149th day of 2015; 216 remaining
Tides at the Golden Gate
High: 10:06am/9:43pm
Low: 3:44am/3:11pm
Sunrise: 5:51am
Sunset: 8:24pm
Moonrise: 4:43pm (77% visible)
Moonset: 3:32am
Special celebrations and commemorations today include...
Anniversary of the death of President Ali Soilih - Comoros
Ascension of Bahaullah - Baha'i
Bats Day
Hug Your Cat Day
Learn About Composting Day
International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers
Put A Pillow On Your Fridge Day
National Coq Au Vin Day
On this day in...
1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire.
1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth.
1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony.
1765 - Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.
1790 - Rhode Island became the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1827 - The first nautical school opened in Nantucket, MA, under the name Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School.
1848 - Wisconsin became the 30th state to join the United States.
1849 - A patent for lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1910 - An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.
1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.
1916 - The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 - U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1922 - Ecuador became independent.
1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, not subject to antitrust laws.
1932 - World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.
1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.
1965 - Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.
1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1978 - In the U.S., postage stamps were raised from 13 cents to 15 cents.
1981 - The U.S. performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
1985 - Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.
1986 - Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1988 - U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1988 - NBC aired "To Heal A Nation," the story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.
1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.
1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
2000 - Fiji's military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
If today's your birthday, you share the special day with...
Charles II 1630
Patrick Henry 1736
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874
Oswald Spengler 1880
Beatrice Lillie 1898
Bob Hope 1903
John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1917
Clifton James 1921
Joe Weatherly 1922
Eugene Wright 1923
Paul Erlich 1932
Al Unser, Sr. 1939
Stacy Keach, Sr. 1941
Roy Crewdson 1941
Bob Simon 1941
Kevin Conway 1942
Helmut Berger 1944
Gary Brooker 1945
Anthony Geary 1948
Rebbie Jackson 1950
Danny Elfman 1953
John Hinckley Jr. 1955
Michael Porcaro 1955
LaToya Jackson 1956
Annette Bening 1958
Rupert Everett 1959
Adrian Paul 1959
Mel Gaynor 1959
Jesse Johnson 1960
Melissa Etheridge 1961
Lisa Whelchel 1963
Jumping Jack Frost 1967
Noel Gallagher 1967
Jayski McGowan 1967
Blaze Bayley 1968
Chan Kinchla 1969
Tracey Bregman 1973
Mark Lee 1973
Playa Poncho 1975
Melanie Janine Brown 1975
Sébastien René Grosjean 1978
