Hotel Pierre, exchanging torrid insults that were heard by the second largest audience in the history of radio. The ‘feud’, incidentally, lasted for the next 12 years! This was probably the longest-running publicity stunt in history, too!
- 1939 --- The Republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation.
- 1943 --- U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane while in office.
- 1950 --- Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the "toughest guys" the FBI wanted to capture. The story drew so much public attention that the "Ten Most Wanted" list was given the okay by J. Edgar Hoover the following year. As of 2011, 465 of the criminals included on the list have been apprehended or located, 153 as a result of tips from the public. The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) of the FBI asks all fifty-six field offices to submit candidates for inclusion on the list. The CID in association with the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs then proposes finalists for approval of by the FBI's Deputy Director. The criteria for selection is simple, the criminal must have a lengthy record and current pending charges that make him or her particularly dangerous. And the the FBI must believe that the publicity attendant to placement on the list will assist in the apprehension of the fugitive.
- 1958 --- Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the first gold record. It was Perry Como’s Catch a Falling Star on RCA Victor Records. The tune became the first to win million-seller certification, though other songs dating as far back as the 1920s may have sold a million records or more. Due to lack of a certification organization like the RIAA, they weren’t awarded the golden platter. The next three gold records that were certified after Perry Como’s million seller were the 45 rpm recordings of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands by Laurie London, Patricia, an instrumental by the ‘Mambo King’, Perez Prado and Hard Headed Woman by Elvis Presley. The first gold-album certification went to the soundtrack of the motion picture, Oklahoma!, featuring Gordon MacRae.
- 1964 --- Billboard magazine reported that Beatles recordings were claiming 60% of the singles sales in the U.S.
- 1964 --- A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John Kennedy.
- 1968 --- After two seasons on television, ABC-TV showed the last episode of Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as Robin. The first Batman episode was Hi Diddle Riddle, shown on January 12, 1966. The pilot program for Batman cost $300,000 -- quite expensive by 1966 standards. Through the two seasons, the ‘Dynamic Duo’ welcomed these stars to the cast: Art Carney (The Archer), Tallulah Bankhead (Black Widow), Eartha Kitt (Catwoman), Julie Newmar (Catwoman), Lee Meriwether (Catwoman), Liberace (Chandell), Vincent Price (Egghead), Cesar Romero (The Joker), Rudy Vallee (Lord Phogg), Milton Berle (Louie the Lilac), Shelley Winters (Ma Parker), David Wayne (The Mad Hatter), Zsa Zsa Gabor (Minerva), Van Johnson (The Minstrel), Otto Preminger (Mr. Freeze), Burgess Meredith (The Penguin), John Astin (The Riddler), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Cliff Robertson (Shame), Joan Collins (The Siren) and Anne Baxter (Zelda the Great). Finally, a partial list of official Bat-Noises: Aargh!, Clash!, Crunch!, Klonk!, Pow!, Splat!, Clunk! Eee-Yow! Ooof!, Powie! Swoosh!, Biff!, Conck! Ouch!, Qunkk!, Thunk! Boff! Crash!, Uggh!, Zam!, Zap! and others. Wow!
- 1972 --- The April issue of Cosmopolitan revealed Burt Reynolds as the magazine’s first nude centerfold.
- 1972 --- California governor Ronald Reagan pardoned convicted burglar Merle Haggard as "fully rehabilitated." Haggard had served two-and-a-half years at San Quentin.
- 1990 --- Church officials in Belgium discovered that eight nuns had sold their convent in Bruges for $1.4 million, moved to France, and bought a castle
- 1991 --- In the face of widespread questioning of their guilt, British authorities release the so-called "Birmingham Six," six Irish men who had been sent to prison 16 years earlier for the 1974 terrorist bombings of two Birmingham, England, pubs. On November 21, 1974, two Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs exploded in two separate Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring hundreds. The bombing attacks were part of the ongoing conflict between the British government and the IRA over the status of Northern Ireland. Days after the Birmingham bombings, the British government outlawed the IRA in all the United Kingdom, and authorities rushed to arrest and convict the IRA members responsible. Six Irish suspects were arrested and sent to interrogation, where four of them signed confessions. The IRA, which claimed responsibility for the Birmingham bombings, declared that the six were not members of its organization. During the subsequent trial, the defendants maintained their innocence, claiming that police had beaten the confessions out of them. Prosecutors denied this and also came up with forensic evidence that apparently proved that the Birmingham Six had handled explosives shortly before their arrest. They were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. In 1985, the forensic evidence was exposed by scientists as unreliable at best, and in 1987 an appeals judge conceded that the same results could be obtained from testing people who recently touched playing cards or cigarette paper. However, it was not until March 1991, with people across Britain and Ireland calling for their release, that the Birmingham Six were freed after years in prison. Seven years later, a British court of appeals formally overturned their sentences, citing serious doubts about the legitimacy of the police evidence and the treatment of the suspects during their interrogation.
- 2002 --- A Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A five-judge court ruled unanimously that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was guilty of bringing down the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.
- 2005 --- A judge in San Francisco ruled that California's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional.
- Birthdays
- Albert Einstein
- Quincy Jones
- Billy Crystal
- Frank Borman
- Michael Caine
- Johann Strauss
- Casey Jones
- Les Brown
- Lucy Hobbs Taylor (the first American woman to graduate from dental school)
- Hank Ketcham
- Wes Unseld