- 25th Day of 2013 / 340 Remaining
- 54 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:18
- Sunset:5:26
- 10 Hours 8 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:4:28pm
- Moon Set:6:03am
- Moon’s Phase: %
- The Next Full Moon
- January 26 @ 8:40pm
- Full Wolf Moon
Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
- Tides
- High: 10:04am
- Low: 4:15am/5:01pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:13.49
- Last Year:6.03
- Normal To Date:12.72
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Speak Up and Succeed Day
- A Room of One's Own Day
- National Opposite Day
- National Irish Coffee Day
- Dinner Party Day
- Foundation Day-Brazil
- Burns Night-Scotland
- Kirmeline-Lithuania
- On This Day In …
- 1533 --- England's King Henry VIII secretly married Anne Boleyn, his second wife.
- 1858 --- Mendelssohn’s "Wedding March" was presented for the first time, as the daughter of Queen Victoria married the Crown Prince of Prussia.
- 1890 --- The United Mine Workers of America was founded in Columbus, Ohio.
- 1905 --- At the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine's superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the "Cullinan," it was the largest diamond ever found. Frederick Wells was 18 feet below the earth's surface when he spotted a flash of starlight embedded in the wall just above him. His discovery was presented that same afternoon to Sir Thomas Cullinan, who owned the mine. Cullinan then sold the diamond to the Transvaal provincial government, which presented the stone to Britain's King Edward VII as a birthday gift. Worried that the diamond might be stolen in transit from Africa to London, Edward arranged to send a phony diamond aboard a steamer ship loaded with detectives as a diversionary tactic. While the decoy slowly made its way from Africa on the ship, the Cullinan was sent to England in a plain box.
- 1915 --- Alexander Graham Bell in New York spoke to his assistant (Thomas Watson) in San Francisco, inaugurating the first transcontinental telephone service.
- 1924 --- The first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as 12 other events involving a total of six sports. The "International Winter Sports Week," as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games, staged in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the second Winter Olympics. Five years after the birth of the modern Olympics in 1896, the first organized international competition involving winter sports was staged in Sweden. Called the Nordic Games, only Scandinavian countries competed. Like the Olympics, it was staged thereon every four years but always in Sweden. In 1908, figure skating made its way into the Summer Olympics in London, though it was not actually held until October, some three months after the other events were over. In 1911, the IOC proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for the 1912 Stockholm Games, but Sweden, wanting to protect the popularity of the Nordic Games, declined. Germany planned a Winter Olympics to precede the 1916 Berlin Summer Games, but World War I forced the cancellation of both. At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, ice hockey joined figure skating as an official Olympic event, and Canada took home the first of many hockey gold medals. Soon after, an agreement was reached with Scandinavians to stage the IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week. It was so popular among the 16 participating nations that, in 1925, the IOC formally created the Winter Olympics, retroactively making Chamonix the first.
- 1949 --- The first Emmys, the awards presented each year in recognition of excellence in television performance and production, were presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
- 1959 --- American Airlines opened the jet age in the United States with the first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707.
- 1964 --- The Beatles reached the #1 spot on the music charts, as their hit single, I Want to Hold Your Hand, grabbed the top position in Cash Box magazine, as well as on the list of hits on scores of radio stations. It was the first #1 hit for the Beatles. Billboard listed the song as #1 on February 1. The group’s second #1 hit song, She Loves You, was also released this day -- but not on Capitol Records. It was on Swan Records (#4152). Other songs by The Beatles were released on Vee Jay (Please, Please Me), M-G-M (My Bonnie with Tony Sheridan), Tollie (Twist and Shout), Atco (Ain’t She Sweet) and the group’s own label, Apple Records, as well as Capitol.
- 1980 --- Paul McCartney was released from a Tokyo jail where he had been imprisoned for nine days after trying to carry a half pound of marijuana through customs at the Tokyo airport.
- 1981 --- Super Bowl XV (at New Orleans): Oakland Raiders 27, Philadelphia Eagles 10. The second Super Bowl win for the Raiders (they won Super Bowl XI), this one belonged to Oakland all the way. They led 14-0 after one quarter, 14-3 at the half and 24-3 after three quarters. MVP: Raiders’ QB Jim Plunkett. Tickets: $40.00.
- 1995 --- Russia's early-warning defense radar detects an unexpected missile launch near Norway, and Russian military command estimates the missile to be only minutes from impact on Moscow. Moments later, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, his defense minister, and his chief of staff were informed of the missile launch. The nuclear command systems switched to combat mode, and the nuclear suitcases carried by Yeltsin and his top commander were activated for the first time in the history of the Soviet-made weapons system. Five minutes after the launch detection, Russian command determined that the missile's impact point would be outside Russia's borders. Three more minutes passed, and Yeltsin was informed that the launching was likely not part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western nuclear submarines. These conclusions came minutes before Yeltsin and his commanders should have ordered a nuclear response based on standard launch on warning protocols. Later, it was revealed that the missile, launched from Spitzbergen, Norway, was actually carrying instruments for scientific measurements. Nine days before, Norway had notified 35 countries, including Russia, of the exact details of the planned launch. The Russian Defense Ministry had received Norway's announcement but had neglected to inform the on-duty personnel at the early-warning center of the imminent launch. The event raised serious concerns about the quality of the former Soviet Union's nuclear systems.
- Birthdays
- Robert Burns
- W. Somerset Maugham
- Virginia Woolf
- Eduard Shevardnadze
- Alicia Keys
- Gen George Pickett
- Edwin Newman
- Corazon Aquino
- Etta James