- 17th Day of 2012 / 349 Remaining
- 63 Days Until Spring Begins
- Sunrise:7:23
- Sunset:5:17
- 9 Hr 54 Min
- Moon Rise:1:50am
- Moon Set:12:13pm
- Moon’s Phase: 34 %
- 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:4:52am/6:45pm
- Low:12:03pm/11:21pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:3.37
- Last Year:12.35
- NormalTo Date:10.57
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Judgment Day
- Kid Inventor's Day
- National Hot Buttered Rum Day
- Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day
- National Professional Boxer's Day
- St. Anthony's Day-Christian
- Liberation Day-Poland
- Antonovden-Bulgaria
- On This Day In ...
- 1871 --- Andrew Smith Hallidie of San Francisco, California received a patent for a cable car system. The public transportation system was put into operation in the city by the bay in 1873, providing a fast, safe way to travel up and down San Francisco’s steep hills. Now, Hallidie didn’t just wake up one day and invent his cable car system. This was one situation that proves the truth of the old adage, ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Hallidie realized the necessity for the cable car system when he saw a loaded horse-drawn San Francisco streetcar slide backwards on a slippery hill. It was a summer day in 1869, but the cobblestones were wet from the usual San Francisco dampness. The heavily weighted car dragged five of the horses to their deaths. The catastrophe prompted Andrew Hallidie and his partners to do something to prevent this from happening again. Coincidentally, Hallidie already had the basic product needed to produce his cable car system. His father had filed the first patent in Great Britain for the manufacture of wire rope. Although Andrew was born in England, he had moved to the U.S. in 1852. As a young man, he was able to use his father’s new, tough rope when he designed and built a suspension bridge across Sacramento’s American River. He also had used the wire rope to pull heavy ore cars out of underground gold mines on tracks. The light bulb went on and his wire-rope manufacturing plant (that he had already moved to San Francisco) began the process of making the new cable car system. A little known fact is that Mr. Hallidie didn’t call them cable cars at first. Originally, one took a trip on ‘the endless wire rope way.’ The cars ran on rails, pulled by an endless steel cable moving on a slot beneath the street surface. In fact, the San Francisco landmark and tourist attraction works the same way today.
- 1893 --- Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
- 1929 --- Popeye debuted in the news comic strip "Thimble Theater."
- 1945 --- Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
- 1945 --- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Wallenberg was credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews.
- 1950 --- A team of 11 thieves, in a precisely timed and choreographed strike, steals more than $2 million from the Brinks Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. The Great Brinks Robbery, as it quickly became known, was the almost perfect crime. Only days before the statute of limitations was set to expire on the crime, the culprits were finally caught. Tony Pino, a lifelong criminal, was the mastermind behind the audacious theft. Together with Joe McGinnis, he assembled a group that meticulously planned the heist. They staked out the depot for a year and a half to figure out when it was holding the most money. Then, the gang stole the plans for the depot's alarm system and returned them before anyone noticed that they were missing. The criminal team held repeated rehearsals, with each man wearing blue coats and Halloween masks. On January 17, they finally put their plan into action. Inside the counting room, the gang surprised the guards and tied up the employees. Multiple canvas bags, weighing more than half a ton, were filled with cash, coins, checks, and money orders. Within 30 minutes, the Brinks robbery team was gone--taking $2.7 million with them. They left no clues at all. Next, the gang met and split the proceeds of the theft. They agreed that each would stay out of trouble for six years and they almost made it. However, one of the men, Specs O'Keefe, left his share with another member because he had to serve a prison sentence for another crime. O'Keefe, worried that he would be cheated out of his money, indicated that he might begin to talk. The others decided to send a hit man to kill O'Keefe but he was only wounded, and the assassin was caught. O'Keefe made a deal with police and testified against the others. Eight participants in the Great Brinks Robbery were caught and convicted. However, only a small part of the money was ever recovered.
- 1953 --- Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors' (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette, named for a fast type of naval warship, would eventually become an iconic American muscle car and remains in production today.
- 1961 --- In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the "military-industrial complex" that has developed in the post-World War II years. A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners. Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. No longer could the U.S. afford the "emergency improvisation" that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was "compelled to create a permanent armaments industry" and a huge military force. He admitted that the Cold War made clear the "imperative need for this development," but he was gravely concerned about "the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex." In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
- 1972 --- Memphis renamed Bellvue Street Elvis Presley Boulevard. All the new street signs disappeared immediately.
- 1994 --- The Northridge earthquake rocked Los Angeles, CA, registering a 6.7 on the Richter Scale. At least 61 people were killed and about $20 billion in damage was caused.
- 1997 --- A court in Ireland granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history.
- 1999 --- In High Point, North Carolina, complaints began rolling in about the unfriendly policewoman on Eastchester Drive. She didn’t wave, she was sleeping, she was dead. Actually, she was a female mannequin, dressed in police clothes, helping to reduce speeds at a high-traffic intersection.
- 2001 --- Norway lifted a ban on exports of whale meat.
- Birthdays
- Muhammad Ali
- Michelle Obama
- James Earl Jones
- Eartha Kitt
- Vidal Sassoon
- Andy Kaufman
- Don Zimmer
- Maury Povich
- Mick Taylor
- Robert F Kennedy Jr
- Steve Earle
- Steve Harvey
- Susanna Hoffs
- Jim Carrey
- Kid Rock
- Benjamin Franklin
- Betty White
- Al Capone
- Anne Bronte
- Mack Sennett
- Anton Chekhov