With her the force will be this December once again. Happy Birthday, Carrie Fisher.
294th day of 2015, 71 remaining
- Sunrise: 7:22am
- Sunset: 6:27pm
- Moonset: 12:42am
- Moonrise: 2:46pm (49% visible)
Tides at the Golden Gate:
- High: 7:37am/6:40pm
- Low: 12:08am/12:53pm
Special celebrations today include...
- Anniversary of President Ndadaye's Death - Burundi
- Antilles Day - Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustatius
- Army Day - Honduras
- Overseas Chinese Day - Taiwan
- Revolution Day - Somalia
- St. Ursula Day - British Virgin Islands
- Egyptian Naval Day - Egypt
It's also...
- Celebration of The Mind Day
- National Mammography Day
- Unity Day
- Hagfish Day
- Information Overload Day
- Global Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) Prevention Day
- Medical Assistants Recognition Day
- Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity
- Reptile Awareness Day
On this day in...
- 1797 - "Old Ironsides," the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, was launched in Boston's harbor.
- 1805 - The Battle of Trafalgar occurred off the coast of Spain. The British defeated the French and Spanish fleet.
- 1849 - The first tattooed man, James F. O’Connell, was put on exhibition at the Franklin Theatre in New York City, NY.
- 1858 - The Can-Can was performed for the first time in Paris.
- 1879 - Thomas Edison invented the electric incandescent lamp. It would last 13 1/2 hours before it would burn out.
- 1917 - The first U.S. soldiers entered combat during World War I near Nancy, France.
- 1918 - Margaret Owen set a typing speed record of 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter.
- 1925 - The photoelectric cell was first demonstrated at the Electric Show in New York City, NY.
- 1925 - The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it had fined 29,620 people for prohibition (of alcohol) violations.
- 1927 - In New York City, construction began on the George Washington Bridge.
- 1944 - During World War II, the German city of Aachen was captured by U.S. troops.
- 1945 - Women in France were allowed to vote for the first time.
- 1950 - Chinese forces invaded Tibet.
- 1959 - The Guggenheim Museum was opened to the public in New York. The building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
- 1967 - Thousands of demonstrators marched in Washington, DC, in opposition to the Vietnam War.
- 1980 - The Philadelphia Phillies won their first World Series.
- 1983 - The Pentagon reported that 2,000 Marines were headed to Grenada to protect and evacuate Americans living there.
- 1986 - The U.S. ordered 55 Soviet diplomats to leave. The action was in reaction to the Soviet Union expelling five American diplomats.
- 1991 - Jesse Turner, an American hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly five years of being imprisoned.
- 1993 - The play "The Twilight of the Golds" opened.
- 1994 - North Korea and the U.S. signed an agreement requiring North Korea to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections.
- 1998 - The New York Yankees set a major league baseball record of 125 victories for the regular and postseason combined.
- 1998 - Cancer specialist Dr. Jane Henney became the FDA's first female commissioner.
- 2003 - The U.S. Senate voted to ban what was known as partial birth abortions.
- 2003 - North Korea rejected U.S. President George W. Bush's offer of a written pledge not to attack in exchange for the communist nation agreeing to end its nuclear weapons program.
Today's birthday celebrants include (or included)...
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772
- Alfred Nobel 1833
- Sir Georg Solti 1912
- Dizzy Gillespie 1917
- Joyce Randolph 1924
- Whitey Ford 1928
- Ursula LeGuin 1929
- Georgia Brown 1933
- Manfred Mann 1940
- Francis Fitzgerald 1940
- Steve Cropper 1941
- Elvin Bishop 1942
- Judy Sheindlin 1942
- Ron Elliot 1943
- Everett McGill 1945
- Lee Loughnane 1946
- Bill Russell 1948
- Benjamin Netanyahu 1949
- Charlotte Caffey 1953
- Eric Faulkner 1955
- Carrie Fisher 1956
- Julian Cope 1957
- Steve Lukather 1957
- Ken Watanabe 1959
- Melora Walters 1960
- Che Colovita Lemon 1970
- Jade Jagger 1971
- Jeremy Miller 1976
- Will Estes 1977
- Michael McMillian 1978
- Kim Kardashian 1980
