Today is Monday December 31st. It is the 365th day of the year. Less than one day to the new year. 79 days until spring begins...673 days until presidential elections Tuesday November 3, 2020
(1 year 10 months and 3 days from today)
The sun rises at 7:25 am
and sunset will be at 5:02 pm.
We will have 9 hours and 37 minutes of daylight.
the next low tide at 1:47 pm.
and the final high tide at 8:13 pm.
The Moon is 27.3% visible; a Waning Crescent
Moon Direction: 128.52° SE↑
Moon Altitude: 26.85°
Moon Distance: 239347 mi
Next New Moon: Saturday January 5, 2019 at 5:28 pm
Next Full Moon: Sunday January 20, 2019 at 9:16 pm
Next Moonset: Today at 1:36 pm
Today is…
Today is also…
International Solidarity Day of Azerbaijanis
Last Day of the Year or Bisperás ng Bagong Taón, special holiday between Rizal Day and New Year's Day in The Philippines
Ōmisoka in Japan
The first day of Hogmanay or "Auld Year's Night" in Scotland
The seventh of the Twelve Days of Christmas
“On the seventh day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Seven swans a swimming…”
The sixth and penultimate day of Kwanzaa:
Today’s principle is Kuumba, Creativity
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this day with…
1491 – Jacques Cartier, French navigator and explorer (d. 1557)
1720 – Charles Edward Stuart, Scottish claimant to the throne of England (d. 1788)
1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor (d. 1954)
1908 – Simon Wiesenthal, Ukrainian-Austrian nazi hunter and author (d. 2005)
1930 – Odetta, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress (d. 2008)
1938 – Rosalind Cash, American singer and actress (d. 1995)
1943 – John Denver, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 1997)
1943 – Ben Kingsley, English actor
1948 – Donna Summer, American singer-songwriter (d. 2012)
1959 – Val Kilmer, American actor
1977 – Psy, South Korean singer-songwriter, producer, and dancer
1977 – Donald Trump, Jr., American businessman and son of billionaire Donald Trump
…and on this day in history…
1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine, and he was granted the patent in 1879.
1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1907 – The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan.
1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
1956 – The Romanian Television begins its first broadcast in Bucharest.
1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.
1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.
1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner.
1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.
1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.
1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively.
1999 – First President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.
1999 – The United States Government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.
2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).
2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.