- 66th Day of 2012 / 300 Remaining
- 14 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:6:33
- Sunset:6:09
- 11 Hr 36 Min
- Moon Rise:4:42pm
- Moon Set:5:11am
- Moon’s Phase: 97 %
- The Next Full Moon
- March 8 @ 1:41 am
- Full Worm Moon
- Full Sap Moon
- Full Crust 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:8:51am/10:01pm
- Low:2:55am/3:26pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:7.38
- Last Year:18.24
- Normal To Date:17.75
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Namesake Day
- Alamo Day
- National Frozen Food Day
- National Chocolate Cheesecake Day
- Headache Relief Day
- Shrovetide
- Foundation Day-Norfolk Island
- Carnival of Binche-Belgium
- Fasching Sunday-Austria & Germany
- Independence Day-Ghana
- On This Day In …
- 1820 --- The Missouri Compromise was enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed by U.S. President James Monroe. The act admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibited slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.
- 1834 --- The city of Toronto was incorporated.
- 1836 --- The thirteen-day siege of the Alamo by Santa Anna and his army ended. The Mexican army of three thousand men defeated the 189 Texas volunteers.
- 1853 --- Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" opera debuted in Venice.
- 1857 --- The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision on Sanford v. Dred Scott, a case that intensified national divisions over the issue of slavery. In 1834, Dred Scott, a slave, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then Wisconsin territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery. Scott lived in Wisconsin with his master, Dr. John Emerson, for several years before returning to Missouri, a slave state. In 1846, after Emerson died, Scott sued his master's widow for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived as a resident of a free state and territory. He won his suit in a lower court, but the Missouri supreme court reversed the decision. Scott appealed the decision, and as his new master, J.F.A. Sanford, was a resident of New York, a federal court decided to hear the case on the basis of the diversity of state citizenship represented. After a federal district court decided against Scott, the case came on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was divided along slavery and antislavery lines; although the Southern justices had a majority. During the trial, the antislavery justices used the case to defend the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, which had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Southern majority responded by ruling on March 6, 1857, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. Three of the Southern justices also held that African Americans who were slaves or whose ancestors were slaves were not entitled to the rights of a federal citizen and therefore had no standing in court. These rulings all confirmed that, in the view of the nation's highest court, under no condition did Dred Scott have the legal right to request his freedom. The Supreme Court's verdict further inflamed the irrepressible differences in America over the issue of slavery, which in 1861 erupted with the outbreak of the American Civil War.
- 1899 --- The Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registers Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co. Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine, beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19thcentury, it was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to damage the stomach. In 1897, Bayer employee Felix Hoffman found a way to create a stable form of the drug that was easier and more pleasant to take. After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time. The brand name came from "a" for acetyl, "spir" from the spirea plant (a source of salicin) and the suffix "in," commonly used for medications. It quickly became the number-one drug worldwide.
- 1946 --- Ho Chi Minh, the President of Vietnam, struck an agreement with France that recognized his country as an autonomous state within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
- 1948 --- Ralph Edwards created a quiz on radio’s Truth or Consequences called The Walking Man. After ten weeks of guesses by contestants playing the game, it was finally revealed that Jack Benny was The Walking Man.
- 1912 --- Oreo sandwich cookies were first introduced by the National Biscuit Co., which later became Nabisco.
- 1930 --- Retail frozen foods go on sale for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Various fruits, vegetables, meat and fish were offered for sale. Clarence Birdseye had developed the method used to successfully freeze foods on a commercial scale.
- 1955 --- A new comedienne made her San Francisco debut at the Purple Onion club. Phyllis Diller was 37 years old.
- 1959 --- The Drifters recorded "There Goes My Baby."
- 1967 --- U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his plan to establish a draft lottery.
- 1981 --- Walter Cronkite, the dean of American television newscasters, said “And that’s the way it is” for the final time, as he closed the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. An audience estimated at 17,000,000 viewers saw ‘the most trusted man in America’ sign-off. Cronkite retired after more than 30 years in broadcasting. He was replaced by Dan Rather at the anchor desk.
- 1982 --- Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind" entered the pop chart at #88, went on to #5, and won a Grammy as Country Song of the Year. It had been recorded ten years earlier by Elvis Presley.
- 1985 --- Yul Brynner played his famous role as the king in The King and I in his 4,500th performance in the musical. The actor, age 64, opened the successful production on Broadway in 1951.
- 2007 --- Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
- Birthdays
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Michelangelo (Buonarroti)
- Rob Reiner
- Mary Wilson(The Supremes)
- Bob Wills
- David Gilmour(Pink Floyd)
- Ring Lardner
- William Webster
- Alan Greenspan
- Tom Arnold
- Shaquille O'Neal
- Cyrano de Bergerac
- Lou Costello
- Wes Montgomery
- Ed McMahon
- Marion Barry
- Willie Stargell
- Cookie Rojas
- Dame Kiri Te Kanawa