Re: RAT Amazing stories and histories

[Mary Ann McGivern <mmcgivern@stlnet.com>]

This is just amazing.

For the first time in the life of anyone around today, we'll see a full
moon
occur on the Winter solstice, Dec. 22nd, commonly called the first day
of
Winter.  Since a full moon on the Winter solstice occurs in
conjunction
with a lunar perigee (point in  the  moon's orbit that is closest to
Earth),
the moon will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point
in
its elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth
is
also several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year
than
in the summer, sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger making
it
brighter. Also, this will be the closest perigee of the Moon of the
year
since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. If the weather is clear
and
there is a snow cover where you live, it is believed that even car
headlights will be superfluous.
On December 21st, 1866 the Lakota Sioux took advantage of this
combination
of occurrences and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on soldiers
in
Wyoming Territory.
In layman's terms: It will be a super bright full moon, much more than
the
usual AND it hasn't happened this way for 133 years!  Our ancestors 133
years ago saw this.  Our descendants 100 or so years from now will see
this
again.