- 353rd Day of 2013 / 12 Remaining
- 2 Days Until The First Day of Winter
- Sunrise:7:20
- Sunset:4:53
- 9 Hours 33 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:7:22pm
- Moon Set:8:45am
- Moon’s Phase: 95 %
- Full Moon
- December 17 @ 1:29am
- Full Cold Moon
- Full Long Nights Moon
During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.
- Tides
- High:12:40am/11:03am
- Low:5:31am/6:05pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year: 2.09
- Last Year:9.36
- Normal To Date:7.23
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Oatmeal Muffin Day
- National Hard Candy Day
- Separation Day-Anguilla
- Las Posadas-Mexico
- Sveti Nikola-Serbia
- On This Day In …
- 1732 --- Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia first published Poor Richard's Almanack. The book, filled with proverbs preaching
- 1777 --- With the onset of the bitter winter cold, the Continental Army under General George Washington, still in the field, enters its
- 1843 --- Charles Dickens' Yuletide tale, "A Christmas Carol," was first published in Britain.
- 1871 --- Albert L. Jones of New York received patent No. 122,023 for corrugated paper, an "improvement in paper for packing" which could be used to make boxes.
- 1903 --- The Williamsburg Bridge opened in New York City. It opened as the largest suspension bridge on Earth and remained the largest until 1924. It was also the first major suspension bridge to use steel towers to support the main cable. Originally open to
- 1907 --- A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa., killed 239 workers.
- 1917 --- Four teams of the National Hockey League (NHL) play in the fledgling league’s first two games. At the time of its inception, the NHL was made up of five franchises: the Canadiens and the Wanderers (both of Montreal), the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec
- 1918 --- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It or Not" column in "The New York Globe".
- 1946 --- War broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.
- 1955 --- Carl Perkins recorded the hit "Blue Suede Shoes."
- 1957 --- Meredith Willson’s The Music Man opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York City. The Broadway show starred Robert
- 1960 --- Frank Sinatra recorded his first session with his very own record company, Reprise Records. Frank did "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" and "Let’s Fall in Love."
- 1972 --- The Apollo lunar-landing program ends, when the last three astronauts to travel to the moon splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before. In July 1969, after three years of preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accomplished President John F. Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth with Apollo 11. From 1969 to 1972, there were six successful lunar landing missions, and
- 1973 --- Johnny Carson pulled a good one before a nationwide late-night audience on NBC. Carson started a fake toilet-paper scare. In his Tonight Show monologue, he told his huge audience that a Wisconsin congressman had warned that toilet paper was disappearing from supermarket shelves. Toilet paper soon became a scarce commodity in many areas of the United States after the gag.
- 1974 --- Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as vice president, replacing Gerald R. Ford, who became president when Richard M. Nixon resigned.
- 1984 --- In the Hall of the People in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement committing Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong--a small peninsula and group of islands jutting out from China's Kwangtung province--was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.
- 1985 --- Jan Stenerud announced his retirement from the NFL. The football kicker holds the record for the most career field goals with
- 1986 --- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, from their internal exile in Gorky, a major city on the Volga River that was then closed to foreigners. The move was hailed as evidence of Gorbachev's commitment to lessening political repression inside the Soviet Union.
- 1990 --- Bo Jackson (Los Angeles Raiders) became the first athlete to be chosen for All Star Games in two sports.
- 1996 --- The school board of Oakland, voted to recognize Black English, also known as "ebonics." The board later reversed its stance.
- 2000 --- A volcano outside Mexico City spewed a fiery fountain of ash and rock in its most spectacular eruption in more than a millennium. It left towns around the mountain’s base deserted as
- 2008 --- U.S. President George W. Bush signed a $17.4 billion rescue package of loans for ailing auto makers General Motors and Chrysler.
- Birthdays
- Leonid Brezhnev
- Jake Gyllenhaal
- Jennifer Beals
- Cicely Tyson
- Al Kaline
- Maurice White
- Alvin Lee
- Alyssa Milano
- Edwin Stanton
- Edith Piaf
- David Susskind
- Phil Ochs
- Tim Reid