Wednesday January 8, 2014

• 8^th Day of 2013 / 357 Remaining
• 71 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:25
• Sunset:5:08
• 9 Hours 43 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:12:00pm
• Moon Set: 12:41am
• Moon’s Phase: 57 %

• The Next Full Moon
• January 15 @ 8:35pm
• Full Wolf Moon
• Full Old Moon

January is the month of the Full Wolf Moon. It appeared when wolves howled in hunger outside the villages. It is also known as the Old Moon. To some Native American tribes, this was the Snow Moon, but most applied that name to the next full Moon, in February.

• Tides
• High:4:48am/5:20pm
• Low:11:21am/10:43pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:2.09
• Last Year:13.35
• Average Year to Date:10.26

• Holidays
• National English Toffee Day
• National Joygerm Day
• Show & Tell Day at Work
   
• World Literary Day
• Midwife's Day/Women's Day-Greece
• Commonwealth Day-Northern Marianas
• Takai Day-Niue

• On This Day In …
• 1642 --- Galileo Galilei dies in Italy at age 77. Galileo has been referred to as the "father of modern astronomy," the "father of modern physics" and the "father of science" due to his revolutionary discoveries. The first person to use a telescope to observe the skies, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, sunspots and the solar rotation.

• 1675 --- The first corporation was charted in the United States. The company was the New York Fishing Company.

• 1790 --- President George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address to the assembled Congress in New York City.

• 1800 --- The first soup kitchens in London were opened to serve the poor.

• 1815 --- Two weeks after the War of 1812 officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, U.S. General Andrew Jackson achieves the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans. In September 1814, an impressive American naval victory on Lake Champlain forced invading British forces back into Canada and led to the conclusion of peace negotiations in Ghent, Belgium. Although the peace agreement was signed on December 24, word did not reach the British forces assailing the Gulf coast in time to halt a major attack. On January 8, 1815, the British marched against New Orleans, hoping that by capturing the city they could separate Louisiana from the rest of the United States. Pirate Jean Lafitte, however, had warned the Americans of the attack, and the arriving British found militiamen under General Andrew Jackson strongly entrenched at the Rodriquez Canal. In two separate

  

  assaults, the 7,500 British soldiers under Sir Edward Pakenham were unable to penetrate the U.S. defenses, and Jackson's 4,500 troops, many of them expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee, decimated the British lines. In half an hour, the British had retreated, General Pakenham was dead, and nearly 2,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or missing. U.S. forces suffered only eight killed and 13 wounded. Although the battle had no bearing on the outcome of the war, Jackson's overwhelming victory elevated national pride, which had suffered a number of setbacks during the War of 1812. The Battle of New Orleans was also the last armed engagement between the United States and Britain.

• 1856 --- Borax (hydrated sodium borate) was discovered by Dr. John Veatch near Red Bluff, California.

• 1889 --- The tabulating machine was patented by Dr. Herman Hollerith. His firm, Tabulating Machine Company, later became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
  

  

• 1901 --- The first tournament sanctioned by the American Bowling Congress was held in Chicago, Illinois.
  

  

• 1908 --- A catastrophic train collision occurred in the smoke-filled Park Avenue Tunnel in New York City. Seventeen were killed and thirty-eight were injured. The accident caused a public outcry and increased demand for electric trains.

• 1912 --- The African National Congress was founded in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

• 1925 --- Russian composer Igor Stravinsky appeared in his first American concert. He conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a program of his own compositions.

• 1958 --- Bobby Fischer won the United States Chess Championship for the first time. Fischer was 14 years of age.
  

  

• 1962 --- At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is exhibited for the first time in America. Over 2,000 dignitaries, including President John F. Kennedy, came out that evening to view the famous

  

  painting. The next day, the exhibit opened to the public, and during the next three weeks an estimated 500,000 people came to see it. The painting then traveled to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was seen by another million people.

• 1964 --- President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.

• 1965 --- The TV dance show "Hullabaloo" debuted on NBC.
  

  

• 1966 --- The Beatles LP, Rubber Soul, began a 6-week reign at the top of the album chart. This was the seventh Beatles LP to reach the #1 position since February 1964. Rubber Soul stayed on the charts for 56 weeks. The other #1 albums for the Fab Four to that date were: Meet the Beatles, The Beatles Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles ’65, Beatles VI and Help!.
  

  

• 1973 --- The trial opened in Washington, of seven men accused of bugging Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC.

• 1975 --- Ella Grasso became the governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman to become a governor of a state without a husband preceding her in the governor’s chair.
  

  

• 1992 --- President George H.W. Bush becomes ill on a trip to Japan and vomits on Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi.
  

  

• 1993 --- An Elvis Presley commemorative stamp was debuted by the U.S. Postal Service. The 29-cent stamp showed the likeness of the 1950's era Elvis.
  

  

• 1997 --- Mister (Fred) Rogers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  

  

• 1998 --- Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced in New York to life in prison.

• 1999 --- The top two executives of Salt Lake City’s Olympic organizing committee resigned amid investigations into how far city boosters stooped to win the 2002 Winter Games. Investigators found boosters gave IOC members cash payments up to $70,000 and expensive gifts; and paid educational, travel, housing and medical costs of IOC members and their families.

• 2009 --- In Egypt, archeologists entered a 4,300 year old pyramid and discovered the mummy of Queen Sesheshet.
  

  

• 2011 --- Gabrielle Giffords, a U.S. congresswoman from Arizona, is critically injured when a man goes on a shooting spree during a constituents meeting held by the congresswoman outside a Tucson-area supermarket. Six people died in the attack and another 13, including Giffords, were wounded. The gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, was taken into custody at the scene.

• Birthdays
• Elvis Presley
• Soupy Sales
• Emily Greene Balch
• Bill Graham
• Stephen J Hawking
• Sean Paul
• Shirley Bassey
• Charles Osgood
• Bob Eubanks
• Robbie Krieger
• David Bowie
• R Kelly
• Hilde Myall
• Evelyn Wood
• Jose Ferrer
• James Longstreet
• Larry Storch
• Ron Moody
• Anthony Gourdine
• Al Burke Jr