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Wednesday March 21, 2012

KALW
Published March 21, 2012 at 5:55 AM PDT
Selma, Alabama 1965 (highlighted story below)
Selma, Alabama 1965 (highlighted story below)
  • 81st Day of 2012 / 285 Remaining
  • 91 Days Until Summer Begins
  • Sunrise:7:11
  • Sunset:7:24
  • 12 Hr 14 Min
  • Moon Rise:6:25am
  • Moon Set:6:56pm
  • Moon’s Phase: 1 %
  • 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:11:01am/11:26pm
  • Low:4:57am/5:03pm
  • Rainfall
  • This Year:10.35
  • Last Year:21.37
  • Normal To Date:19.48
  • Annual Average: 22.28
  • Holidays
  • Memory Day
  • National French Bread Day
  • California Strawberry Day
  • Fragrance Day and Flower Day
  • Race Relations Day
  • Common Courtesy Day
  • UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
  • Canberra Day-Australia
  • Noruz (Nauroze)-Iranian/Persian New Year
  • Independence Day-Namibia
  • Human Rights Day-South Africa
  • Mother's Day-Egypt/Syria
  • National Tree Planting Day-Lesotho
  • Youth Day-Tunisia
  • World Down Syndrome Day
  • Alban Eiler (Northern Hemisphere)-Celticism
  • Alban Elued (Southern Hemisphere)-Celticism
  • Mabon-(Southern Hemisphere)-Paganism
  • Ostara-(Northern Hemisphere)-Paganism
  • Shunbun no Hi-Shinto
  • New Year's Day-India
  • On This Day In …
  • 1790 --- Thomas Jefferson took office as America's first secretary of state.
  • 1871 --- Henry Morton Stanley begins his famous search through Africa for the missing British explorer Dr. David Livingstone. In the late 19th century, Europeans and Americans were deeply fascinated by the "Dark Continent" of Africa and its many mysteries. After setting out from Zanzibar in March 1871, Stanley led his caravan of nearly 2,000 men into the interior of Africa. Nearly eight months passed--during which Stanley contracted dysentery, cerebral malaria and smallpox--before the expedition approached the village of Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Sick and poverty-stricken, Livingstone had come to Ujiji that July after living for some time at the mercy of Arab slave traders. When Stanley's caravan entered the village on October 27, flying the American flag, villagers crowded toward the new arrivals. Spotting a white man with a gray beard in the crowd, Stanley stepped toward him and stretched out his hand: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" These words--and Livingstone's grateful response--soon became famous across Europe and the United States.
  • 1939 --- God Bless America, written by Irving Berlin back in 1918 as a tribute by a successful immigrant to his adopted country, was recorded by Kate Smith. Ms. Smith first introduced the song on her Thursday, November 10, 1938 radio show (aired live the day before Armistice Day). God Bless America was a fitting tribute to its composer, who gave all royalties from the very popular and emotional song to the Boy Scouts.
  • 1961 --- The Beatles made their debut in an appearance at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, where they became regulars in a matter of months.
  • 1963 --- Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates.
  • 1965 --- 3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were on hand to provide safe passage for themarch, which twice had been turned back by Alabama state police at Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. In 1965, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to make the small town of Selma the focus of their drive to win voting rights for African Americans in the South. Alabama's governor, George Wallace, was a vocal opponent of the African-American civil rights movement, and local authorities in Selma had consistently thwarted efforts by the Dallas County Voters League and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register local blacks. In spite of repeated registration campaigns, only 2 percent of eligible blacks were on the voter rolls. Furthermore, the local sheriff was notoriously brutal, and so seemed sure to respond in so galling a way as to attract national attention. King had won the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace, and the world's eyes turned to Selma after his arrival there in January 1965. He launched a series of peaceful protests, and by mid-February thousands of protesters in the Selma area had spent time in jail, including King himself. On February 18, a group of white segregationists attacked some peaceful marchers in the nearby town of Marion. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American, was shot by a state trooper in the melee. After he died, King and the SCLC planned a massive march from Selma to Montgomery. Although Governor Wallace promised to prevent it from going forward, on March 7 some 500 demonstrators, led by SCLC leader Hosea Williams and SNCC leader John Lewis, began the 54-mile march to the state capital. After crossing Pettus Bridge, they were met by Alabama state troopers and posse men who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas, and whips after they refused to turn back. Several of the protesters were severely beaten, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television and outraged many Americans. Hundreds of ministers, priests, and rabbis headed to Selma to join the voting rights campaign. King, who was in Atlanta at the time, promised to return to Selma immediately and lead another attempt. On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside. King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. This decision led to criticism from some marchers who called King cowardly. In Selma that night, James Reeb, a white minister from Boston, was fatally beaten by a group of segregationists. Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon Johnson went on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress. "There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem," he said, "...Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." On March 21, U.S. Army troops and federalized Alabama National Guardsmen escorted the marchers across Edmund Pettus Bridge and down Highway 80. When the highway narrowed to two lanes, only 300 marchers were permitted, but thousands more rejoined the Alabama Freedom March as it came into Montgomery on March 25. On the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, King addressed live television cameras and a crowd of 25,000, just a few hundred feet from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he got his start as a minister in 1954. That August, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed African Americans the right to vote.
  • 1976 --- Singer Claudine Longet, formerly the wife of Andy Williams, shot her boyfriend, world skiing champion Spider Sabich. Sabich had tried to throw her and her three children out of his house. Longet was arrested for manslaughter.
  • 1980 --- The TV show Dallas left viewers wondering, "Who Shot J.R.?" When the series resumed in the fall, 300-million viewers in 57 countries tuned in to see Kristin pull the trigger.
  • 1980 --- U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
  • 1989 --- Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison after his conviction was overturned. The documentary "The Thin Blue Line" had challenged evidence of Adams' conviction for killing a police officer.
  • 1999 --- Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed in the Egyptian desert, having completed the 1st 'Around the World' hot air balloon flight.  According to the BBC, they carried fresh food, including bread, cheese and pre-cooked steaks to last for 6 or 7 days, after which they made due with dried foods such as cereals and powdered milk.  The flight began in the Swiss Alps, took 19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes, and covered 29,056 non-stop miles.
  • 2000 --- A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government lacked authority to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.
  • Birthdays
  • Johann Sebastian Bach
  • Gary Oldman
  • Matthew Broderick
  • Eddie Money
  • Rosie O'Donnell
  • Ronaldinho
  • Florenz Ziegfeld
  • Benito Juarez
  • Alice Henry
  • John D. III Rockefeller
  • Julio Gallo