Friday January 24, 2014

• 24^th Day of 2013 / 341 Remaining
• 55 Days Until The First Day of Spring

• Sunrise:7:18am
• Sunset:5:25pm
• 10 Hours 7 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:12:53am
• Moon Set: 11:46am
• Moon’s Phase: 43 %

• 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:4:15am/5:39pm
• Low:11:16am/10:31pm

• Rainfall
• This Year:2.12
• Last Year:13.49
• Average Year to Date:12.57

• Holidays
• Belly Laugh Day
• National Compliment Day
• National Peanut Butter Day
• Beer Can Appreciation Day

• Economic Liberation Day-Togo

• On This Day In …
• 1848 --- James Marshall discovers gold along the banks of Sutter's Creek in California. A tributary to the South Fork of the American River in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco, Sutter's Creek was named for a Swiss immigrant who came to Mexican California in 1839. John Augustus Sutter became a citizen of Mexico and won a grant of nearly 50,000 acres in the lush Sacramento Valley, where he hoped to create a thriving colony. He built a sturdy fort that became the center of his first town, New Helvetia, and purchased farming implements, livestock, and a

  

  cannon to defend his tiny empire. In the 1840s, Sutter's Fort became the first stopping-off point for overland Anglo-American emigrants coming to California to build farms and ranches. Though sworn to protect the Mexican province from falling under the control of the growing number of Americans, Sutter recognized that his future wealth and influence lay with them. With the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, he threw his support to the Americans, who emerged victorious in the fall of 1847. With the war over and California securely in the hands of the United States, Sutter hired the millwright James Marshall to build a sawmill along the South Fork of the American River in January 1848. In order to redirect the flow of water to the mill's waterwheel, Marshall supervised the

  

  excavation of a shallow millrace. On the morning of January 24, 1848, Marshall was looking over the freshly cut millrace when a sparkle of light in the dark earth caught his eye. Looking more closely, Marshall found that much of the millrace was speckled with what appeared to be small flakes of gold, and he rushed to tell Sutter. After an assayer confirmed that the flakes were indeed gold, Sutter quietly set about gathering up as much of the gold as he could, hoping to keep the discovery a secret. However, word soon leaked out and, within months, the largest gold rush in the world had begun.    (134)

• 1908 --- The Boy Scouts movement begins in England with the publication of the first installment of Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. The name Baden-Powell was already well known to many

  

  English boys, and thousands of them eagerly bought up the handbook. By the end of April, the serialization of Scouting for Boys was completed, and scores of impromptu Boy Scout troops had sprung up across Britain.

• 1922 --- Christian K. Nelson, an ice cream salesman in Onawa, Iowa, was issued patent #1,404,539 for the Eskimo Pie.
  

  

• 1924 --- The Russian city of St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in honor of late revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. The name has since been changed back to St. Petersburg.

• 1935 --- Canned beer makes its debut on this day in 1935. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production. By the late 19th century, cans were instrumental in the mass distribution of foodstuffs, but it wasn't until 1909 that the American

  

  Can Company made its first attempt to can beer. This was unsuccessful, and the American Can Company would have to wait for the end of Prohibition in the United States before it tried again. Finally in 1933, after two years of research, American Can developed a can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.

• 1936 --- Benny Goodman and his orchestra recorded one of the all-time greats, Stompin’ at the Savoy, on Victor Records. The song became such a standard, that, literally, hundreds of artists have

  

  recorded it, including a vocal version by Barry Manilow; believe it or not. The ‘King of Swing’ recorded the song in a session at the Congress Hotel in Chicago.

• 1939 --- An 8.3-magnitude earthquake centered in south central Chile leaves 50,000 people dead and 60,000 injured on this day in 1939. The disaster came just 33 years after another terrible quake in Chile killed tens of thousands.

• 1950 --- P.L. Spencer received a patent (No. 2,495,429) for the microwave oven. (applied for on October 8, 1945).

• 1962 --- Brian Epstein signed with the Beatles as their manager and began to direct their image away from leather jackets. He led them toward a smarter stage presentation, with matching suits and bows to the audience.
  

  

• 1964 --- CBS-TV acquired the rights to televise the National Football League’s 1964-1965 regular season. The move cost CBS $14.1 million a year. The NFL stayed on CBS for 30 years.

• 1972 --- After 28 years of hiding in the jungles of Guam, local farmers discover Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who was unaware that World War II had ended. Guam, a 200-square-mile island in the western Pacific, became a U.S. possession in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In 1941, the Japanese attacked and captured it, and in 1944, after three years of Japanese

  

  occupation, U.S. forces retook Guam. It was at this time that Yokoi, left behind by the retreating Japanese forces, went into hiding rather than surrender to the Americans. In the jungles of Guam, he carved survival tools and for the next three decades waited for the return of the Japanese and his next orders. After he was discovered in 1972, he was finally discharged and sent home to Japan, where he was hailed as a national hero. He subsequently married and returned to Guam for his honeymoon. His handcrafted survival tools and threadbare uniform are on display in the Guam Museum in Agana.
  

  

• 1978 --- A nuclear-powered Soviet satellite plunged through Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated. The radioactive debris was scattered over parts of Canada's Northwest Territory.

• 1980 --- In an action obviously designed as another in a series of very strong reactions to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. officials announce that America is ready to sell military equipment (excluding weapons) to communist China. The surprise statement was part of the U.S. effort to build a closer relationship with the People's Republic of China for use as leverage against possible Soviet aggression.

• 1982 --- At Super Bowl XVI in Pontiac, Michigan the 49ers beat  the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21. The first cold-weather Super Bowl, the game was played in the Pontiac, Michigan Silverdome. The 49ers

  

  led 20-0 at the half, but the Bengals chased and almost caught them in the second half. The Most Valuable Player was 49ers QB Joe Montana. Tickets were $40.00. The CBS telecast was viewed by 110.2 million fans and CBS radio counted 14 million listeners to its broadcast of the game. It was the first Super Bowl Championship for Coach Bill Walsh and the 49ers.
  

  

• 1985 --- Penny Harrington became the first woman police chief of a major city. She assumed the duties as head of the Portland, Oregon, force of 940 officers and staff.

• 1986 --- The Voyager 2 space probe swept past Uranus, coming within 50,679 miles of the seventh planet from the sun.
  

  

• 1992 --- Greg McPherson, a music professor at the University of Massachusetts, filed a $21 million lawsuit against New Kids on the Block manager Maurice Starr. It was alledged that he was not paid for his work on the group's "Hangin' Tough Live" album. McPherson also charged that the group only sang 20 percent of the album and lipsynched in concert.

• 2004 --- NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars three weeks after its identical twin, Spirit.

• Birthdays
• Edith Wharton
• Neil Diamond
• Aaron Neville
• Ray Stevens
• Yakoff Smirnoff
• Nastassja Kinski
• Mary Lou Retton
• Mark Goodson
• Ernest Borgnine
• Oral Roberts
• Doug Kershaw
• Maria Tallchief
• Sharon Tate
• Warren Zevon
• John Belushi
• Jools Holland
• Jerry Marren