Friday January 17, 2014

KALW

Published January 17, 2014 at 6:08 AM PST

17^th Day of 2013 / 348 Remaining
62 Days Until The First Day of Spring

Sunrise:7:22
Sunset:5:17
9 Hours 55 Minutes of Daylight

Moon Rise:7:06pm
Moon Set: 7:57am
Moon’s Phase: 98 %

The Next Full Moon
February 14 @ 3:54 pm
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:1;09am/11:54am
Low:6:08am/6:32pm

Rainfall
This Year:2.12
Last Year:13.13
Average Year to Date:11.59

Holidays
National Hot Buttered Rum Day
Judgment Day
Kid Inventor's Day
Arbor Day-Florida
Bean Day (Jan 16-17, 2014) Northarvest Bean Growers Association

Liberation Day-Poland

On This Day In …
1871 --- Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco, California received a patent for a cable car system. The public transportation system was put into operation in the city by the bay in 1873, providing a fast, safe way to travel up and down San Francisco’s steep hills. Hallidie realized the necessity for the cable car system when he saw a loaded horse-drawn San Francisco streetcar slide backwards on a slippery hill. It was a summer day in 1869, but the

cobblestones were wet from the usual San Francisco dampness. The heavily weighted car dragged five of the horses to their deaths. The catastrophe prompted Andrew Hallidie and his partners to do something to prevent this from happening again. Hallidie already had the basic product needed to produce his cable car system. His father had filed the first patent in Great Britain for the manufacture of wire rope. Although Andrew was born in England, he had moved to the U.S. in 1852. As a young man, he was able to use his father’s new, tough rope when he designed and built a suspension bridge across Sacramento’s American River. He also had used the wire rope to pull heavy ore cars out of underground gold mines on tracks.

The light bulb went on and his wire-rope manufacturing plant (that he had already moved to San Francisco) began the process of making the new cable car system. A little known fact is that Mr. Hallidie didn’t call them cable cars at first. Originally, one took a trip on ‘the endless wire rope way.’ The cars still run on rails, pulled by an endless steel cable moving on a slot beneath the street surface.

1893 --- Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
1912 --- English explorer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole. Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him there by one month. Scott and his party died during the return trip.
1929 --- Popeye the spinach loving sailor first appeared in the comic strip 'Thimble Theatre.'
1945 --- Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
1945 --- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, was taken into Soviet custody in Budapest, Hungary. (His fate has never been determined.)

1950 --- 11 men steal more than $2 million from the Brinks Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. The culprits weren't caught until January 1956, just days before the statute of limitations for the theft expired. The robbery's mastermind was Anthony "Fats" Pino, a career criminal who recruited a group of 10 other men to stake out

the depot for 18 months to figure out when it held the most money. Pino's men then managed to steal plans for the depot's alarm system, returning them before anyone noticed they were gone. Wearing navy blue coats and chauffeur's caps--similar to the Brinks employee uniforms--with rubber Halloween masks, the thieves entered the depot with copied keys, surprising and tying up several employees inside the company's counting room. Filling 14 canvas bags with cash, coins, checks and money orders--for a total weight of more than half a ton--the men were out and in their getaway car in about 30 minutes. Their haul? More than $2.7 million--the largest robbery in U.S. history up until that time. The gang promised to stay out of trouble and not touch the money for six years in order for the statute of limitations to run out. They might have made it, but for the fact that one man, Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe, left his share with another member in order to serve a prison sentence for another burglary. While in jail, O'Keefe wrote bitterly to his cohorts demanding money and hinting he might talk. The group sent a hit man to kill O'Keefe, but he was caught before completing his task.

The wounded O'Keefe made a deal with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to testify against his fellow robbers. Eight of the Brinks robbers were caught, convicted and given life sentences. Two more died before they could go to trial. Only a small part of the money was ever recovered; the rest is fabled to be hidden in the hills north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

1953 --- A prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors' (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
1961 --- In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the "military-industrial complex" that has developed in the post-World War II years. A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. No longer could the U.S. afford the "emergency improvisation" that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was "compelled to create a permanent armaments industry" and a huge military force. He admitted that the Cold War made clear the "imperative need for this development," but he was gravely concerned about "the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex." In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." Eisenhower's blunt language stunned some of his supporters. They

believed that the man who led the country to victory in Europe in World War II and guided the nation through some of the darkest moments of the Cold War was too negative toward the military-industrial complex that was the backbone of America's defense. For most listeners, however, it seemed clear that Eisenhower was merely stating the obvious. World War II and the ensuing Cold War resulted in the development of a large and powerful defense establishment. Necessary though that development might be, Eisenhower warned, this new military-industrial complex could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was designed to protect.

1971 --- Marvin Gaye sang the U.S. national anthem at Super Bowl V in Miami, FL.

1994 --- An earthquake rocks Los Angeles, California, killing 54 people and causing billions of dollars in damages. The Northridge

quake (named after the San Fernando Valley community near the epicenter) was one of the most damaging in U.S. history. It was 4:31 a.m. when the 6.7-magnitude quake struck the San Fernando Valley, a densely populated area of Los Angeles located 20 miles northeast of the city's downtown. With an epicenter 12 miles

beneath the earth's surface, the earthquake caused the collapse of several apartment buildings.

1994 --- Actors Donny Osmond and Danny Bonaduce slugged it out in a three-round charity boxing match in Chicago, Illinois. The winner: Bonaduce, who bloodied Osmond’s nose in the two-to-one decision. The match was set up after Osmond taunted Bonaduce at the gym where both men were working out.
1995 --- A 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit Kobe, Japan.

The ‘Great Hanshin Earthquake’ happened at 5:46 a.m., killing at least 6,000 people and injured more than 26,000. The quake damaged or destroyed more than 56,000 buildings.
1998 --- U.S. President Clinton gave his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against him. He was the first U.S. President to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil lawsuit.
2001 --- Faced with an electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.
2001 --- Congo's President Laurent Kabila was shot and killed during a coup attempt. Congolese officials temporarily placed Kabila's son in charge of the government.

Birthdays
Muhammad Ali
Benjamin Franklin
Michelle Obama
Eartha Kitt
James Earl Jones
Maury Povich
Mick Taylor
Susanna Hoffs
Betty White
Al Capone
Jim Carrey
Kid Rock
Anne Bronte
Mack Sennett
Anton Chekov