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Almanac - Wednesday 5/20/20

by flickr user Tania & Artur; Strawberry picking ...

It's Pick Strawberries Day...

Today is Wednesday, the 20th of May of 2020.

It is the 141st day of the year.

225 days remain until the end of the year.

31 days until summer begins

167 days until election day

The sun rises at 5:55 am 

and sunset will be at 8:19 pm.

Today we will have 14 hours and 24 minutes of daylight.

The solar transit will be at 1:07 pm.

The first low tide was at 5:06 am 

and the next low tide will be at 4:37 pm.

The first high tide will be at 11:41 am 

and the final high tide at 10:57 pm.

The Moon is 4.7%; Waning Crescent

Next New Moon: Friday May 22, 2020 at 10:38 am

Today is…

Be a Millionaire Day

Eliza Doolittle Day

Emergency Medical Services for Children Day

Flower Day

International Clinical Trials Day

National Quiche Lorraine Day

National Rescue Dog Day

Pick Strawberries Day

Turn Beauty Inside Out Day

Weights and Measures Day

World Autoimmune Arthritis Day

World Bee Day

Today is also…

Day of Remembrance (Cambodia)

Emancipation Day (Florida)

European Maritime Day (European Council)

Independence Restoration Day, celebrates the independence of East Timor from Indonesia in 2002.

Josephine Baker Day (NAACP)

National Awakening Day (Indonesia), and its related observances:

Indonesian Doctor Day (Indonesia)

National Day (Cameroon)

World Bee Day

World Metrology Day

On this day in history…

1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.

1891 – History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

1980 – In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects, by 60% of the vote, a government proposal to move towards independence from Canada.

1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

2002 – The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

…and if today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You!  You get to share this special day with…

1799 – Honoré de Balzac, French novelist and playwright (d. 1850)

1806 – John Stuart Mill, English economist, civil servant, and philosopher (d. 1873)

1818 – William Fargo, American businessman and politician, co-founded Wells Fargo and American Express (d. 1881)

1825 – Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the U.S. (d. 1921)

1882 – Sigrid Undset, Danish-Norwegian novelist, essayist, and translator, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1949)

1901 – Doris Fleeson, American journalist (d. 1970)

1904 – Margery Allingham, English author of detective fiction (d. 1966)

3)

1908 – James Stewart, American actor (d. 1997)

1911 – Annie M. G. Schmidt, Dutch author and playwright (d. 1995)

1915 – Moshe Dayan, Israeli general and politician, 5th Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 1981)

1919 – George Gobel, American comedian (d. 1991)

1923 – Edith Fellows, American actress (d. 2011)

1940 – Sadaharu Oh, Japanese-Taiwanese baseball player and manager

1944 – Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter (d. 2014)

1946 – Cher, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress

1949 – Dave Thomas, Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter