© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

KALW ALMANAC

  • 5th Day of 2012 / 361 Remaining
  • 75 Days Until Spring Begins
  • Sunrise:7:25
  • Sunset:5:05
  • 9 Hr 30 Min
  • Moon Rise:2:12pm
  • Moon Set:4:16am
  • Moon’s Phase: 88 %
  • The Next Full Moon
  • January 8 @ 11:32pm
  • Full Wolf Moon
  • Full Old Moon

Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.

  • Tides
  • High:7:18am/9:45pm
  • Low:1:24am/2:46pm
  • Rainfall
  • This Year:3.37
  • Last Year:12.20
  • Year To Date Average:8.76
  • Annual Average: 22.28
  • Holidays
  • National Whipped Cream Day
  • Turn Up the Heat Day
  • Dia de la Toma-Spain
  • Twelfth Night(the evening before Epiphany, marking the end of medieval Christmas festivities)
  • On This Day In History
  • 1643 --- In the first legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted a divorce from Denis Clarke. She accused her husband of adultery.
  • 1781 --- American traitor and British Brigadier General Benedict Arnold enjoys his greatest success as a British commander on this day in 1781. Arnold's 1,600 largely Loyalist troops sailed up the James River at the beginning of January, eventually landing in Westover, Virginia. Leaving Westover on the afternoon of January 4, Arnold and his men arrived at the virtually undefended capital city of Richmond the next afternoon. Virginia's governor, Thomas Jefferson, had frantically attempted to prepare the city for attack by moving all arms & other Military Stores records from the city to a foundry five miles outside Richmond. As news of Arnold's unexpectedly rapid approach reached him, Jefferson then tried to orchestrate their removal to Westham, seven miles further north. He was too late--Arnold's men quickly reached and burned the foundry and then proceeded towards Westham, which Jefferson had asked the formidable Prussian military advisor Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben to guard. Finding von Steuben, Arnold chose to return to Richmond, burning much of the city the following morning. Only 200 militiamen responded to Governor Jefferson's call to defend the capital--most Virginians had already served and therefore thought they were under no further obligation to answer such calls. Despite this untenable military position, the author of the Declaration of Independence was criticized by some for fleeing Richmond during the crisis. Later, two months after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, he was cleared of any wrongdoing during his term as governor. Jefferson went on to become the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, and his presidential victory over the Federalists is remembered as The Revolution of 1800.
  • 1885 --- The Long Island Railroad Company was the first to offer piggyback rail service. It transported farm wagons on trains and moved all those potatoes pretty fast! Where did all of Long Island’s (NY) potato farms go when they were replaced by houses, houses, houses?
  • 1889 --- According to the ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ the word 'hamburger' first appeared in print on this day in a Walla Walla, Washington newspaper.
  • 1914 --- Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day.
  • 1925 --- Nellie T. Ross succeeded her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in U.S. history.
  • 1933 --- What is now a symbol of the great American West, the Golden Gate Bridge, went under construction. It would be called an engineering marvel when completed. Spanning the deep channel at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, with the Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, few people-made things are as beautiful as the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • 1940 --- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) got its very first demonstration of FM radio. The new medium, free of interference, static, and noise in thunderstorms, was developed by Major E.H. Armstrong. The first FM transmitter was put in operation in 1941. What did it broadcast? Talk, of course. Well, not ‘talk’ per se, but lots of talking.
  • 1948 --- Warner Brothers released the first color newsreel to be shown to movie audiences. It included pictures of the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game.
  • 1949 --- In his State of the Union address, President Harry S. Truman labeled his domestic program the "Fair Deal."
  • 1956 --- In the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy walked on two legs for the first time.
  • 1961 --- “Hello. I’m Mr. Ed!” “A horse is a horse, of course, of course”... you know the lyrics. Mr. Ed, the talking horse, debuted for what would be a six-year run. The show starred Alan Young as Ed’s owner, Wilbur Post. Wilbur’s wife, Carol, was played by Connie Hines. Good old neighbor Roger Addison was Larry Keating. The voice of Mr. Ed was... no, not Alan Young... rather, Allan ‘Rocky’ Lane... of course, of course.
  • 1968 --- Antonin Novotny, the Stalinist ruler of Czechoslovakia, is succeeded as first secretary by Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak who supports liberal reforms. In the first few months of his rule, Dubcek introduced a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and the rehabilitation of political dissidents. Dubcek's effort to establish "communism with a human face" was celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom became known as the "Prague Spring." On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union answered Dubcek's reforms with invasion of Czechoslovakia by 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops. Prague was not eager to give way, but scattered student resistance was no match for Soviet tanks. Dubcek's reforms were repealed, and the leader himself was replaced with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who re-established an authoritarian Communist regime in the country.
  • Birthdays
  • Alvin Ailey
  • Aaron Lupin(invented canned aerosol whipped cream)
  • Robert Duvall
  • Diane Keaton
  • Iris Dement
  • Marilyn Manson
  • Charlie Rose
  • Walter Mondale
  • King Juan Carlos-Spain
  • Ted Lange
  • Pamela Sue Martin
  • George Tenet
  • Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky
  • Francisco Suarez
  • Zebulon Pike
  • King Gillette
  • Stella Gibbons
  • George Reeves
  • Sam Wyche