- 32nd Day of 2013 / 333 Remaining
- 47 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:13
- Sunset:5:34
- 10 Hours 21 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:11:38pm
- Moon Set:9:58am
- Moon’s Phase: 69 %
- The Next Full Moon
- February 25 @ 12:28pm
- Full Snow Moon
- Full Hunger Moon
Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult.
- Tides
- High: 3:08am/3:23pm
- Low: 9:12am/8:56pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:13.50
- Last Year:6.06
- Normal To Date:13.78
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- African-American Coaches Day
- Freedom Day
- Hula in the Coola Day
- Robinson Crusoe Day
- Working Naked Day
- National Serpent Day
- Bubble Gum Day
- National Baked Alaska Day
- Gederal Territory Day-Malaysia
- Confederal Agreement Day-Senegal
- Imbolc/Oimelc/Brigid(No. Hemisphere)-Paganism/Celticism
- Lunasa/Lammas(So. Hemisphere)-Paganism
- On This Day In …
- 1862 --- The Battle Hymn of the Republic was first published in Atlantic Monthly. The lyric was the work of Julia Ward Howe.
- 1884 --- The first portion, or fascicle, of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, is published. Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of over half a million words, past and present Plans for the dictionary began in 1857 when members of London's Philological Society, who believed there were no up-to-date, error-free English dictionaries available, decided to produce one that would cover all vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon period (1150 A.D.) to the present. Conceived of as a four-volume, 6,400-page work, it was estimated the project would take 10 years to finish. In fact, it took over 40 years until the 125th and final fascicle was published in April 1928 and the full dictionary was complete--at over 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes--and published under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Unlike most English dictionaries, which only list present-day common meanings, the OED provides a detailed chronological history for every word and phrase, citing quotations from a wide range of sources, including classic literature and cookbooks. The OED is famous for its lengthy cross-references and etymologies. The verb "set" merits the OED's longest entry, at approximately 60,000 words and detailing over 430 uses. No sooner was the OED finished than editors began updating it. A supplement, containing new entries and revisions, was published in 1933 and the original dictionary was reprinted in 12 volumes and officially renamed the Oxford English Dictionary. Between 1972 and 1986, an updated 4-volume supplement was published, with new terms from the continually evolving English language plus more words and phrases from North America, Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia. In 1984, Oxford University Press embarked on a five-year, multi-million-dollar project to create an electronic version of the dictionary. The effort required 120 people just to type the pages from the print edition and 50 proofreaders to check their work. In 1992, a CD-ROM version of the dictionary was released, making it much easier to search and retrieve information. Today, the dictionary's second edition is available online to subscribers and is updated quarterly with over 1,000 new entries and revisions. At a whopping 20 volumes weighing over 137 pounds, it would reportedly take one person 120 years to type all 59 million words in the OED.
- 1896 --- By the time the first of his three career-defining operas had its premiere, Giacomo Puccini was no longer living a life of impoverished artistic struggle. His previous opera, Manon Gascaut, had made his name in the world of Italian opera, and, more important, it had earned him a significant advance on his next work. With his debts repaid and a country villa acquired, Puccini was no longer a starving artist, but rather an up-and-coming star embraced by the artistic establishment. It was, perhaps, the perfect vantage point from which to create a work that so famously romanticizes the passionate struggles of the artistic class: La bohème, which was performed for the very first time on this day in 1896, at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy. The libretto of La bohème was based on the immensely popular Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, Henri Murger's 1845 collection of stories depicting the lives and loves of a group of young Parisian "Bohemians"—a label that Murger's work helped popularize. (The label refers to the supposed geographic origins of the Gypsies, whose itinerant, out-of-the-mainstream ways seemed an apt comparison to the alternative lifestyles being led by the growing class of artist-types living in Europe's urban centers.) From Murger's stories, Puccini drew his cast of characters: Colline, the philosopher; Rodolfo, the poet; Marcello, the painter; Schaunard, the musician; and Marcello and Rodolfo's respective love interests, the singer Musetta and the doomed seamstress Mimì. In choosing to write La bohème, Puccini was choosing to involve himself in his own real-life drama. Puccini's friend, the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, was working on an opera of his own, also based on Scènes de la Vie de Bohème and also called La bohème. Puccini's pursuit of the project cost him his friendship with Leoncavallo, who is nevertheless famous for his 1892 opera Pagliacci, but whose own La bohème, completed one year after Puccini's, is now almost never performed. Puccini's La bohème, on the other hand, is second on the list of the world's most-performed operas, behind only his own Madama Butterfly, the third of his acknowledged masterworks (Tosca being the second). Even those who are not opera fans may be more familiar with La bohème than they realize; Puccini's opera acted as inspiration and source material for the late Jonathan Larson in creating the Broadway smash Rent.
- 1904 --- Enrico Caruso recorded his first sides for Victor Records. He did ten songs in the session ... for $4,000.
- 1930 --- The Times published its first crossword puzzle.
- 1960 --- Four 'colored' students from the Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina sat down at the lunch counter in Woolworth's and ordered coffee. They were refused service, but made history.
- 1963 --- Neil Young, at age 17, performed his first professional date at a country club in Winnipeg.
- 1964 --- The governor of Indiana declared that the song "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen was pornographic. He requested that the state's radio stations not play the song.
- 1968 --- During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. The scene was captured in a news photograph.
- 1969 --- Joni Mitchell made her Carnegie Hall debut.
- 1979 --- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.
- 1992 --- U.S. President George Bush (I) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed an agreement of general principles that concluded decades of East-West rivalry and encouraged a future relationship of cooperation. The signing in Washington DC marked the official end of the ‘Cold War’.
- 1999 --- Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gave a vidotaped deposition for senators weighing impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton.
- 2003 --- NASA's space shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. All seven astronauts on board were killed.
- 2010 --- More than 80 artists gathered to record the remake of "We Are The World". The next day Janet Jackson laid down her version of Michael Jackson's part. The song was premiered at the opening of the Winter Olympics on February 12.
- Birthdays
- Langston Hughes
- Don Everly
- Garrett Morris
- Terry Jones
- Bill Mumy
- Sherilyn Fenn
- Lisa Marie Prelsey
- John Ford
- Clark Gable
- SJ Perelman
- Boris Yeltsin
- Sherman Hemsley
- Rick James