Friday February 6, 2015

KALW | By Joe Burke

Published February 6, 2015 at 7:13 AM PST

37^th Day of 2015 328 Remaining
Spring Begins in 42 Days
Sunrise:7:08
Sunset:5:39
10 Hours 31 Minutes
Moon Rise:8:30pm
Moon Set:8:23am
Phase: 97%
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:12:29am/11:46am
Low:6:30am/6:17pm
Rainfall:
This Year to Date:15.14
Last Year:3.17
Avg YTD:14.62
Annual Avg:23.80
Holidays
Doodle Day
Bubble Gum Day
Give Kids A Smile Day
Lame Duck Day
Wear Red Day
Working Naked Day
National Frozen Yogurt Day
International Bob Marley Day
New Zealand Day-New Zealand
Sami National Day-Finland/Norway/Sweden
On This Day
1778 --- The United States gained official recognition from France as the two nations signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris.
1788 --- Massachusetts became the 6th state to ratify the U.S. constitution.
1829 --- Bollinger Renaudin & Cie. was established. Producers of Champagne Bollinger in the village of Ay in Champagne, France.
1891 --- The Dalton Gang's first attempt at train robbery became a fiasco. Bob, Grat, and Bill tried to rob a Southern Pacific train near Alila, California. While Bill kept any passengers from interfering by shooting over their heads, Bob and Grat forced the engineer to show them the location of the cash-carrying express car. When the engineer tried to slip away, one of the brothers shot him in the stomach. Finding the express car on their own, Bob and Grat demanded that the guard inside open the heavy door. The guard refused and began firing down on them from a small spy hole. Thwarted, the brothers finally gave up and rode away.
1917 --- Just three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's speech of February 3, 1917—in which he broke diplomatic relations with Germany and warned that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted—a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the Anchor Line passenger steamer California off the Irish coast.
1928 --- A woman calling herself Anastasia Tschaikovsky and claiming to be the youngest daughter of the murdered czar of Russia arrives in New York City. She held a press conference on the liner Berengaria, explaining she was here to have her jaw reset. It was broken, she alleged, by a Bolshevik soldier during her narrow escape from the execution of her entire family at Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1918. Tschaikovsky was welcomed to New York by Gleb Botkin, the son of the Romanov family doctor who was executed along with his patients in 1918. Botkin called her "Your Highness" and claimed that she was without a doubt the Grand Duchess Anastasia with whom he had played as a child. A Romanov daughter was missing from the burial site. Could Anastasia have escaped and resurfaced as Anna Anderson? In 1994, American and English scientists sought to answer this question once and for all. Using a tissue sample of Anderson's recovered from a Virginia hospital, the English team compared her mtDNA with that of the Romanovs. Simultaneously, an American team compared the mtDNA found in a strand of her hair. Both teams came to the same decisive conclusion: Anna Anderson was not a Romanov. Later, the scientists compared Anna Anderson's mtDNA with that of Karl Maucher, a great nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. The DNA was a match, finally proving the theory put forth by a German investigator in the 1920s. One of the great mysteries of the 20th century was solved.
1933 --- The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. The amendment moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January.
1937 --- John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, the story of the bond between two migrant workers, is published. He adapted the book into a three-act play, which was produced the same year. The story brought national attention to Steinbeck's work, which had started to catch on in 1935 with the publication of his first successful novel, Tortilla Flat. His work after World War II, including Cannery Row and The Pearl, continued to offer social criticism but became more sentimental. Steinbeck tried his hand at movie scripts in the 1940s, writing successful films like Forgotten Village (1941) and Viva Zapata (1952). He also took up the serious study of marine biology and published a nonfiction book, The Sea of Cortez, in 1941. His 1962 nonfiction book, Travels with Charlie, describes his travels across the United States in a camper truck with his poodle, Charlie. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962
1952 --- King George VI of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dies in his sleep at the royal estate at Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of the king's two daughters and next in line to succeed him, was in Kenya at the time of her father's death; she was crowned Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, at age 27.
