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Almanac - Monday May 20, 2024

Late summer strawberries
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Flickr Creative Commons

Late summer strawberries

Julie &Today is Monday, the 20th of May of 2024,

May 20 is the 141st day of the year

225 days remain until the end of the year.

31 days until summer begins

The sun rose this morning at 5:55:17 am

and sunset will be at 8:18:26 pm.

We will have 14 hours and 23 minutes of daylight

The solar transit will be at 1:06:51 pm.

Water temperature in San Francisco Bay today is 57.7°F

The first low tide will be at 3:54 am at 0.32 feet

The first high tide will be at 10:13 am at 4.07 feet

The next low tide at 3:17 pm at 2.03 feet

and the final high tide at Ocean Beach tonight will be at 9:28 pm at 5.77 feet

The Moon is currently 90.8% visible

Waxing Gibbous

It will be a Full Moon in 3 days on Thursday the 23rd of May of 2024 at 6:53 am

In May, it’s called the Full Flower Moon

Flowers spring forth in abundance this month.

The May full moon is also called the….

Budding Moon (Cree)

Egg Laying Moon (Cree)

Frog Moon (Cree)

Leaf Budding Moon (Cree)

Planting Moon (Dakota, Lakota)

Moon of Shedding Ponies (Oglala)

Today is….

Be a Millionaire Day

Eliza Doolittle Day

Flower Day

International Clinical Trials Day

International Red Sneakers Day

National Psychometrist Day

National Quiche Lorraine Day

National Rescue Dog Day

National Streaming Day

National SugarBee Apple Day

Pick Strawberries Day

Weights and Measures Day

World Autoimmune Arthritis Day

World Flour 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)

Indonesian Doctor Day (Indonesia)

National Day (Cameroon)

World Bee Day

World Metrology Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1958Ron Reagan, American journalist and radio host

1959 – Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Native Hawaiian singer, songwriter ("Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World"), and Hawaiian sovereignty advocate, born in Honolulu, Hawaii (d. 1997)

1972 – Busta Rhymes, American rapper, producer, and actor

….and on this day in history….

1570Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.

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

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

1875 – Signing of the Metre Convention by 17 nations leading to the establishment of the International System of Units.

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

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

1902Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.

1932Amelia 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.

1943 – The Luttra Woman, a bog body from the Early Neolithic period (radiocarbon-dated c. 3928–3651 BC),[11] was discovered near Luttra, Sweden.

1964Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias.

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 a team of French scientists including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann, and Luc Montagnier.

1996Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

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).

2011Mamata Banerjee is sworn in as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, the first woman to hold this post.

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.