Today is Friday, the 31st of December of 2021,
December 31 is the 365th day of the year
Today is the last day of the year.
The sun rises at 7:25:11 am
and sunset will be at 5:01:49 pm.
We will have 9 hours and 36 minutes of daylight
The solar transit will be at 12:13:30 pm.
The first low tide will be at 1:36 am at 2.63 feet
The first high tide will be at 7:48 am at 7.04 feet
The next low tide at 3:01 pm at -1.17 feet
and the final high tide Ocean Beach tonight will be at 10:05 pm at 4.86 feet
The Moon is currently 7.4%
It’s a Waning Crescent moon
We’ll have the New Moon in 2 days on Sunday the 2nd of January of 2022 at 10:33 am
Today is…
Hogmanay in Scotland
The seventh of the Twelve Days of Christmas in which you’re supposed to bring to your true love seven swans a-swimming
Today is also…
Last Day of the Year or Bisperás ng Bagong Taón,
a special holiday between Rizal Day and New Year's Day celebrated in The Philippines
International Solidarity Day of Azerbaijanis
The sixth and penultimate day of Kwanzaa
Today’s principle is Kuumba (Creativity) ...
On this day in history…
406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul.
1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province 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, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine. 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.
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.
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.
1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.
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.
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).
2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020 – The World Health Organization's issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine.
…and if today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share this very special day with…
1491 – Jacques Cartier, French navigator and explorer (d. 1557)
1720 – Charles Edward Stuart, Scottish claimant to the throne of England (d. 1788)
1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor (d. 1954)
1878 – Elizabeth Arden, Canadian businesswoman, founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (d. 1966)
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)
1942 – Andy Summers, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer
1943 – John Denver, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 1997)
1943 – Ben Kingsley, English actor
1948 – Donna Summer, American singer-songwriter (d. 2012)
1959 – Val Kilmer, American actor
1968 – Junot Diaz, Dominican-born American novelist, short story writer, and essayist
1977 – Psy, South Korean musician
1977 – Donald Trump Jr., American businessman and son of U.S. President Donald Trump