Today, Tuesday, the 12th of February of 2019 is the 43rd day of the year. There are 322 days remaining until the end of the year. 36 days until spring begins. 630 days until presidential elections Tuesday November 3, 2020...
(1 year 8 months and 22 days from today)
The sun rises at 7:02 am
and the sun will set at 5:47 pm.
Today we will have 10 hours and 45 minutes of daylight.
Solar noon will be at 12:24 pm.
The first high tide was at 4:19 am
and the next high tide will be at 5:43 pm.
The first low tide will be at 11:02 am
and the next low tide at 10:25 pm.
The Moon is 45.9% visible; a Waxing Crescent
Moon Direction: 340.62° NNW↑
Moon Altitude: -38.15°
Moon Distance: 240629 mi
Next Full Moon: Tuesday February 19, 2019 at 7:53 am
Next New Moon: Wednesday March 6, 2019 at 8:03 am
Next Moonrise: Today at 11:20 am
Today is…
Today is also…
International Red Hand Day
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this day with…
1663 – Cotton Mather, English-American minister and author (d. 1728)
1775 – Louisa Adams, English-American wife of John Quincy Adams, 6th First Lady of the United States (d. 1852)
1809 – Charles Darwin, English geologist and theorist (d. 1882)
1809 – Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer and politician, 16th President of the United States (d. 1865)
1876 – 13th Dalai Lama (d. 1933)
1877 – Louis Renault, French engineer and businessman, co-founded Renault (d. 1944)
1880 – John L. Lewis, American miner and union leader (d. 1969)
1881 – Anna Pavlova, Russian-English ballerina and actress (d. 1931)
1904 – Ted Mack, American radio and television host (d. 1976)
1907 – Joseph Kearns, American actor (d. 1962)
1915 – Lorne Greene, Canadian-American actor (d. 1987)
1916 – Joseph Alioto, American lawyer and politician, 36th Mayor of San Francisco (d. 1998)
1917 – Dom DiMaggio, American baseball player (d. 2009)
1919 – Forrest Tucker, American actor (d. 1986)
1933 – Costa-Gavras, Greek-French director and producer
1938 – Judy Blume, Jewish-American author and educator
1939 – Ray Manzarek, American singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer (d. 2013)
1948 – Ray Kurzweil, American computer scientist and engineer
1955 – Bill Laswell, American bass player and producer
1956 – Arsenio Hall, American actor and talk show host
1968 – Josh Brolin, American actor
1968 – Chynna Phillips, American singer and actress
1980 – Christina Ricci, American actress and producer
On this day in history…
1818 – Bernardo O'Higgins formally approves the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción, Chile.
1855 – Michigan State University is established.
1915 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.
1924 – George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music", in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.
1990 – Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history when she becomes Premier of Western Australia
1999 – United States President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2002 – The trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begins at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He dies four years later before its conclusion.
2004 – The city of San Francisco begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom.
And on this day in Black History…
February 12, 1866 The Colored Caulkers Trade Union Society purchased a shipyard and railway which they named the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company.
February 12, 1896 Isaac Burns Murphy, hall of fame jockey, died. Murphy was born April 16, 1861 in Frankfort, Kentucky.
1903: Todd Duncan, the first African American singer to perform in the New York City Opera was born on this day in Danville, KY. He passed away in 1998 at age 95.
February 12, 1907 Roberta Martin, gospel singer, composer and choral organizer, was born in Helena, Arkansas but raised in Chicago, Illinois.
1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. The purpose and the focus of the NAACP is “To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in response to the brutal race riots in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, where a white mob ransacked Black neighborhoods, burned business, and lynched two Black men and injured dozens of others. Comprising the 60 founding members of the NAACP were prominent white descendants of abolitionists and African-Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell. The organization’s principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate racial prejudice.
February 12, 1924 Frazier Augustus Boutelle, soldier and conservationist, died. Boutelle was born September 12, 1840 in Troy, New York. His military career began in 1861 when he enlisted in Company A of the 5th New York Cavalry. He served in the United States Army for 57 years, fighting in the Civil War, Indian Wars, and serving as a recruiter during World War I. In 1889, Boutelle was appointed acting superintendent of Yellowstone National Park which the army managed. During his short time in that role, he gained recognition in conservation circles for his advocacy of protection for wildlife, landscape, and natural features.
– On this day in 1934, Birthday of William Felton Russell, better known as "Bill" Russel, he was player-coach of the Boston Celtics basketball team in 1968 and 1969. Russell was born in Monroe, Louisiana, and was raised in Oakland, California
• February 12, 1937 Charles Everett Dumas, hall of fame track and field athlete and the first person to high jump seven feet, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• February 12, 1939 August Nathaniel Lushington, the first person of African descent to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in the United States, died.
1946 – African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the civil rights movement and partially inspires Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil. Woody Guthrie later recalled “I sung ‘The Blinding of Isaac Woodard’ in the Lewisohn Stadium one night for more than 36,000 people, and I got the loudest applause I’ve ever got in my whole life.”
– On this day in 1956, the first black late-night talk show host Arsenio Hall was born.
1965 – Malcolm X visits Smethwick following the racial charged 1964 general election.
1983: Eubie Blake passed away, aged 96. He was a composer, lyricist and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans.
• February 12, 1988 The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in southeast Washington, D. C. was established.
2000: Jalacy Hawkins aka Screamin’ Jay Hawkins passed away, aged 70. He was a musician, singer, and actor. Famed chiefly for his powerful, operatic vocal delivery and wildly theatrical performances of songs such as “I Put a Spell on You”, Hawkins sometimes used macabre props onstage, making him an early pioneer of shock rock.
• February 12, 2004 The Agassiz School in Cambridge, Massachusetts was renamed the Maria L. Baldwin School. Maria Louise Baldwin was born September 13, 1856 in Cambridge. She became principal of the school in 1889, the first African American female principal in Massachusetts.