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Wednesday May 23, 2012

William Harvey Carney (highlighted story below)
William Harvey Carney (highlighted story below)
  • 144th Day of 2012 / 222 Remaining
  • 28 Days Until Summer Begins
  • Sunrise:5:54
  • Sunset:8:20
  • 14 Hours 26 Minutes of Daylight
  • Moon Rise:8:02am
  • Moon Set:10:46pm
  • Moon’s Phase: 7 %
  • The Next Full Moon
  • June 4 @ 4:11am
  • Full Strawberry Moon
  • Full Rose Moon
  • Full Milk Moon

This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June, so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!

  • Tides
  • High:12:03am/2:24pm
  • Low:7:09am/7:03pm
  •  
  • Rainfall
  • This Year:15.67
  • Last Year:29.96
  • Normal To Date:23.46
  • Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
  • Holidays
  • National Taffy Day
  • Go For A Walk in Your Swim Fins Day
  • Julia Pierpont Day.
  • Moog Day
  • National Climb a Tree Day
  • Declaration of the Bab-Baha'i
  • International World Turtle Day
  • Linnaeus Day-Sweden
  • National Day-Morocco
  • Victoria Day-Canada
  • Labour Day-Jamaica
  • On This Day In …
  • 1430 --- Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English.
  • 1533 --- Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
  • 1785 --- Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals.
  • 1788 --- South Carolina, the colony originally named in honor of Charles I of England, became one of the United States on this day. The eighth state also has the dubious honor of being the first state to secede at the start of the Civil War in 1861. Its capital city is Columbia. The state bird is, appropriately, the Carolina wren. When a state has so many palmetto palms and beautiful jasmine flowers, what do you do? You choose the yellow jessamine (jasmine) as the state flower and call South Carolina the Palmetto State. Equal opportunity for the plants.
  • 1827 --- The first nursery school in the United States was established in New York City. The school was developed “to relieve parents of the laboring classes from the care of their children ... offering the children protection from weather, from idleness and contamination of evil example.” Yes, it actually meant that mommies and daddies who worked could drop the kiddies off for a truly fun, educational experience with little to fear. Plus, the youngsters got milk and cookies too!
  • 1876 --- Boston’s Joe Borden pitched the very first no-hitter in the history of the National League.
  • 1879 --- Iowa State College, located in Ames, IA, established the first veterinary school in the U.S.
  • 1900 --- Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 18, 1863, while fighting for the Union cause as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. He was the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, which is the nation's highest military honor. The 54th Massachusetts, formed in early 1863, served as the prototype for African American regiments in the Union army. On July 16, 1863, the regiment saw its first action at James Island, South Carolina, performing admirably in a confrontation with experienced Confederate troops. Three days later, the 54th volunteered to lead the assault on Fort Wagner, a highly fortified outpost on Morris Island that was part of the Confederate defense of Charleston Harbor. Struggling against a lethal barrage of cannon and rifle fire, the regiment fought their way to the top of the fort's parapet over several hours. Sergeant William Harvey Carney was wounded there while planting the U.S. flag. The regiment's white commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was killed, and his soldiers were overwhelmed by the fort's defenders and had to fall back. Despite his wound, Carney refused to retreat until he removed the flag, and though successful, he was shot again in the process. The 54th lost 281 of its 600 men in its brave attempt to take Fort Wagner, which throughout the war never fell by force of arms. The 54th went on to perform honorably in expeditions in Georgia and Florida, most notably at the Battle of Olustee. Carney eventually recovered and was discharged with disability on June 30, 1864.
  • 1934 --- Famed fugitives Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are killed in a police ambush near Sailes, Louisiana. A contingent of officers from Texas and Louisiana set up along the highway, waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to appear, and then unloaded a two-minute fusillade of 167 bullets at their car, killing the criminal couple. Bonnie Parker was 19 years old when she met Clyde Barrow while visiting her husband in a Texas jail. Barrow, serving time for burglary, obviously made quite an impression on Parker, because she smuggled a gun, taped to her thigh, into prison to help him escape. He was eventually caught in Ohio and brought back to prison. When a personal appeal from his mother to the Texas governor earned his release in 1932, he vowed never to return. Bonnie and Clyde teamed up shortly thereafter. After Bonnie was caught stealing a car, she had to spend three months in prison, while Clyde went on a robbery spree. He then killed a sheriff and deputy at a barn dance in Oklahoma. In the fall of 1932, the pair spent their time carrying out small-time robberies throughout Texas and Oklahoma. At one such robbery, they picked up W. D. Jones, a gas station attendant, who joined their team for the next 18 months. Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother who was recently pardoned by the new Texas governor, Ma Ferguson, also joined the gang. For some reason, the media latched onto Bonnie and Clyde. The pair loved the attention, posing for snapshots with their arsenal of weapons. In early 1934, they barely escaped a trap in Missouri, killing two lawmen in the ensuing shootout. Buck and his wife, Blanche, were shot and captured, but Buck died from his wounds. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer finally caught up with Bonnie and Clyde in May, after tracking them for more than three months. Today, Bonnie and Clyde have an unwarranted reputation as charming Robin Hoods, mostly due to the sympathetic personalities portrayed in the 1967 classic movie Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.
  • 1949 --- Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin lifted the Berlin Blockade. It had taken 10 months and 18 days of a continuous airlift of goods by the United States to foil Stalin’s attempt at isolating Berlin from the outside world. The U.S. kept more than 2.5 million Berliners in the Western sector of the German city from starvation and freezing ... supplying food, medicine, machinery, clothing and other necessities -- up to 13,000 tons per day. The airlift transormed West Berlin into a symbol of resistance to communism. During the blockade, the U.S. and its allies delivered 2,325,809 tons of supplies, including 23 tons of oranges. Two thirds of the tonage was coal to provide heat during the brutally-cold 1948-49 winter. The round-the-clock airlift, registered 277,804 flights, and a loss of 78 airmen, killed in crashes and other accidents.
  • 1960 --- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announces to the world that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has been captured and will stand trial in Israel. Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question," was seized by Israeli agents in Argentina on May 11 and smuggled to Israel nine days later.
  • 1960 --- A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile travels across the Pacific Ocean and kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii, on this day in 1960. The massive 8.5-magnitude quake had killed thousands in Chile the previous day. The earthquake, involving a severe plate shift, caused a large displacement of water off the coast of southern Chile at 3:11 p.m. Traveling at speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour, the tsunami moved west and north. On the west coast of the United States, the waves caused an estimated $1 million in damages, but were not deadly. The Pacific Tsunami Warning System, established in 1948 in response to another deadly tsunami, worked properly and warnings were issued to Hawaiians six hours before the wave's expected arrival. Some people ignored the warnings, however, and others actually headed to the coast in order to view the wave. Arriving only a minute after predicted, the tsunami destroyed Hilo Bay on the island of Hawaii. Thirty-five-foot waves bent parking meters to the ground and wiped away most buildings. A 10-ton tractor was swept out to sea. Reports indicate that the 20-ton boulders making up the sea wall were moved 500 feet. Sixty-one people died in Hilo, the worst-hit area of the island chain. The tsunami continued to race further west across the Pacific. Ten thousand miles away from the earthquake's epicenter, Japan, despite ample warning time, was not able to warn the people in harm's way. At about 6 p.m., more than a day after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The crushing wave killed 180 people, left 50,000 more homeless and caused $400 million in damages.
  • 1962 --- The National Basketball Association (NBA) agreed to transfer the Philadelphia Warriors to San Francisco, CA. The team became the San Francisco Warriors, and later the Golden State Warriors.
  • 1999 --- Gerry Bloch, at age 81, became the oldest climber to scale El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He broke his own record that he set in 1986 when he was 68 years old.
  • Birthdays
  • Margaret Fuller
  • Arabella Mansfield
  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Joan Collins
  • Drew Carey
  • Jewel
  • Luka Bloom
  • Marvin Hagler
  • Artie Shaw
  • Scatman Crothers
  • Betty Garrett
  • Anatoly Karpov
  • Noel Gallagher