Today is Thursday, the 9th of August of 2018 is the 221st day of the year.
There are 144 days remaining until the end of the year.
89 days until mid-term elections Tuesday November 6, 2018 ...
(2 months and 28 days from today)
817 days until presidential elections Tuesday November 3, 2020
(2 years 2 months and 25 days from today)
The sun rises at 6:21 am
and sunset will be at 8:08 pm.
We will have 13 hours and 47 minutes of daylight, today.
The solar transit will be at 1:14 pm.
The first low tide was at 4:23 am
and the next low tide at 4:08 pm.
The first high tide will be at 11:34 am
and the next high tide at 10:23 pm.
Pollen count today is a low-to-medium reading of 3.9, rising to a peak at a medium count of 5 this weekend, and dips down to a low-to-medium count of 4.1 by the start of next week
The Moon is 5.6% visible; a Waning Crescent
Moon Direction: ↑ 68.05° ENE
Moon Altitude: 4.46°
Moon Distance: 223417 mi
Next New Moon: Saturday August 11, 2018 at 2:57 am
Next Full Moon: Sunday August 26, 2018 at 4:56 am
Next Moonset: Today at 7:01 pm
Today is…
International Day of the World's Indigenous People
International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples (United Nations)
National Day, celebrates the independence of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965.
National Peacekeepers' Day, celebrated on Sunday closest to the day (Canada)
National Women's Day (South Africa)
Remembrance for Radbod, King of the Frisians (The Troth)
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this day with…
1896 – Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist and philosopher (d. 1980)
Mary Golda Ross (August 9, 1908 – April 29, 2008) was the first known Native American female engineer. She was one of the 40 founding engineers of the Skunk Works, and was known for her work at Lockheed Corporation on "preliminary design concepts for interplanetary space travel, manned and unmanned earth-orbiting flights, the earliest studies of orbiting satellites for both defense and civilian purposes."
1914 – Tove Jansson, Finnish author and illustrator (d. 2001)
1922 – Philip Larkin, English poet and novelist (d. 1985)
1942 – Jack DeJohnette, American drummer, pianist, and composer
1957 – Melanie Griffith, American actress and producer
1959 – Kurtis Blow, American rapper, producer, and actor
1963 – Whitney Houston, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress (d. 2012)
1970 – Chris Cuomo, American lawyer and journalist
…and on this day in history…
1173 – Construction of the campanile of the Cathedral of Pisa (now known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) begins; it will take two centuries to complete.
1854 – Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden.
1892 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
1930 – Betty Boop makes her cartoon debut in Dizzy Dishes.
1936 – Summer Olympic Games: Games of the XI Olympiad: Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal at the games.
1944 – The United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.
In 1944, 258 African-American sailors based at Port Chicago, California, refused to load a munitions ship following a cargo vessel explosion that killed 320 men, many of them black. (Fifty of the sailors were convicted of mutiny, fined and imprisoned.)
1945 – World War II: Nagasaki is devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, is dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. Thirty-five thousand people are killed outright, including 23,200-28,200 Japanese war workers, 2,000 Korean forced workers, and 150 Japanese soldiers.
1945 – The Red Army invades Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
1965 – Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.
1969 – The Manson Family commits the Tate murders.
1974 – As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.
In 1995, Jerry Garcia, lead singer and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, died in Forest Knolls, California, of a heart attack at age 53.
In 1997, Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was brutalized in a Brooklyn, New York, stationhouse by Officer Justin Volpe, who raped him with a broken broomstick.
2014 – Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American male in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer after reportedly assaulting the officer and attempting to steal his weapon, sparking protests and unrest in the city.