- 121st Day of 2013 / 244 Remaining
- 51 Days Until The First Day of Summer
- Sunrise:6:12
- Sunset:8:00
- 13 Hours 48 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:1:14am
- Moon Set:11:59am
- Moon’s Phase:58 %
- The Next Full Moon
- May 24 @ 9:27pm
- Full Flower Moon
- Full Corn Planting Moon
- Full Milk Moon
In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:3:27am/5:37pm
- Low:10:23am/11:08pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:16.32
- Last Year:15.62
- Normal To Date:22.98
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Executive Coaching Day
- Keep Kids Alive - Drive 25 Day
- Law Day USA
- Lei Day
- Loyalty Day
- Mother Goose Day
- National Dance Day
- National Infertility Survival Day
- New Homeowner's Day
- School Principal's Day
- Stepmothers Day
- Mother Goose Day
- National Chocolate Parfait Day
- Labor Day/Worker’s Day-International
- Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day)-Israel
- Agriculture Day-Haiti
- Constitution Day-Latvia
- May Day
May Day has been a traditional holiday celebration since ancient times. On this day, spring festivals and Maypoles are common. The Maypole is a tall pole that is covered with streamers, flowers and other decorations of spring. People grab hold of a streamer and dance around the pole to ward off ol’ man Winter for good. It is a way to shake the dreary winter blues once and for all. Since the 1880s, May Day has been celebrated in some countries, particularly socialist nations, as a labor holiday. In Hawaii, May Day is Lei Day. It’s a day when friends, lovers, bosses, relatives ... just about anyone and everyone ... gives the gift of a lei to another, putting it around the receiver’s neck and accompanying it with the traditional kiss. This custom of sharing the aloha spirit with a beautiful floral lei on Lei Day began in 1928. There are many celebrations throughout the Hawaiian islands; some complete with pageants, a Lei Queen and her court, Hawaiian music and hula dances.
- On This Day In …
- 1707 --- The Kingdom of Great Britain was created as a treaty merging England and Scotland took effect.
- 1786 --- Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro" premiered in Vienna.
- 1841 --- The first wagon train left Independence, Missouri for California.
- 1867 --- Reconstruction in the South began with black voter registration.
- 1883 --- William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) had his first Wild West Show.
- 1926 --- Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford's office workers the following August.
- 1931 --- President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building's lights. Hoover's gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York. The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the gleaming 1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing four-and-a-half stories a week. At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world's tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time.
- 1931 --- Singer Kate Smith began her long and illustrious radio career with CBS on this, her birthday. The 24-year-old Smith started out with no sponsors and a paycheck of just $10 a week for the nationally broadcast daily program. However, within 30 days, her salary increased to a more respectable $1,500 a week!
- 1941 --- Orson Welles’ landmark film Citizen Kane began generating such controversy that Radio City Music Hall eventually refused to show it. Instead, Citizen Kane, now revered as one of the greatest movies in history, made its debut at the smaller RKO Palace Theater on this day in 1941. A preview of Citizen Kane in early February 1941 had drawn almost universally favorable reviews from critics. However, one viewer, the leading Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, was incensed by the film and Welles’ portrayal of its protagonist, Charles Foster Kane. She took her concerns to Hearst himself, who soon began waging a full-scale campaign against Welles and his film, barring the Hearst newspapers from running ads for it and enlisting the support of Hollywood bigwigs such as Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was said Hearst was particularly angry over the movie’s depiction of a character based on his companion, Marion Davies, a former showgirl whom he had helped become a popular Hollywood actress. For his part, Welles threatened to sue Hearst for trying to suppress the film and also to sue RKO if the company did not release the film. When Citizen Kane finally opened in May 1941, it was a failure at the box office. Although reviews were favorable, and it was nominated for nine Academy Awards, Welles was booed at that year’s Oscar ceremony, and RKO quietly archived the film. It was only years later, when it was re-released, that Citizen Kane began to garner well-deserved accolades for its pioneering camera and sound work, as well as its complex blend of drama, black comedy, history, biography and even fake-newsreel or “mockumentary” footage that has informed hundreds of films produced since then. It consistently ranks at the top of film critics’ lists, most notably grabbing the No. 1 spot on the American Film Institute’s poll of America’s 100 Greatest Films.
- 1960 --- An American U-2 plane invaded Soviet airspace. The Soviets reacted by shooting down the plane piloted by the C.I.A.’s Francis Gary Powers. It took five days for the Soviets to announce the occurrance to the rest of the world. At first the U.S. referred to the U-2 as a weather reconnaissance plane, denying that Powers was a spy. Later, the U.S. State Department admitted that the mission was to photograph Soviet military installations, and that the mission was justified. Powers was tried as a spy by the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to solitary confinement for 10 years in "Matrosskaya Tishina". In 17 months, he was exchanged for Russian spy Rudolf Abel who had been exposed by the CIA.
- 1969 --- In a speech on the floor of the Senate, George Aiken (R-Vermont), senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urges the Nixon administration to begin an immediate "orderly withdrawal" of U.S. forces from South Vietnam. Aiken said, "It should be started without delay." The speech was widely regarded as the end of the self-imposed moratorium on criticism that senators had been following since the Nixon administration took office.
- 1971 --- A new word was introduced into the American traveling lexicon this day -- Amtrak. The word soon became synonymous with passenger train travel. Amtrak operates under the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.
- 1974 --- The Carpenters performed at U.S. President Nixon's request at a White House dinner for West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
- 1991 --- Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson steals his 939th base to break Lou Brock's record for stolen bases in a career. Henderson stole a total of 1,406 bases in his major league career, almost 500 more than the next closest player. Henderson was also the premiere lead-off hitter of his generation.
- 2003 --- A record-breaking wave of tornadoes begins across the southern and midwestern United States on this day in 2003. By the time the wave is over, more than 500 tornadoes are recorded for the month, shattering the previous record by more than 100.
- 2011 --- President Barack Obama announced that U.S. soldiers had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
- Birthdays
- Judy Collins
- Rita Coolidge
- Mimi Farina
- Wes Anderson
- Glen Ford
- Jack Paar
- Joseph Heller
- Ollie Matson
- Little Walter
- Kate Smith
- “Calamity” Jane/Martha Jane Canary