- National Vichyssoise Day
- Push Button Phone Day
- Use Less Stuff Day
- William Tell Day
- Occult Day
- National Entrepreneurs’ Day
- Independence Day-Latvia
- Flag Day-Uzbekistan
- Independence Day-Morocco
- Vertieres’ Day-Haiti
- On This Day
- 1307 --- The legendary William Tell supposedly shot an apple from his son's head.
- 1477 --- William Caxton produced "Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres," which was the first book to be printed in England.
- 1865 --- Samuel L. Clemens published "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" under the pen name "Mark Twain" in the New York "Saturday Press."
- 1874 --- Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed in Cleveland, Ohio.
- 1883 --- At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies. The need for continental time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns in the U.S. had their own local time, generally based on "high noon," or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As
railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone.
- 1928 --- Walt Disney debuted his talking, animated cartoon, Steamboat Willie, at the Colony Theatre in New York. The short film featured a character who had been named Mortimer. Walt changed the name to Mickey Mouse. Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon with synchronized sound. And, for those of you who don’t remember, Steamboat Willie was in black and white. Disney’s first color cartoon wasn’t released for another four years. The star of the film has changed somewhat over the years; but Mickey Mouse is still with us.
- 1932 --- For the first time, a tie occurred for the Best Actor Academy Award. Wallace Beery and Fredric March were only one vote apart so the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled it a tie. Both received an Oscar at the Fifth Annual Academy Awards, March for his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Beery for his role in The Champ.
- 1951 --- Chuck Connors (Los Angeles Angels) became the first player to oppose the major league draft. Connors later became the star of the television show "The Rifleman."
- 1951 --- Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly launched one of the most highly-praised TV productions in history. See It Now debuted on CBS. On that first program, Murrow showed a live camera shot of the Atlantic Ocean, followed by a live shot of the Pacific, then he said, “We are impressed by a medium through which a man sitting in his living room has been able to look at two oceans at once.”
- 1952 --- Borden Company registered "Elmer's" (glue) trademark. (Elmer the Bull is spouse of Elsie the Cow, the corporate symbol of Borden's).
- 1956 --- Fats Domino appeared on the Ed Sullivan show and performed his hit "Blueberry Hill."
- 1963 --- The 1st telephone in the U.S. with push buttons ('Touch-Tone') instead of a rotary dial, was placed into commercial service in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
- 1966 --- Sandy Koufax, the ace pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, retires from baseball. He was just 30 years old, and he was retiring after a great season--he’d led the Dodgers to a National League pennant and won his third Cy Young award. But he had chronic arthritis in his pitching arm, and he was afraid that if he kept playing baseball, eventually he wouldn’t be able to use his left hand at all. "In those days there was no surgery," he said much later. "The wisdom was if you went in there, it would only make things worse and your career would be over, anyway. Now you go in, fix it, and you’re OK for next spring."
- 1969 --- Apollo 12 astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. and Alan L. Bean landed on the lunar surface during the second manned mission to the moon.
- 1970 --- Linus Pauling declares that large doses of Vitamin C will keep the common cold at bay.
- 1978 --- Billy Joel earned his first #1 album when his sixth release, 52nd Street, hit the top of the Billboard pop chart.
- 1978 --- The worst case of murder-suicide in history took place in Jonestown, Guyana. Religious-cult leader Jim Jones (Peoples Temple) directed the ingestion of Kool-Aid (laced with cyanide) by at least 900 of his followers. He and his mistress then followed suit. Earlier in the day, Jones had directed the murder of California Congressman Leo J. Ryan, three news people and several ‘defectors’. Ryan, on a fact-finding tour of Jonestown, was boarding a private airplane with the small group when they were shot down.
- 1987 --- After nearly a year of hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal, the joint Congressional investigating committee issues its final report. It concluded that the scandal, involving a complicated plan whereby some of the funds from secret weapons sales to Iran were used to finance the Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, was one in which the administration of Ronald Reagan exhibited "secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law." Naming several members of the Reagan administration as having been directly involved in the scheme (including National Security Advisor John Poindexter and deceased CIA Director William Casey), the report stated that Reagan must bear "ultimate responsibility." A number of government officials were charged and convicted of various crimes associated with the scandal.A minority opinion by some of the Republican members of the committee contained in the report argued that the hearings had been politically motivated.
- 1987 --- U2 opened for itself by pretending to be a country-rock group called The Dalton Brothers during a concert in Los Angeles, CA.
- 1987 --- A fire in a London subway station kills 30 commuters and injures scores of others on this day in 1987. It is the worst fire in the history of the city's underground rail system. The King's Cross station in London is one of the city's busiest; it contains two terminals and is at the intersection of several subway lines. Late on a Wednesday afternoon, people began to smell smoke coming from beneath one of the station's escalators. Even though several people reported the smell to station employees, no action was taken. At 7:50 p.m., flames were spotted beneath the escalator. By that time, it was too late. Smoke filled the station as the fire quickly spread, leaving no clear path of escape. The London Fire Brigade arrived to find general chaos and panic; they were also faced with what one witness described as a "shock wave of fire." The heat level rose rapidly since the fire was trapped far below street level. One firefighter, Colin Townley, and 30 commuters died in this catastrophic fire. Another 80 people were hospitalized. It was later revealed that debris and grease had built up under the escalator, but the exact cause of ignition is unknown.
- 1991 --- Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon free Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite after more than four years of captivity. Waite, looking thinner and his hair grayer, was freed along with American educator Thomas M. Sutherland after intense negotiations by the United Nations. Waite, special envoy of the archbishop of Canterbury, had secured the release of missionaries detained in Iran after the Islamic revolution. He also extracted British hostages from Libya and even succeeded in releasing American hostages from Lebanon in 1986.
- 1993 --- Representatives from 21 South African political parties approved a new constitution.
- 1998 --- Alice McDermott beats out front-runner Tom Wolfe for the National Book Award with her novel Charming Billy, losing a bet with her children. McDermott felt she was so unlikely to win the award that she told her three children she'd give them whatever they wanted if she won: She ended up owing them a portable TV, an inflatable armchair, and a ski trip.
- 2003 --- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-3 that the state constitution guarantees gay couples the right to marry.
- 2004 --- Parliament voted to ban Fox hunting in the U.K. effective in February 2005.
- Birthdays
- Mickey Mouse (86)
- Imogene Coca
- Brenda Vaccaro
- Alan Shepard
- Linda Evans
- Louis Jacques Daguerre
- Ignacy Paderewski
- George Gallup
- Johnny Mercer
- Andrea Marcovicci
- Graham parker
- Kim Wilde
- Kirk Hammett
- 322nd Day of 2014 / 43 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 33 Days
- Sunrise:6:64
- Sunset:4:56
- 10 Hours 8 Minutes
- Moon Rise:3:00am
- Moon Set:2:50pm
- Moon Phase:14%
- Next Full Moon December 6 @ 4:27am
- 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 Tide:7:33am/8:27pm
- Low Tide:1:10am/2:17pm