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Almanac - Wednesday August 23, 2023

Cuban sandwich. Lunch in Marathon, FL.
John Marshok
/
Flickr Creative Commons
Cuban sandwich. Lunch in Marathon, FL.

Today is Wednesday, the 23rd of August of 2023,

August 23 is the 235th day of the year

130 days remain until the end of the year.

32 days until autumn begins

The sun rose this morning at 6:32:19 am

and sunset will be at 7:51:14 pm

We will have 13 hours and 18 minutes of daylight

The solar transit will be at 1:11:46 pm.

Water temperature in San Francisco Bay today is 67.8°F.

The first high tide was at 4:21 am at 3.94 feet

The first low tide will be at 9:18 am at 2.65 feet

The next high tide at 3:56 pm at 5.76 feet

and the final low tide at Ocean Beach tonight will be at 11:11 pm at 1.08 feet

The Moon is currently 41% visible

It’s the First Quarter Moon as of at 2:57 am this morning

Today is…

Buttered Corn Day

European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism

Hug Your Sweetheart Day

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

Internaut Day

National Cheap Flight Day

National Cuban Sandwich Day

National Sponge Cake Day

Ride the Wind Day

Valentino Day (Rudolph Valentino died on this day in 1926)

23 August is the name of a couple of villages in Romania

Today is also…

Battle of Kursk Day in Russia

Day of the National Flag in Ukraine

Liberation from Fascist Occupation Day in Romania

National Day for Physicians in Iran

Um-h’langa Day Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland)

If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday to you! You share your special day with…

1900 – Malvina Reynolds, American singer-songwriter and activist (d. 1978)

1905Ernie Bushmiller, American cartoonist (d. 1982)

1912Gene Kelly, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1996)

1917Tex Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1985)

1931Barbara Eden, American actress and singer

1932Houari Boumediene, Algerian colonel and politician, 2nd President of Algeria (d. 1978)

1932 – Mark Russell, American comedian and pianist

1933 – Pete Wilson, American commander and politician, 36th Governor of California

1940Galen Rowell, American mountaineer and photographer (d. 2002)

1946Keith Moon, English drummer, songwriter, and producer (d. 1978)

1947 – Linda Thompson, English folk-rock singer-songwriter

1949 – Shelley Long, American actress

1949 – Rick Springfield, Australian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor

1951 – Queen Noor of Jordan

1969 – Jeremy Schaap, American journalist and author

1969 – Keith Tyson, English painter and illustrator

1970 – River Phoenix, American actor (d. 1993)

1975Eliza Carthy, English folk musician

1978Kobe Bryant, American basketball player and businessman (d. 2020)

1990Seth Curry, American basketball player

…and on this day in history…

79Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for four years.

1904 – The automobile tire chain is patented.

1970 – Organized by Mexican American labor union leader César Chávez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.

1973 – A bank robbery gone wrong in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis; over the next five days the hostages begin to sympathise with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".

1975 – The start of the Wave Hill walk-off by Gurindji people in Australia, lasting eight years, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 Paul Kelly song and an annual celebration.

1989Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the VilniusTallinn road, holding hands.

1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.

1990 – West and East Germany announce that they will reunite on October 3.

1991 – The World Wide Web is opened to the public.

1994Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

2011 – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the Libyan Civil War.

Kevin Vance created a program of folk music for KALW, A Patchwork Quilt, in October 1991. He grew up in Berkeley during the 1960s and '70s and spent his years learning in public schools, community colleges, bookstores, libraries, and non-commercial radio stations, as well as from the people around him. When he's not on the radio, then he's selling books, taking care of his family, listening to music, entering stuff into a computer, or taking a class.