Friday December 6, 2013

• 340^th Day of 2013 / 25 Remaining
• 15 Days Until The First Day of Winter

• Sunrise:7:11
• Sunset:4:50
• 9 Hours 49 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:10:23am
• Moon Set:9:26pm
• Moon’s Phase: 20 %

• The Next Full Moon
• December 17 @ 1:29amam
• Full Cold Moon
• Full Long Nights Moon

During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.

• Tides
• High:1:42am/12:38pm
• Low:6:48am/7:28pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• This Year: 1.70
• Last Year:8.89
• Normal To Date:5.34
• Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

• Holidays
• National Miner's Day
• National Pawnbrokers Day
• Saint Nicholas Day
• National Gazpacho Day
• Microwave Oven Day

• Constitution Day-Spain
• Independence Day-Finland
• Farmer’s Day-Ghana

• On This Day In …
• 1774 --- Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.

• 1865 --- The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.

• 1866 --- The 2 mile long, 5 foot diameter Chicago Lake Tunnel was completed. It was the first water supply tunnel for a U.S. city.
  

  

• 1868 --- A guard, who had been shot by brothers Frank, William, and Simeon Reno during a train robbery in May, dies of his wounds. His death so infuriated the public that a group of vigilantes yanked the three brothers from their Indiana jail cell five days later and

  

  hanged them. Although the Reno gang—which included another brother, John, as well—had a short reign of terror, they are credited with pulling off the first train robbery in American history and are believed to be the inspiration for criminal copycats like the legendary Jesse James.

• 1883 --- Ladies’ Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper was published for the first time. It became one of the few magazines to reach a circulation of over one million. Paid circulation is over 3,000,000.
  

  

• 1877 --- Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.

• 1902 --- The 8¢ Martha Washington stamp was issued this day. The stamp was the first U.S. definitive or commemorative stamp to feature a woman.
  

  

• 1907 --- In West Virginia's Marion County, an explosion in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah kills 361 coal miners. It was the worst mining disaster in American

  

  history. Nationwide, a total of 3,242 Americans were killed in mine accidents in 1907. In ensuing decades, the United Mine Workers of America labor union and sympathetic legislators forced safety regulations that brought a steady decline in death rates in West Virginia and elsewhere.

• 1921 --- The Irish Free State, comprising four-fifths of Ireland, is declared, ending a five-year Irish struggle for independence from Britain. Like other autonomous nations of the former British Empire, Ireland was to remain part of the British Commonwealth, symbolically subject to the king. The Irish Free State later severed ties with Britain and was renamed Eire, and is now called the Republic of Ireland.

• 1933 --- A federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the United States and England when it came out in 1922. Three years earlier, its serialization in an American review had been cut short by the U.S. Post Office for the same reason. Fortunately, one of James' supporters, Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, published the novel herself in 1922.

• 1947 --- Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry S Truman. In the President’s words, “Here are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no mighty glaciers or rushing streams

  

  wearing away the uplifted land. Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country.”

• 1948 --- Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts debuted on CBS-TV. The show ran for almost 10 years and the redhead introduced such

  

  talent as Pat Boone, The Chordettes, Carmel Quinn, The McGuire Sisters, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Connie Francis, Steve Lawrence and Al Martino.

• 1957 --- AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters were readmitted in 1987.

• 1960 --- Gene Autry was attending the 1960 baseball winter meetings hoping to secure a broadcasting contract for KMPC, his Los Angeles radio station. The ‘Singing Cowboy’ wound up as the owner of the expansion Los Angeles Angels (when no one came forward to bid for the team, Autry made a bid of his own). The team became the showpiece for KMPC. The Angels played their first season in Wrigley Field (capacity 22,000), then rented Dodger Stadium and later moved to Anaheim.

• 1964 --- 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' Christmas special first aired on NBC TV.
  

  

• 1969 --- A free concert at the Altamont Speedway was the brainchild of the Rolling Stones, who hoped to cap off their U.S. tour in late 1969 with a concert that would be the West Coast equivalent of Woodstock, in both scale and spirit. Unlike Woodstock, however, which was the result of months of careful planning by a team of well-funded organizers, Altamont was a largely improvised affair that did not even have a definite venue arranged just days before the event. It was only on Thursday, December 4, 1969, that organizers

  

  settled on the Altamont Speedway location for a free concert that was by then scheduled to include Santana; the Jefferson Airplane; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and the Grateful Dead, all in support of the headlining Stones. The event would also include, infamously, several dozen members the Hells Angels motorcycle gang acting as informal security staff in exchange for $500 worth of beer as a "gratuity." It was dark by the time the concert's next-to-last act, the Grateful Dead, was scheduled to appear. But the Dead had left the venue entirely out of concern for their safety when they learned that Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin had been knocked unconscious by one of the Hells Angels in a melee during his band's performance. It was during the Rolling Stones' set, however, that a 21-year-old Hells Angel named Alan Passaro stabbed a gun-wielding 18-year-old named Meredith Hunter to death just 20 feet in front of the stage where Mick Jagger was performing "Under My Thumb." Unaware of what had just occurred, the Rolling

  

  Stones completed their set without further incident, bringing an end to a tumultuous day that also saw three accidental deaths and four live births. The killing of Meredith Hunter at Altamont was captured on film in Gimme Shelter, the documentary of the Stones' 1969 tour by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, which opens with Jagger viewing the footage in an editing room several months later. In the years since, Jagger has not spoken publicly about the killing, for which Passaro was tried but acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

• 1973 --- Following the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, House Speaker Gerald Ford became the U.S.’s first appointed Vice President. Later, he became the nation’s first non-elected President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon.

• 1992 --- Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers catches his 101st career touchdown reception, breaking the record for most career touchdowns previously held by Steve Largent.

• 1998 --- In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier.
  

  

• 1998 --- Astronauts on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour completed the most difficult task of their 12-day mission, mating modules from Russia and the United States to create the first two building blocks of International Space Station. “We have capture of Zarya,”

  

  Commander Robert Cabana announced when the two pieces came together at approximately 9:07 p.m. EST. “Congratulations to the crew of the good ship Endeavour,” replied Mission Control. “That's terrific.”

• 2002 --- Winona Ryder was sentenced to 36 months of probation and 480 hours of community service stemming from her conviction for shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue. She was also ordered to pay $10,000 in fines and restitution.

• 2004 --- Al-Qaida struck the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with explosives and machine guns, killing nine people.

• 2006 --- An outbreak of illness from the dangerous E. Coli 0157:H7 was reported, with green onions as the suspected cause.  Cases were reported in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, and Utah.

• 2006 --- The bipartisan Iraq Study Group concluded that President George W. Bush's war policies had failed in almost every regard, and said the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."

• Birthdays
• Ira Gershwin
• Irv Robbins
• Judd Apatow
• Tom Hulce
• JoBeth Williams
• Peter Buck
• Gov Andrew Cuomo
• Janine Turner
• Alfred Joyce Kilmer
• James J Braddock
• Agnes Moorhead
• Tish Hinohosa
• Steven Wright