1958 --- A British European Airways flight crashes just after takeoff from the Munich Airport. Twenty-three people died in the crash, including eight players from the Manchester United soccer team, which had just qualified for the semifinals of the European Cup. Twenty-two of the 43 people on board died in the crash. Seven players were among the dead and an eighth, Duncan Edwards, died from his injuries two weeks later, bringing the total death toll to 23. Coach Busby suffered severe injuries and was in critical condition for weeks. The plane's captain survived the crash and was later charged with criminal negligence after photos appeared to show that he had ignored an icy buildup on the wings. A subsequent investigation revealed that there was little ice on the wings but that slush at the end of the runway had slowed the plane at a critical point in the takeoff, making it impossible to achieve proper lift. Still, German prosecutors did not clear the captain until 1968. That same year, Coach Busby led Manchester United to their first European Cup title. The team included two players who had survived the crash.
1966 --- Accompanied by his leading political and military advisers, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky in Honolulu. The talks concluded with issuance of a joint declaration in which the United States promised to help South Vietnam "prevent aggression," develop its economy, and establish "the principles of self-determination of peoples and government by the consent of the governed." Johnson declared: "We are determined to win not only military victory but victory over hunger, disease, and despair." He announced renewed emphasis on "The Other War"--the effort to provide the South Vietnamese rural population with local security, and economic and social programs to win over their active support. In his final statement on the discussions, Johnson warned the South Vietnamese that he would be monitoring their efforts to build democracy, improve education and health care, resettle refugees, and reconstruct South Vietnam's economy.
1971 --- NASA Astronaut Alan B. Shepard used a six-iron that he had brought inside his spacecraft and swung at three golf balls on the surface of the moon.
1993 --- Arthur Ashe, the only African-American man to win Wimbledon and the U.S. and Australian Opens, dies of complications from AIDS, at age 49 in New York City. Ashe's body later laid in state at the governor's mansion in Richmond, Virginia, where thousands of people lined up to pay their respects to the ground-breaking athlete and social activist. Ashe was known for his commitment to charitable causes and humanitarian work. He established tennis programs for inner-city children and campaigned against apartheid in South Africa. Following his retirement, Ashe was a TV sports commentator and columnist and wrote a 3-volume book, "A Hard Road to Glory," about black athletes. In 1988, Ashe learned he had AIDS. It was believed he contracted the HIV virus from a tainted blood transfusion following a 1983 heart operation. Ashe kept his medical condition private until April 1992, when a newspaper informed him of its intention to run an article about his illness. Ashe decided to pre-empt the article and held a news conference to announce he had AIDS. He spent the remainder of his life working to raise awareness about the disease.
1998 --- A judge reinstates the suspended sentence of school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and sends her back to prison for seven years after she is caught violating a no-contact order with her former student Vili Fualaau, when she is found in a vehicle with the boy. Letourneau first met Fualaau when she was a teacher at Shorewood Elementary School, in the Seattle suburb of Burien, Washington, and he was a second-grader. During the summer of 1996, Letourneau, then 34 and a married mother of four, began a sexual relationship with her former sixth-grade student, then 12. In August 2004, Letourneau was released from prison after serving seven and a half years. A judge also lifted a ban prohibiting her from contacting Fualaau, by then an adult. On May 20, 2005, Letourneau, then 43, and Fualaau, then 22, wed in a ceremony with tight security at a winery in Woodinville, Washington. The couple’s two daughters served as flower girls and Letourneau’s daughter from her first marriage, which lasted from 1984 to 1999, was the maid of honor. The television show Entertainment Tonight negotiated exclusive rights to film the ceremony.
2000 --- In Finland, Foreign Minister Tarja Halonen became the first woman to be elected president.
2004 --- An explosion ripped through a Moscow subway car during rush hour, killing 41 people in a terrorist attack blamed on Chechen separatists.
2009 --- The Honda Insight, billed as "the world's first affordable hybrid," goes on sale in Japan. Honda took some 18,000 orders for the car within the first three weeks, pushing Toyota's Prius, known as the world's first mass-produced hybrid vehicle, out of the top-10-selling cars for that month, according to a March 2009 report in The New York Times.
Birthdays
Bob Marley
Babe Ruth
Aaron Burr
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Patrick Macnee
Rip Torn
Fabian Forte
Natalie Cole
Kathy Najimy
Axl Rose
Ronald Reagan
Jeb Stuart
Eva Braun
Francois Truffaut