Happy Birthday to violinist Itzhak Perlman (special guest for the opening of the San Francisco Symphony on 9/5)!
Today is Friday, August 31, 2018, the 243rd day of the year with 122 days remaining.
- Sunrise: 6:39am
- Sunset: 7:41pm
...giving us 13 hours and 1 minute of daylight. 82% of the waning moon will be visible, rising at 10:50pm.
Tides at the Golden Gate
- High: 3:18am/3:41pm
- Low: 8:58am/9:50pm
Special international celebrations today…
- Hero's Day - Philippines
- Independence Day - Kyrgyzstan, Trinidad & Tobago
- National Day - Malaysia
- National Language Day - Moldova
- Grape Blessing Day - Armenia
- White Rose Day (in honor of Princess Diana) - Australia
It’s also…
- Love Litigating Lawyers Day
- National Diatomaceous Earth Day
- National College Colors Day
- National Matchmaker Day
- National Trail Mix Day
- National Eat Outside Day
On this day in…
1823 - Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain when invited French forces entered Cadiz. The event is known as the Battle of Trocadero.
1852 - The first pre-stamped envelopes were created with legislation of theU.S. Congress.
1881 - The first tennis championships in theU.S. were played.
1887 - The kinetoscope was patented by Thomas Edison. The device was used to produce moving pictures.
1920 - The first news program to be broadcast on radio was aired. The station was 8MK in Detroit,MI.
1920 - John Lloyd Wright was issued a patent for "Toy-Cabin Construction," which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086)
1935 - The act of exportingU.S. arms to belligerents was prohibited by an act signed byU.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1940 - Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh were married.
1941 - The radio program "The Great Gildersleeve" made its debut on NBC.
1946 - Superman returned to radio on the Mutual Broadcasting System after being dropped earlier in the year.
1950 - Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers hit four home runs in a single game off of four different pitchers.
1959 - Sandy Koufax set a National League record by striking out 18 batters.
1962 - The Caribbean nations Tobago and Trinidad became independent within the British Commonwealth.
1964 -California officially became the most populated state in America.
1965 - The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created by theU.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
1980 - Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day strike.
1981 - The 30-year contract between Milton Berle and NBC-TV expired.
1989 - Great Britain's Princess Anne and Mark Phillips announced that they were separating. The marriage was 16 years old.
1990 - U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to try and negotiate a solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf.
1990 - East and West Germany signed a treaty that meant the harmonizing of political and legal systems.
1991 - Uzbekistan and Kirghiziz declared their independence from the Soviet Union. They were the 9th and 10th republics to announce their plans to secede.
1991 - In a "Solidarity Day" protest hundreds of thousands of union members marched in Washington, DC.
1993 - Russia withdrew its last soldiers from Lithuania.
1994 - A cease-fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
1994 - Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics after a half-century.
1998 - A ballistic missile was fired over Japan by North Korea. The missile landed in stages in the waters around Japan. There was no known target.
Today’s birthday celebrants include (or included)...
- Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) 0012
- Maria Montessori 1870
- Wilhelmina (Netherlands) 1880
- Frederic March 1897
- Arthur Godfrey 1903
- William Saroyan 1908
- Sir Bernard Lovell 1914
- Daniel Schorr 1916
- Alan Jay Lerner 1918
- Richard Basehart 1919
- G.D. Spradlin 1920
- Buddy Hackett 1924
- James Coburn 1928
- Frank Robinson 1935
- Eldridge Cleaver 1935
- Warren Berlinger 1937
- Jerry Allison (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) 1939
- Jack Thompson 1940
- Itzhak Perlman 1945
- Ian Morrison (Them) 1945
- Richard Gere 1949
- Rudolph Schenker (Scorpions) 1952
- Anthony Thistlethwaite (The Waterboys) 1955
- Gina Schock (The Go-Go's) 1957
- Glenn Tilbrook (Squeeze) 1957
- Edwin Moses 1958
- Chris Whitley 1960
- Tony DeFranco (The DeFranco Family) 1960
- Larry Waddell (Mint Condition) 1963
- Jeff Russo (Tonic) 1969
- Debbie Gibson 1970 - Singer
