288th day of 2015, 77 days remain
- Sunrise: 7:18am
- Sunset: 6:33pm
- Moonrise: 9:41am (3% of the waxing moon is visible)
- Moonset: 8:26pm
Tides at the Golden Gate:
- High: 1:55am/1:19pm
- Low: 7:03am/7:07pm
Special Celebrations today around the world...
- Cayenne Festival - French Guiana
- Evacuation Day - Tunisia
- International Day of Older People - Australia
- National Tree Planting Day - Sri Lanka
- Rectification Day - Burkina Faso
- World Rural Women's Day- Australia
It’s also…
- Conflict Resolution Day
- Get to Know Your Customers Day
- Get Smart About Credit Day
- Global Handwashing Day
- International Credit Union Day
- International Day of Rural Women
- I Love Lucy Day
- National Cake Decorating
- National Grouch Day
- National Latino AIDS Awareness Day
- National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Da
- White Cane Safety Day
On this day in…
1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte began his exile on the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
1860 - Grace Bedell, 11 years old, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. The letter stated that Lincoln would look better if he would grow a beard.
1883 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It allowed for individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.
1892 - The U.S. government announced that the land in the western Montana was open to settlers. The 1.8 million acres were bought from the Crow Indians for 50 cents per acre.
1914 - The Clayton Antitrust Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.
1931 - "Cat and the Fiddle" opened in New York for the first of 395 performances.
1937 - "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway was published for the first time.
1939 - New York Municipal Airport was dedicated. The name was later changed to La Guardia Airport.
1945 - Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, was executed for treason.
1946 - Hermann Goering, a Nazi war criminal and founder of the Gestapo, poisoned himself just hours before his scheduled execution.
1951 - "I Love Lucy" premiered on CBS-TV.
1953 - "Teahouse of the August Moon" opened on Broadway. It ran for 1,027 performances.
1964 - It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had been removed from power. He was replaced with Alexei N. Kosygin.
1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation.
1966 - In Illinois, Cahokia Mounds was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
1966 - The First Bank of the United States was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
1983 - U.S. Marines killed five snipers who had pinned them down in Beirut International Airport.
1984 - The Freedom of Information Act was passed.
1989 - South African officials released eight prominent political prisoners.
1989 - Wayne Gretzky, while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, surpassed Gordie Howe's NHL scoring record of 1,850 career points.
1993 - U.S. President Clinton sent warships to enforce trade sanctions that had been imposed on Haitian military rulers.
1993 - South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the apartheid system in South Africa.
1997 - British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green broke the land-speed record by driving a jet-powered car faster than the speed of sound.
1997 - The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. On January 14, 2005, a probe sent back pictures of Saturn's moon Titan during and after landing.
1998 - The U.N. condemned the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba for the seventh year in a row.
2001 - NASA's Galileo spacecraft passed within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.
2011 - Legoland Florida opened in Winter Haven, Florida.
Birthday celebrants today include, or included…
- Virgil 70 B.C.
- Friedrich Nietzsche 1844
- Mule (George) Haas 1903
- John Kenneth Galbraith 1908
- David Carroll 1913
- Jan Miner 1917
- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. 1917
- Robert Walker 1918
- Mario Puzo 1920
- Lee Iacocca 1924
- Jean Peters 1926
- Peter Haskell 1934
- Linda Lavin 1937
- Barry McGuire 1935
- Marv Johnson 1938
- Dick Lotz 1942
- Penny Marshall 1943
- Don Stevenson 1942
- Jim Palmer 1945
- Victor Banerjee 1946
- Richard Carpenter 1946
- Roscoe Tanner 1951
- Tito Jackson 1953
- Larry Miller 1953
- Jere Burns 1954
- Tanya Roberts 1955
- Sarah Ferguson 1959
- Emeril Lagasse 1959
- Mark Reznicek 1962
- Eric Benet 1966
- Dominic West 1969
- Ginuwine 1970
