- 26th Day of 2012 / 240 Remaining
- 54 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:18
- Sunset:5:27
- 10 Hr 9 Min
- Moon Rise:8:54am
- Moon Set:9:19pm
- Moon’s Phase: 13 %
- The Next Full Moon
- February 7 @ 1:56pm
- Full Snow Moon
- Full Hunger 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:12:57am/12:54pm
- Low:6:40am/6:48pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:6.06
- Last Year:12.35
- Normal To Date:12.01
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Admission Day-Michigan
- National Popcorn Day
- National Peanut Brittle Day
- Australia Day-Australia
- Republic Day-India
- Foundation Day(Santos)-Brazil
- Duarte Day-Dominican Republic
- On This Day In …
- 1784 --- Ben Franklin wrote to his daughter to tell her that he was unhappy that the bald eagle had been chosen as the national bird of the United States. He mentioned that he believed the turkey would have been a much more respectable choice.
- 1788 --- The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia land in Botany Bay. Over the next 60 years, approximately 50,000 criminals were transported from Great Britain to the "land down under," in one of the strangest episodes in criminal-justice history. The accepted wisdom of the upper and ruling classes in 18th century England was that criminals were inherently defective. Thus, they could not be rehabilitated and simply required separation from the genetically pure and law-abiding citizens. Accordingly, lawbreakers had to be either killed or exiled, since prisons were too expensive. With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, transgressors could no longer be shipped off across the Atlantic, and the English looked for a colony in the other direction.
- 1802 --- Congress passed an act calling for a library to be established within the U.S. Capitol.
- 1837 --- 32 years and 15 days after Michigan was organized as a territory, it became the 26th state of the United States of America. Named Michigan after the American Indian word, Michigama, meaning great or large lake, Michigan borders four of the Great Lakes, and is divided into two peninsulas by the Straits of Mackinac that connect Lakes Michigan and Huron. The two peninsulas are recognized in the state motto: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you. In Latin: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice (sounds like Latin words that someone made up because someone somewhere decided that state mottos have to be written in Latin). Michigan is nicknamed the Wolverine State (although wolverines are very rare there) and/or the Great Lake State (its shores touch four of the five Great Lakes). The state bird is the robin; the state flower: apple blossom; state tree: white pine; state fish: trout; state gem: Isle Royal Greenstone aka Chlorastrolite. This gemstone wasn't enough for Michigan. It had to have a real stone, too ... the Petoskey stone. The state flag, which is blue charged with the arms of the state, waves over the state capital of Lansing.
- 1875 --- George F. Green of Kalamazoo, Michigan patented the electric dental drill for sawing, filing, dressing and polishing teeth.
- 1905 --- The Cullinan diamond, at 3,106.75 carats, was found by Captain Wells at the Premier Mine, near Pretoria, South Africa.
- 1934 --- The Apollo Theatre opened in New York City as a ‘vaudeville theatre’. It became the showplace for many of the great black entertainers, singers, groups and instrumentalists in the country. If you made it... you played it... at the Apollo Theatre.
- 1945 --- Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps—and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there. Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller "satellite" camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four "bathhouses" in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used for medical experiments overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death."
- 1950 --- India proclaimed itself a republic
- 1961 --- President John F. Kennedy appointed Dr. Janet G. Travell (Mrs. John Powell) to the post of personal physician to the President. Dr. Travell was the first woman to hold that post.
- 1970 --- John Lennon wrote and recorded "Instant Karma."
- 1977 --- Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac's first lead guitar player, was committed to a mental hospital in England. He had fired a pistol in the general direction of a delivery boy. Green left the band in May of 1970.
- 1988 --- The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Phantom of the Opera," the longest-running show in Broadway history, opened at the Majestic Theater in New York.
- 1992 --- Russian president Boris Yeltsin announced that his country would stop targeting U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.
- 1993 --- Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel was elected president of the new Czech Republic.
- 1998 --- President Clinton told reporters, "I want to say one thing to the American people ... I did not have sexual relations with that woman .. Miss Lewinsky."
- Birthdays
- Lucinda Williams
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Angela Davis
- Stephane Grappelli
- Huey "Piano" Smith
- Douglas MacArthur
- Paul Newman
- Gov. Mark Dayton - Minnesota
- Eddie Van Halen
- Scott Glenn
- Bob Uecker
- David Strathairn
- Jack Youngblood
- Wayne Gretzky
- Andrew Ridgeley
- Jean-Baptiste Pigalle
- Sean MacBride
- Nicolae Ceausescu
- Gene Siskel