Today Tuesday, the 31st of December of 2019...
It is the 365th day of the year
It is the last day of the year
The following day is January 1, the first day of the following year.
63 days until primaries Tuesday March 3, 2020
(2 months and 3 days from today)
308 days until presidential elections Tuesday November 3, 2020
(10 months and 3 days from today)
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 7:25 am
and sunset will be at 5:02 pm.
Today we will have 9 hours and 37 minutes of daylight.
The solar transit will be at 12:13 pm.
The first high tide was at 3:45 am
and the next high tide will be at 2:18 pm.
The first low tide will be at 8:59 am
and the next low tide at 9:02 pm.
The Moon is 26.2% visible; a Waxing Crescent
Moon Direction: 28.80° NNE↑
Moon Altitude:-61.74°
Moon Distance: 250510 mi
Next Full Moon: Jan 10, 2020 11:21 am
Next New Moon: Jan 24, 2020 1:42 pm
Next Moonrise: Today 11:12 am
Today is…
Old Year’s Day/Night
It’s 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
The first day of Hogmanay or "Auld Year's Night" in Scotland
The seventh day of the Twelve Days of Christmas
The sixth and penultimate day of Kwanzaa;
Today’s priniciple is Kuumba, Creativity.
On this day in history…
1796 – The incorporation of Baltimore as a city.
1831 – Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.
1853 – A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England.
1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of Canada.
1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.
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.
1906 – Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution of 1906.
1907 – The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in Manhattan.
1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe.
1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
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 the 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 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.
1999 – The U.S. 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.
2000 – The last day of the 20th Century and 2nd Millennium.
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.
…and if today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this special day with…
1491 – Jacques Cartier, French navigator and explorer (d. 1557)
1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor (d. 1954)
1880 – George Marshall, American general and politician, 50th United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)
1899 – Silvestre Revueltas, Mexican violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1940)
1908 – Simon Wiesenthal, Ukrainian-Austrian Nazi hunter and author (d. 2005)
1930 – Odetta, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actress (d. 2008)
1930 – Jaime Escalante, Bolivian-American educator (d. 2010)
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-
1968 – Junot Diaz, Dominican-born American novelist, short story writer, and essayist
1977 – Psy, South Korean singer-songwriter, producer, and dancer
1977 – Donald Trump, Jr., American businessman and son of billionaire Donald Trump