Wordless Wednesday: It's not the beach, but...

...sunrise in our own back yard can be beautiful, too.

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday.


Today is:

Candlemas -- on the Julian Calendar, and in the Orthodox Christian Churches

Decimal Day -- UK (anniversary of the 1971 currency conversion to the decimal system)

Flag Day -- Canada (Maple Leaf adopted this date 1965)

John Frum Day -- Tanna Island, Vanuatu

Kamakura Matsuri -- Yokote, Akita Prefecture, Japan (Snow Cave Festival; through tomorrow)

Kuromori Kabuki -- Kuromori, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan (traditional Kabuki, through the 17th)

Lupercalia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (remembrance of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus)

National Gum Drop Day

Nirvana Day -- Buddhist; Jain; Sikh

Remember the Maine Day -- US (remembrance of the Spanish War)

Singles Awareness Day -- although some celebrate on the 14th as an anti-Valentine's Day

Sretenje -- Serbia (National Day)

Stop and Smell Your Compost Pile Day -- snort away the winter blues and think about spring (but i think this one is just plain weird)

St. Sigfrid's Day (Patron of Sweden)

Susan B. Anthony Day -- US (birth anniversary)

Total Defense Day -- Singapore


Birthdays Today:

Amber Riley, 1986
Renee O'Connor, 1971
Jane Child, 1967
Chris Farley, 1964
Matt Groening, 1954
Melissa Manchester, 1951
Jane Seymour, 1951
Marisa Berenson, 1948
Susan Brownmiller, 1935
Adolfo, 1933
Claire Bloom, 1931
Harvey Korman, 1927
Kevin McCarthy, 1914
Irena Sendler,1910
Miep Gees, 1909 
Cesar Romero, 1907
Harold Arlen, 1905
John Barrymore, 1882
Ernest Shackleton, 1874
Alfred North Whitehead, 1861
Elihu Root, 1824
Susan B. Anthony, 1820
Charles Lewis Tiffany, 1812
Cyrus McCormick, 1809
John Augustus Sutter, 1903
Henry Engelhard Steinway, 1797
Abraham Clark, 1726
Galileo Galilei, 1564
Pedro Mememdez de Aviles, 1519
Babur, 1483 (founder of Mughal dynasty in India)
Claudius Drusus Germanicus Caesar Nero, 37 


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Come Back, Little Sheba"(Play), 1950
Cinderella(Disney cartoon film), 1950
"The Little Foxes"(Play), 1939
"An der schönen blauen Donau"(The Blue Danube)(Strauss Waltz), 1867


Today in History:

Philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death, BC399
Khosrau II is crowned as king of Persia, 590
Ho-tse Shen-hui, Zen teacher, disputes the founder of Northern Ch'an line, 732
The city of St. Louis, Missouri, is founded by Pierre Laclade Ligue as a French trading post, 1764
The first US printed ballots are authorized, in Philadelphia, 1799
Sarah Roberts is barred from attending a white school in Boston, 1848
Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits its first patient, 1852
A fire in Rotterdam, Netherlands, damages the Museum Boymans, 1864
American President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, 1879
Nine inches (23cm) of snow falls on New Orleans, Louisiana, 1898
The USS Maine sinks in Havana harbor, cause unknown-258 sailors die, 1898
The first Teddy Bear is introduced in America, made by Morris and Rose Michtom, 1903
Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls, 1949
The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China sign a mutual defense treaty, 1950
Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the far northern Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, 1954
A new red-and-white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada, replacing the old Canadian Red Ensign banner, 1965
The decimalisation of British coinage is completed on Decimal Day, 1971
The 1976 Constitution of Cuba is adopted by the national referendum, 1976
The drilling rig Ocean Ranger sinks during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing 84 rig workers, 1982
The Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan, 1989
At the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China, a Long March 3 rocket, carrying an Intelsat 708, crashes into a rural village after liftoff, killing an unannounced number of people, 1996
First draft of the complete Human Genome is published in Nature, 2001
YouTube, the Internet site on which videos may be shared and viewed by others, is launched in the United States, 2005
A near-Earth asteroid, 2012 DA14, comes within 17,200 miles of the Earth's surface, a record-close approach for an object estimated at 50 meters, or 160 ft in in diameter, 2013