© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Almanac - Tuesday 8/7/18

raspberries and cream, by flickr user jemma hales

Today is Tuesday, the 7th of August of 2018, is the 219th day of the year

There are 146 days remaining until the end of the year.

46 days until autumn begins ...

91 days until mid-term elections Tuesday November 6, 2018...

(2 months and 30 days from today)

This day marks the approximate midpoint of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and of winter in the Southern Hemisphere (starting the season at the June solstice).

The sun will rise in San Francisco at 6:19 am

and sunset will be at 8:11 pm.

We will have 13 hours and 52 minutes of daylight, today.

The solar transit will be at 1:15 pm.

the first low tide will be at 2:39 am 

and the next low tide at 2:11 pm.

The first high tide will be at 9:48 am 

and the next high tide at 8:34 pm.

The Pollen count starts today at a low to medium number of 4 but rises to a medium count of 5 by the end of the week.

The Moon is 21.3% visible; a Waning Crescent

Moon Direction: ↑ 85.54° E

Moon Altitude: 25.84°

Moon Distance: 228018 mi

Next New Moon: this Saturday August 11, 2018 at 2:57 am

Next Full Moon: a Sunday August 26, 2018 at 4:56 am

Next Moonset: Today at 4:58 pm

Beach Party Day

National Lighthouse Day

National Night Out

National Sea Serpent Day

Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day

Professional Speakers Day

Purple Heart Day

Raspberries 'n Cream Day

It’s also…

Emancipation Day in Saint Kitts and Nevis

Republic Day in Ivory Coast

Youth Day in Kiribati

If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You!  You share this day with…

1726 – James Bowdoin, American banker and politician, 2nd Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1790)

1876 – Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (d. 1917)

1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, American author and activist (d. 1964)

1904 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)

1921 – Manitas de Plata, French guitarist (d. 2014)

1926 – Stan Freberg, American puppeteer, voice actor, and singer (d. 2015)

1935 – Rahsaan Roland Kirk, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1977)

1942 – Garrison Keillor, American humorist, novelist, short story writer, and radio host

1949 – Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese journalist and politician

1950 – Rodney Crowell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

1962 – Alison Brown, American banjo player, songwriter, and producer

1975 – Charlize Theron, South African-American actress and producer

…and on this day in history…

1789 – The United States Department of War is established.

1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.

1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.

1930 – The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana; two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.

1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.

1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.

1964 – Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.

1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.

1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

1976 – Viking programViking 2 enters orbit around Mars.

1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.

1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union

1998 – Bombings at United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.