Today is Thursday, the 14th of February of 2019. It is the 45th day of the year. There are 320 days remaining until the end of the year. 34 days until spring begins. 628 days until presidential elections Tuesday November 3, 2020...
(1 year 8 months and 20 days from today)
The sun rose this morning at 7:00 am
and the sun sets at 5:49 pm.
Today we will have 10 hours and 49 minutes of daylight.
The solar noon will be at 12:24 pm.
The first high tide will be at 6:07am
and the next high tide at 8:38 pm.
The only low tide of the day will be at 1:16 pm.
The Moon is 67.2% visible; a Waxing Gibbous
Moon Direction:324.90° NW↑
Moon Altitude:-25.70°
Moon Distance:233214 mi
Next Full Moon: Tuesday February 19, 2019 at 7:53 am
Next New Moon: Wednesday March 6, 2019 at 8:03 am
Next Moonrise: Today at 12:43 pm
Today is…
National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day
February 14 is a 2005 Indian Tamil romance film
Today is also…
Statehood Day (Arizona, United States)
Statehood Day (Oregon, United States)
Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Armenian Apostolic Church)
Parents' Worship Day (parts of India)
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this day with…
1894 – Jack Benny, American actor and producer (d. 1974)
1913 – Jimmy Hoffa, American trade union leader (d. 1975)
1916 – Edward Platt, American actor (d. 1974)
1921 – Hugh Downs, American journalist, game show host, and producer
1929 – Vic Morrow, American actor and director (d. 1982)
1934 – Florence Henderson, American actress and singer (d. 2016)
1937 – Magic Sam, American singer and guitarist (d. 1969)
1939 – Blowfly, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2016)
1941 – Donna Shalala, American academic and politician, 18th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services
1941 – Paul Tsongas, American lawyer and politician (d. 1997)
1942 – Michael Bloomberg, American businessman and politician, 108th Mayor of New York City
1943 – Eric Andersen, American singer-songwriter
1943 – Maceo Parker, American saxophonist
1944 – Carl Bernstein, American journalist and author
1946 – Gregory Hines, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 2003)
1947 – Tim Buckley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1975)
1948 – Kitten Natividad, Mexican-American actress and dancer
1948 – Pat O'Brien, American journalist and author
1951 – Terry Gross, American radio host and producer
1959 – Renée Fleming, American soprano and actress
1960 – Meg Tilly, American actress and author
1970 – Simon Pegg, English actor, director, and producer
And on this day in Black History…
February 14, 1936 The inaugural meeting of the National Negro Congress was convened at the Eighth Regiment Armory in Chicago, Illinois. The purpose was to build a national constituency to pressure government for labor and civil rights
The NNC disbanded in 1947 because of Cold War suppression.
February 14, 1760 Richard Allen, minister, educator and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born enslaved in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
February 14, 1818 Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, author and statesman, was born enslaved in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Douglass taught himself to read and write and escaped from slavery in 1838. He delivered his first abolitionist speech at the 1841 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention. He published his autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," in 1845 and within three years it had been reprinted nine times and there were 11,000 copies in circulation. Douglass lectured throughout the United Kingdom to enthusiastic crowds from 1845 to 1847. During that time he became officially free when his freedom was purchased by British supporters. After returning to the United States, he began producing the North Star and other newspapers. Douglass attended the first women's rights convention in 1848 and declared that he could not accept the right to vote himself as a Black man if women could not also claim that right. During the Civil War, Douglass helped the Union Army as a recruiter for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and after the war served as president of the Freedman's Savings Bank, marshal of the District of Columbia, minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, and charge d'affaires for the Dominican Republic. In 1877, Douglass bought Cedar Hill in Washington, D. C. which was designated the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site February 12, 1988. Douglass died February 20, 1895. The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honor in 1965 and numerous streets, schools, and other buildings are named in his honor. The many biographies of Douglass include "Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass" (1980) and "Frederick Douglass, Autobiography" (1994). Douglass' name is enshrined in the Ring of Genealogy at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.
February 14, 1829 Solomon G. Brown, the first African American employee of the Smithsonian Institute, was born in Washington, D. C
February 14, 1861 William McBryar, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Elizabethtown, North Carolina.
February 14 1867 The Augusta Institute was founded to educate African American men in theology and education.
February 14, 1874 Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass, newspaper publisher and civil rights activist, was born in Sumter, South Carolina
February 14, 1894 Mary Cardwell Dawson, musician, teacher and founder of the Negro Opera Company, was born in Meridian, North Carolina but raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
February 14, 1912 Oliver Wendell "Ollie" Harrington, cartoonist and political satirist, was born in Valhalla, New York. While working for the NAACP in the 1940s,, he published "Terror in Tennessee: The Truth about the Columbia Outrages" (1946) which was an expose of increased lynching violence in the post-World War II South. His work brought him scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House Un-American Activities Committee. As a result, he moved to Paris, France in 1951 and then to East Berlin, Germany where he died November 2, 1995. Harrington published "Why I Left America and Other Essays" in 1993. "Dark Laughter: The Satiric Art of Oliver W. Harrington," a collection of his cartoons, was published in 1993.
February 14, 1922 Oscar Robt. Cassell of New York City received patent number 1,406,344 for a Flying Machine. His invention was intended to provide improvements for dirigible gas filled machines used for passenger service. It was a flying machine that used both buoyant means and planes to sustain the machine in the air and a propeller for water.
February 14, 1926 Monetta J. Sleet, Jr., photographer and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky. Sleet went to work for Ebony Magazine in 1955 and over the next 41 years captured photographs of many significant African American individuals and events, including a young Muhammad Ali, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Billie Holliday, and a grieving Betty Shabazz at the funeral of Malcolm X. His photograph of Coretta Scott King at the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography
February 14, 1937 Samuel Gene "Magic Sam" Maghett, hall of fame blues guitarist, was born in Grenada, Mississippi.
His albums "West Side Soul" (1967) and "Black Magic" (1968) were inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame as classics of blues recordings in 1984 and 1990.
February 14, 1946 Gregory Oliver Hines, hall of fame dancer, choreographer and actor, was born in New York City.
February 14, 1957 Valmore Edwin James, the first African American to play in the National Hockey League, was born in Ocala, Florida. He played for the Buffalo Sabres in 1980
February 14, 1959 Warren "Baby" Dodds, hall of fame Jazz drummer, died. He worked with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver. He invented the Kick Drum.
Also on this day in history…
1849 – In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first serving President of the United States to have his photograph taken.
1855 – Texas is linked by telegraph to the rest of the United States, with the completion of a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas.
1859 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.
1903 – The United States Department of Commerce and Labor is established (later split into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor).
1912 – Arizona is admitted as the 48th and the last contiguous U.S. state.
1920 – The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago.
1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
1990 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of planet Earth that later become famous as Pale Blue Dot.
2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.