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Friday January 30, 2015

  • 30th Day of 2015 335 Remaining
  • Spring Begins in 49 Days
  • Sunrise:7:14
  • Sunset:5:31
  • 10 Hours 17 Minutes
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  • Moon Rise:2:11pm
  • Moon Set:3:49am
  • Phase: 84%
  • Full Moon February 3 @ 3:10pm
  • 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:7:03am/9:04pm
  • Low:12:57am/2:18pm
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  • Rainfall:
  • This Year to Date:15.14
  • Last Year:2.15
  • Avg YTD:13.47
  • Annual Avg:23.80
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  • Holidays
  • National Croissant Day
  • Preschool Fitness Day
  • National Inane Answering Machine Day
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  • International Fun At Work Day
  • World Leprosy Day
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  • On This Day
  • 1649 --- King Charles I is beheaded for treason. Charles ascended to the English throne in 1625 following the death of his father, King James I. In the first year of his reign, Charles offended his Protestant subjects by marrying Henrietta Maria, a Catholic French princess. He later responded to political opposition to his rule by dissolving Parliament on several occasions and in 1629 decided to rule entirely without Parliament. In 1642, the bitter struggle between king and Parliament for supremacy led to the outbreak of the first English civil war. The Parliamentarians were led by Oliver Cromwell, whose formidable Ironsides force won an important victory against the king's Royalist forces at Marston Moor in 1644 and at Naseby in 1645. As a leader of the New Model Army in the second English civil war, Cromwell helped repel the Royalist invasion of Scotland, and in 1646 Charles surrendered to a Scottish army. In 1648, Charles was forced to appear before a high court controlled by his enemies, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Early in the next year, he was beheaded.
  • 1781 --- Maryland becomes the 13th and final state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, almost three years after the official deadline given by Congress of March 10, 1778.
  • 1798 --- The first brawl in the U.S. House of Representatives took place. Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor. 
  • 1835 --- Andrew Jackson becomes the first American president to experience an assassination attempt. Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, approached Jackson as he left a congressional funeral held in the House chamber of the Capitol building and shot at him, but his gun misfired. A furious 67-year-old Jackson confronted his attacker, clubbing Lawrence several times with his walking cane. During the scuffle, Lawrence managed to pull out a second loaded pistol and pulled the trigger, but it also misfired. Jackson's aides then wrestled Lawrence away from the president, leaving Jackson unharmed but angry and, as it turned out, paranoid.
  • 1847 --- Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco.
  • 1868 --- Charles Darwin's 'Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.' was published.
  • 1920 --- Jujiro Matsuda (1875-1952) forms Toyo Cork Kogyo, a business that makes cork, in Hiroshima, Japan; just over a decade later the company produces its first automobile and eventually changes its name to Mazda. Today, Mazda is known for its affordable, quality-performance vehicles, including the Miata, the world's best-selling two-seat roadster.
  • 1923 --- Jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet cuts his first record, featuring "Wild Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Blues."
  • 1933 --- With the stirring notes of the William Tell Overture and a shout of "Hi-yo, Silver! Away!"The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit's WXYZ radio station. The creation of station-owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker, the "masked rider of the plains" became one of the most popular and enduring western heroes of the 20th century. Joined by his trusty steed, Silver, and loyal Indian scout, Tonto, the Lone Ranger sallied forth to do battle with evil western outlaws and Indians, generally arriving on the scene just in time to save an innocent golden-haired child or sun-bonneted farm wife. The program ran for 2,956 episodes and ended in 1955.
  • 1945 --- A vital supply route linking India to China through Burma is finally cleared for Allied military transports on this day in 1945. The first convoy of 133 trucks under British General Mountbatten left Ledo several weeks earlier, but could not enter China until the Americans were able to remove the last Japanese troops, retreating southward from a Chinese counter-offensive. Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek said the road had broken Japan's siege of China.
  • 1948 --- Mohandas Gandhi, the world's chief advocate of non-violence, is assassinated in New Delhi by a terrorist sponsored by a right-wing Hindu militia group. The murder came only 10 days after a failed attempt on Gandhi's life. Thirty-nine-year-old Nathuram Godse shot the great Indian leader as he made his way through a small crowd to lead a prayer session. The father of Indian independence had angered Hindu extremists by his efforts to bring peace in the wake of the British withdrawal from India. Muslims and Hindus had been fighting a civil war since the decision to the Muslim-dominated western region of India had become separated as Pakistan. Religious-inspired riots were breaking out all over India when Gandhi went on a hunger strike in September 1947.
  • 1956 --- Elvis Presley recorded "Blue Suede Shoes." 
  • 1958 --- The first two-way moving sidewalk was put in service at Love Field in Dallas, TX. The length of the walkway through the airport was 1,435 feet. 
  • 1964 --- January 30 - The U.S. launched Ranger 6. The unmanned spacecraft carried television cameras and was intentionally crash-landed on the moon. The cameras did not return any pictures to Earth. 
  • 1968 --- At dawn on the first day of the Tet holiday truce, Viet Cong forces--supported by large numbers of North Vietnamese troops--launch the largest and best coordinated offensive of the war, drivingg into the center of South Vietnam's seven largest cities and attacking 30 provincial capitals from the Delta to the DMZ. Among the cities taken during the first four days of the offensive were Hue, Dalat, Kontum, and Quang Tri; in the north, all five provincial capitals were overrun. At the same time, enemy forces shelled numerous Allied airfields and bases. In Saigon, a 19-man Viet Cong suicide squad seized the U.S. Embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building's roof and routed them. Nearly 1,000 Viet Cong were believed to have infiltrated Saigon, and it took a week of intense fighting by an estimated 11,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to dislodge them. Militarily, Tet was decidedly an Allied victory, but psychologically and politically, it was a disaster. The offensive was a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but the size and scope of the communist attacks caught the American and South Vietnamese allies by surprise. The early reporting of a smashing communist victory went largely uncorrected in the media and led to a psychological victory for the communists. The heavy U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties incurred during the offensive, coupled with the disillusionment over the earlier overly optimistic reports of progress in the war, accelerated the growing disenchantment with President Johnson's conduct of the war. Johnson, frustrated with his inability to reach a solution in Vietnam, announced on March 31, 1968, that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of his party for re-election.
  • 1969 --- The Beatles perform for the last time in public, on the roof of Apple Studios.
  • 1972 --- In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators are shot dead by British Army paratroopers in an event that becomes known as "Bloody Sunday." The protesters, all Northern Catholics, were marching in protest of the British policy of internment of suspected Irish nationalists. British authorities had ordered the march banned, and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, killing 13 and wounding 17
  • 2009 --- A pro-vegetarian Super Bowl ad from animal rights group Peta was too raunchy for NBC. They turned down the ad featuring several nearly naked models becoming very intimate with a pumpkin, broccoli, asparagus, and eggplant, with the flashing message "Studies show vegetarians have better sex."
  • Birthdays
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Roy Eldridge
  • Barbara Tuchman
  • Dick Martin
  • Dorothy Malone
  • Boris Spassky
  • Dick Cheney
  • Marty Balin
  • Jody Watley
  • Christian Bale
  • Gene Hackman