Today is Monday, Feb. 18, the 49th day of 2019. There are 316 days left in the year.
30 days until spring begins. 624 days until presidential elections on Tuesday November 3, 2020
(1 year 8 months and 16 days from today)
The sun will rises this morning at 6:55 am
and the sun sets at 5:53 pm.
Today we will have 10 hours and 58 minutes of daylight.
Solar noon will be at 12:24 pm.
The first low tide was at 3:43 am and
the next low tide will be at 4:36 pm.
The first high tide will be at 9:54 am
and the next high tide at 11:38 pm.
The Moon is 98.0% visible; a Waxing Gibbous
Moon Direction: 280.31° W↑
Moon Altitude: 15.91°
Moon Distance: 222120 mi
Next Full Moon: tomorrow morning, Tuesday February 19, 2019 at 7:53 am
Tomorrow’s full moon is called the Full Snow Moon.
This heaviest snows fall in February. This Moon has also been called the Hunger Moon.
Next New Moon: Wednesday March 6, 2019 at 8:03 am
Next Moonset: Today at 6:23 am
Today is…
Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day
as it was on this day in 1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
Today is also….
Dialect Day on the Amami Islands, Japan
Kurdish Students Union Day in Iraqi Kurdistan
National Democracy Day, celebrates the 1951 overthrow of the Rana dynasty in Nepal
Wife's Day (Konudagur) in Iceland
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this day with…
259 BC – Qin Shi Huang, Chinese emperor (d. 210 BC)
1862 – Charles M. Schwab, American businessman, co-founded Bethlehem Steel (d. 1939)
1883 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek philosopher, author, and playwright (d. 1957)
1890 – Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963)
1892 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 1944)
1903 – Nikolai Podgorny, Ukrainian engineer and politician (d. 1983)
1906 – Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician and academic (d. 1980)
1909 – Wallace Stegner, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 1993)
1914 – Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2000)
1919 – Jack Palance, American boxer and actor (d. 2006)
1920 – Bill Cullen, American game show panelist and host (d. 1990)
1921 – Oscar Feltsman, Ukrainian-Russian pianist and composer (d. 2013)
1922 – Eric Gairy, Grenadan politician, 1st Prime Minister of Grenada (d. 1997)
1922 – Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (d. 2012)
1925 – George Kennedy, American actor (d. 2016)
1931 – Johnny Hart, American cartoonist, co-created The Wizard of Id (d. 2007)
1932 – Miloš Forman, Czech-American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2018)[1]
1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-American singer-songwriter
1936 – Jean M. Auel, American author
1941 – Irma Thomas, American singer
1950 – Cybill Shepherd, American actress and singer
1952 – Juice Newton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1954 – John Travolta, American actor and producer
1957 – Vanna White, American model and game show host
1964 – Matt Dillon, American actor and director
1965 – Dr. Dre, American rapper, producer, and actor
1968 – Molly Ringwald, American actress
1970 – Susan Egan, American actress and singer
1970 – James H. Fowler, American political scientist and author
1974 – Julia Butterfly Hill, American environmentalist and author
Singer-musician Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek) is 42.
1980 – Regina Spektor, Russian-American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer
…and on this day in Black History…
in the year 1688, First formal protest against slavery by organized white body in English America made by Germantown (Pa.) Quakers at monthly meeting. The historic "Germantown Protest" denounced slavery and the slave trade.
1766 – A mutiny by captive Malagasy begins at sea on the slave ship Meermin, leading to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
– On this in 1865, the rebels abandoned Charleston, South Carolina
– On this day in 1894, renowned architect Paul Revere Williams was born
– On this day in 1931, Novelist, Editor, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and Noble Prize laureate, Toni Morrison is
born Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison.
She’s still writing to this day at the age of 88.
1934 – Audre Lorde, American feminist poet, essayist, memoirist, and activist (d. 1992) was born today, February 18, 1934 in New York City.
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Gambia from the United Kingdom in 1965.
2013: R&B singer (and former member of The Temptations) Damon Harris passed away, aged 62. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the age of 47 and formed a non-profit to heighten awareness of prostate cancer diagnoses and treatment.
Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, said in a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month that the United States was "a nation of cowards" on matters of race.
One year ago in 2018: "Black Panther," the Marvel superhero film from the Walt Disney Co., blew past expectations to take in $192 million during its debut weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
Also a year ago today, LeBron James scored 29 points and won his third NBA All-Star Game MVP award as his team beat the rival squad headed by Stephen Curry, 148-to-145.
…also on this day in history…
1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
1911 – The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.
In 1930, photographic evidence of Pluto (now designated a "dwarf planet") was discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
In 1943, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Chinese leader, addressed members of the Senate and then the House, becoming the first Chinese national to address both houses of the U.S. Congress.
1943 – World War II: The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.
1954 – The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.
In 1970, the "Chicago Seven" defendants were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention; five were convicted of violating the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 (those convictions were later reversed).
1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.
In 1977, the space shuttle prototype Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its debut "flight" above Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In 1997, astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery completed their tune-up of the Hubble Space Telescope after 33 hours of spacewalking; the Hubble was then released using the shuttle's crane.
Ten years ago in 2009:
President Barack Obama launched a $75 billion foreclosure rescue plan aimed at saving homes.
Also on this day in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began a two-day visit to Indonesia.
2009 - Pope Benedict XVI received House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Vatican, telling her that Catholic politicians had a duty to protect life "at all stages of its development."
2010 – WikiLeaks publishes the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by the soldier now known as Chelsea Manning.
Five years ago in 2014:
Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun, was sentenced in Knoxville, Tennessee, to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bomb-grade uranium, a demonstration that exposed serious security flaws at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. (Two other activists received sentences of just over five years.)
Also on this day in 2014, Maria Franziska von Trapp, 99, the last surviving member of the seven original Trapp Family Singers of "Sound of Music" fame (and stepdaughter of "the" Maria von Trapp), died in Stowe, Vermont.