- 89th Day of 2012 / 277 Remaining
- 83 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:59
- Sunset:7:31
- 12 Hr 32 Min
- Moon Rise:11:18am
- Moon Set:1:22am
- Moon’s Phase: 40 %
- 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:3:15am/6:03pm
- Low:10:32am/10:38pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:12.34
- Last Year:24.61
- Normal To Date:20.20
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Knights Of Columbus Founders Day
- National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
- Texas Love the Children's Day
- National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day
- Mule Day-Columbia, Tennessee
- Commemoration Day-Madagascar
- Youth Day-Taiwan
- Boganda Day-Central African Republic
- On This Day In …
- 1848 --- A huge upstream ice jam stopped almost all water flow over Niagara Falls (both American Falls and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls) for several hours. You could actually walk out into the riverbed below the falls.
- 1886 --- Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton concocted Coca-Cola on March 29th and introduced it to the public on May 8th.
- 1932 --- Comedian Jack Benny appeared on radio for the first time. He agreed to join then newspaper columnist, Ed Sullivan, on his radio interview show. Benny got a real taste of radio two months later when he got his own show on the NBC radio network.
- 1951 --- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. Gold supported Greenglass's accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius's fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end. The Rosenberg case garnered worldwide attention. Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping America. The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a "legal lynching." Others pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy, of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon to communists.
- 1951 --- The wonderful Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on Margaret Langdon’s novel, Anna and the King of Siam, opened on Broadway. The King and I starred Yul Brynner in the role of the King of Siam. The king who, along with his subjects, valued tradition above all else. From this day forward, the role of the King of Siam belonged to Yul Brynner and no other. Brynner appeared in this part in more than 4,000 performances on both stage and screen (the Broadway show was adapted for Hollywood in 1956).
- 1962 --- Jack Paar left "The Tonight Show" and an audience of eight million. Fill-in hosts filled in until one of them. Johnny Carson, got the job. Paar had hosted the show for five years. Steve Allen was the original host.
- 1966 --- Leonid Brezhnev became the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He denounced the American policy in Vietnam and called it one of aggression.
- 1971 --- Lt. William L. Calley is found guilty of premeditated murder at My Lai by a U.S. Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Calley, a platoon leader, had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province on March 16, 1968. The unit had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission to locate the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion. The unit entered Son My village but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as they ran from their huts. The soldiers rounded up the survivors and led them to a nearby ditch where they were shot. Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder. During the trial, Chief Army prosecutor Capt. Aubrey Daniel charged that Calley ordered Sgt. Daniel Mitchell to "finish off the rest" of the villagers. The prosecution stressed that all the killings were committed despite the fact that Calley's platoon had met no resistance and that he and his men had not been fired on.
- 1973 --- Under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords signed on January 27, 1973, the last U.S. troops depart South Vietnam, ending nearly 10 years of U.S. military presence in that country. The U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam headquarters was disestablished. Only a Defense Attache Office and a few Marine guards at the Saigon American Embassy remained, although roughly 8,500 U.S. civilians stayed on as technical advisers to the South Vietnamese. Also on this day: As part of the Accords, Hanoi releases the last 67 of its acknowledged American prisoners of war, bringing the total number released to 591.
- 1973 --- After recording On the Cover of ‘Rolling Stone’, Dr. Hook finally got a group shot on the cover of Jann Wenner’s popular rock magazine. Inside, a Rolling Stone writer confirmed that members of the group (Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show) bought five copies of the mag for their moms -- just like in the song’s lyrics!
- 1974 --- The unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA in November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before but only for the purpose of using Venus' gravity to whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three flybys of Mercury between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet and succeeded in mapping about 35 percent of its heavily cratered, moonlike surface. Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system and completes its solar orbit in only 88 earth days. Data sent back by Mariner 10 discounted a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches over 58 earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable, Mercury's surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing the sun to -279 degrees when facing away. The planet has no known satellites. Mariner 10 is the only human-created spacecraft to have visited Mercury to date.
- 1976 --- In Memphis, Bruce Springsteen jumped a fence at Graceland in an attempt to see his idol, Elvis Presley.
- 1979 --- The Committee on Assassinations Report issued by U.S. House of Representatives stated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the result of a conspiracy.
- 1990 --- The world's largest yo-yo was launched from a 160-foot crane in Jasonville, Indiana. Built by the woodwork class at Shakamak High School, the yo-yo was 6-feet in diameter and weighed 820 pounds. It yo-yoed 12 times.
- Birthdays
- Amy Sedaris
- Pearl Mae Bailey
- John Tyler (10th President)
- Cy Young
- Perry Farrell
- John McLaughlin
- Eric Idle
- John Major (Former British prime minister)
- Walt Frazier
- Elle Macpherson
- John Popper
- Jennifer Capriati
- Elihu Thomson
- Samuel Moore Walton
- Sen. Eugene McCarthy
- Bud Cort
- Lucy Lawless