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Almanac - Wednesday January 3, 2024

2006_12_31
Dennis Sylvester Hurd
/
Flickr Creative Commons
2006_12_31

Today is Wednesday, the 3rd of January of 2024,

January 3 is the third day of the year

363 days remain until the end of the year

75 days until spring begins

The sun will rise in San Francisco at 7:25:30 am

and sunset will be at 5:03:54 pm.

We will have 9 hours and 38 minutes of sun.

The solar transit will be at 12:14:42 pm.

Water temperature in San Francisco Bay today is 54.5°F.

The first high tide will be at 4:02 am at 5.16 feet

The first low tide will be at 10:39 am at 2.26 feet

The next high tide at 3:37 pm at 3.73 feet

and the final low tide at Ocean Beach will be at 9:39 pm at 1.67 feet.

The Moon is 55.5% visible

Last Quarter Moon will be tonight at 7:30 pm

The moonset will be at 11:44 am

and moonrise early tomorrow morning at 12:33 am

Today is…

Festival of Sleep Day

Humiliation Day

J.R.R. Tolkien Day

Memento Mori

National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day

National Drinking Straw Day

National Write to Congress Day

Women Rock! Day

Today is also…

Anniversary of the 1966 Coup d'état (Burkina Faso)

Ministry of Religious Affairs Day (Indonesia)

Tamaseseri Festival (Hakozaki Shrine, Fukuoka, Japan)

The tenth of the Twelve Days of Christmas

On the Tenth Day Of Christmas…

My True Love Gave To Me…

ten lords a-leaping

nine ladies dancing

eight maids a-milking

seven swans a-swimming

six geese a-laying

five gold rings

four collie (black, corvid) birds

Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.

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

106 BCCicero, Roman philosopher, lawyer, and politician (d. 43 BC)

1793Lucretia Mott, American activist (d. 1880)

1883Clement Attlee, English soldier, lawyer, and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1967)

1892J.R.R. Tolkien, English writer, poet, and philologist (d. 1973)

1894ZaSu Pitts, American actress (d. 1963)

1897 – Marion Davies, American actress and comedian (d. 1961)

1901Ngô Đình Diệm, Vietnamese lawyer and politician, 1st President of the Republic of Vietnam (d. 1963)

1905 – Anna May Wong, American actress (d. 1961)

1907Ray Milland, Welsh-American actor and director (d. 1986)

1909Victor Borge, Danish-American pianist and conductor (d. 2000)

1917 – Roger Williams Straus, Jr., American journalist and publisher, co-founded Farrar, Straus and Giroux (d. 2004)

1919Herbie Nichols, American pianist and composer (d. 1963)

1926 – George Martin, English composer, conductor, and producer (d. 2016)

1943Van Dyke Parks, American singer-songwriter, musician, composer, author, and actor

1945Stephen Stills, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer

1946John Paul Jones, English bass player, songwriter, and producer

1950Victoria Principal, American actress and businesswoman

1956Mel Gibson, American-Australian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter

1980 – Kurt Vile, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer

2003Kyle Rittenhouse, American conservative personality

2003 – Greta Thunberg, Swedish environmental activist

…and on this day in history…

1861Delaware votes not to secede from the United States.

1868Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.

1870 – Construction work begins on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, United States.

1933Minnie D. Craig becomes the first woman elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first woman to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.

1947 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.

1953Frances P. Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, become the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.

1956 – A fire damages the top part of the Eiffel Tower.

1957 – The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.

1958 – The West Indies Federation is formed.

1959Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.

1977Apple Computer is incorporated.

1993 – In Moscow, Russia, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

1999 – The Mars Polar Lander is launched by NASA.

2019Chang'e 4 makes the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, deploying the Yutu-2 lunar rover.

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.