Today is Thursday, the 21st of December of 2023
December 21 is the 355th day of the year
10 days remain until the end of the year.
Today is The Winter Solstice as of 7:27 pm this evening
The sun rises this morning at 7:21:35 am
and sunset will be at 4:54:50 pm.
We will have 9 hours and 33 minutes of daylight.
The solar transit will be at 12:08:12 pm.
Water temperature in San Francisco Bay today is 54.3°F.
The first high tide will be at 5:53 am at 6.17 feet
The only low tide of the day will be at 12:48 pm at 0.76 feet
and the final high tide at Ocean Beach tonight will be at 6:51 pm at 4.16 feet
The Moon is 69.8% visible
It’s a Waxing Gibbous moon
Moon will rise this afternoon at 1:15 pm
and the moon will set early tomorrow morning at 2:58 am.
We’ll have a full moon the day after Christmas
The 21st day of December in the year 2012 was believed by some to be an end-of-the-world event. We’re still here.
Today is…
Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere
It’s also Yule in the Northern Hemisphere
and the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere
celebrating the lives of Anne Frank and Samantha Smith
as it was on this day in 1913 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the
International Dalek Remembrance Day
National French Fried Shrimp Day
National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day
National Look at the Bright Side Day
Today is also…
Armed Forces Day in the Philippines
Dongzhi Festival in Asia
Sang-ha-mitta Day in Thera-vada Buddhism
Ziem-ass-vētki in ancient Latvia
Forefathers' Day in Plymouth, Massachusetts
São Tomé Day in São Tomé and Príncipe
The first day of Pancha Ganapati, celebrated until December 25 in the Saiva Siddhanta Church
Gravy Day in Australia, celebrated in honour of the song How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday to you! You share this special day with….
968 – Minamoto no Yorinobu, Japanese samurai (d. 1048)
1615 – Benedict Arnold, Rhode Island colonial governor (d. 1678)
1795 – Jack Russell, English priest, hunter, and dog breeder (d. 1883)
1804 – Benjamin Disraeli, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1881)
1892 – Rebecca West, English journalist and author (d. 1983)
1911 – Josh Gibson, American baseball player (d. 1947)
1917 – Heinrich Böll, German novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985)
1918 – Donald Regan, American colonel and politician, 11th White House Chief of Staff (d. 2003)
1918 – Kurt Waldheim, Austrian colonel and politician; 9th President of Austria (d. 2007)
1919 – Doug Young, American voice actor for Hanna-Barbera cartoons (d. 2018)
1922 – Paul Winchell, American actor, voice artist, and ventriloquist (d. 2005)
1935 – Phil Donahue, American talk show host and producer
1937 – Jane Fonda, American actress and activist
1940 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer and producer (d. 1993)
1942 – Hu Jintao, Chinese engineer and politician, 5th Paramount leader of China
1947 – Paco de Lucía, Spanish guitarist, songwriter, and producer (d. 2014)
1948 – Barry Gordon, American actor and voice artist; longest-serving president of the Screen Actors Guild (1988–95)
1948 – Samuel L. Jackson, American actor and producer
1949 – Thomas Sankara, Burkinabé captain and politician, 5th President of Burkina Faso (d. 1987)
1950 – Jeffrey Katzenberg, American screenwriter and producer, co-founded DreamWorks Animation
1953 – Betty Wright, American singer-songwriter (d. 2020)
1966 – Kiefer Sutherland, British-Canadian actor, director, and producer
1967 – Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgian lawyer and politician, 3rd President of Georgia…
…and on this day in history…
AD 69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors.[1]
1844 – The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers commences business at its cooperative in Rochdale, England, starting the Cooperative movement.
1879 – World premiere of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1913 – Arthur Wynne's "word-cross", the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.
1919 – American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to Russia.
1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
1965 – International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is adopted.
1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.
1970 – First flight of F-14 multi-role combat aircraft.
1995 – The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
2020 – A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs, with the two planets separated in the sky by 0.1 degrees. This is the closest conjunction between the two planets since 1623.
