- 92nd Day of 2015 273 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 80 Days
- Sunrise:6:52
- Sunset:7:33
- 12 Hours 41 Minutes
- Moon Rise:6:13pm
- Moon Set:5:58am
- Phase:93%
- Full Moon April 4 @ 5:07am
- The name Full Pink Moon came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:10:34am/11:02pm
- Low:4:36am/4:42pm
- Rainfall:
- This Year to Date:17.13
- Last Year:11.92
- Avg YTD:21.54
- Annual Avg:23.80
- Holidays
- Maundy Thursday
- National Ferret Day
- National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
- Reconciliation Day
- Love Your Produce Manager Day
- Tell A Lie Day
- World Autism Day
- International Children’s Book Day
- Sizdah-bedar/National Picnic Day-Iran
- On This Day
- 1513 --- Near present-day St. Augustine, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon comes ashore on the Florida coast, and claims the territory for the Spanish crown. Although other European navigators may have sighted the Florida peninsula before, Ponce de Leon is credited with the first recorded landing and the first detailed exploration of the Florida coast. The Spanish explorer was searching for the “Fountain of Youth,” a fabled water source that was said to bring eternal youth. Ponce de Leon named the peninsula he believed to be an island “La Florida” because his discovery came during the time of the Easter feast, or Pascua Florida.
- 1792 --- The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act to regulate the coins of the United States. The act authorized $10 Eagles, $5 Half Eagles, $2.50 Quarter Eagle gold coins, silver dollars, dollars, quarters, dimes and half-dimes to be minted.
- 1863 --- Shortages of food caused hundreds of angry women gathered in Richmond, Virginia to march on the governor's office and then on the government commissary to demand bread. It ended in a riot when they broke into the commissary and then other shops & buildings and carried out anything they could carry. Even the hospital reported losing over 300 pounds of beef. Arrests were made, but at the request of authorities, the newspapers downplayed the incident, and records were later destroyed when the Confederate government fled and burned much of the town behind them.
- 1905 --- The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy.
- 1917 --- President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. In his address to Congress that day, Wilson lamented it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. Four days later, Congress obliged and declared war on Germany.
- 1917 --- Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana.
- 1963 --- Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, AL.
- 1968 --- The science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey" had its world premiere in Washington, D.C.
- 1972 --- Burt Reynolds appeared nude in "Cosmopolitan" magazine.
- 1975 --- As North Vietnamese tanks and infantry continue to push the remnants of South Vietnam’s 22nd Division and waves of civilian refugees from the Quang Ngai Province, the South Vietnamese Navy begins to evacuate soldiers and civilians by sea from Qui Nhon. Shortly thereafter, the South Vietnamese abandoned Tuy Hoa and Nha Trang, leaving the North Vietnamese in control of more than half of South Vietnam’s territory.
- 1977 --- Racehorse Red Rum wins a historic third Grand National championship at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England, after taking home victory in 1973 and 1974 and finishing second in 1975 and 1976. Red Rum remains the most successful horse in the history of the Grand National, which is considered by many to be the world’s toughest steeplechase race.
- 1979 --- The world’s first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia (now Sverdlosk), on this day in 1979. By the time it ended six weeks later, 62 people were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also suffered livestock losses from the epidemic. As people in Ekaterinburg first began reporting their illnesses, the Soviet government announced that the cause was tainted meat that the victims had eaten. Since the town was known in intelligence circles for its biological-weapons plant, much of the rest of the world was immediately skeptical of the Soviet explanation. It was not until 13 years later, in 1992, that the epidemic was finally explained: workers at the Ekaterinburg weapons plant failed to replace a crucial filter, causing a release of anthrax spores into the outside air. The wind carried the spores to a farming area and infected people and livestock in the area.
- 1982 --- Argentina invades the Falklands Islands, a British colony since 1892 and British possession since 1833. Argentine amphibious forces rapidly overcame the small garrison of British marines at the town of Stanley on East Falkland and the next day seized the dependent territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich group. The 1,800 Falkland Islanders, mostly English-speaking sheep farmers, awaited a British response.
- 1984 --- John Thompson became the first black coach to lead his team to the NCAA college basketball championship.
- 1989 --- In an effort to mend strained relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Havana to meet with Fidel Castro. Castro’s suspicions regarding Gorbachev’s economic and political reform measures in the Soviet Union, together with the fact that Russia’s ailing economy could no longer support massive economic assistance to Cuba, kept the meetings from achieving any solid agreements.
- 1992 --- A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake of the conviction, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, James Fox, was quoted as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and every charge stuck.” On June 23 of that year, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, dealing a significant blow to organized crime.
- 1996 --- Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post-war democratic president.
- 2002 --- Israeli troops surrounded the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 Palestinians had taken refuge at the church when Israel invaded Bethlehem.
- 2007 --- The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
- Birthdays
- Emmylou Harris
- Pamela Reed
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Charlamagne
- Emile Zola
- Max Ernst
- Giovanni Casanova
- Kurt Adler
- Buddy Ebsen
- Herbert Mills
- Sir Alec Guiness
- Marvin Gaye
- Leon Russell
- Linda Hunt
Thursday April 2, 2015
