Today is Wednesday, the 18th of December of 2024,
December 18 is the 353rd day of the year
13 days remain until the end of the year.
3 days until winter begins
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 7:20:22 am
and sunset will be at 4:53:45 pm.
Today we will have 9 hours and 33 minutes of daylight
The solar transit will be at 12:07:03 pm.
Water temperature in Aquatic Park today is 52.3°F.
The first high tide was at 1:40 am at 5.11 feet
The first low tide was this hour at 6:20 am at 3.23 feet
The next high tide will be at 11:52 am at 6.17 feet
and the final low tide at Ocean Beach will be tonight at 7:08 pm at -0.8 feet
The Moon is currently 88.1% visible
It’s a Waning Gibbous moon
We’ll have the Last Quarter Moon in 4 days on Sunday the 22nd of December of 2024 at 2:18 pm
Today is….
Answer the Phone Like Buddy the Elf Day
(“Hello! Buddy The Elf! What’s Your Favorite Color?”)
National Roast Suckling Pig Day
National Wear a Plunger on Your Head Day
Today is also….
UN Arabic Language Day (United Nations)
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share your special day with….
1800 – James Watney, English brewer and businessman (d. 1884)
1863 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (d. 1914)
1878 – Joseph Stalin, Georgian-Russian marshal and politician,General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (d. 1953)
1879 – Paul Klee, Swiss-German painter and educator (d. 1940)
1886 – Ty Cobb, American baseball player and manager (d. 1961)
1888 – Robert Moses, American urban planner (d. 1981)
1897 – Fletcher Henderson, American pianist and composer (d. 1952)
1912 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American general and pilot (d. 2002)
1913 – Willy Brandt, German politician, 4th Chancellor of Germany, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1992)
1916 – Betty Grable, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 1973)
1917 – Ossie Davis, American actor and activist (d. 2005)
1927 – Ramsey Clark, American lawyer and politician, 66th United States Attorney General (d. 2021)
1928 – Harold Land, American tenor saxophonist (d. 2001)
1933 – Lonnie Brooks, American blues singer and guitarist (d. 2017)
1935 – Jacques Pépin, French-American chef and author
1941 – Wadada Leo Smith, American trumpet player and composer
1943 – Keith Richards, English musician
1946 – Steve Biko, South African activist, founded the Black Consciousness Movement (d. 1977)
1946 – Steven Spielberg, American director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded DreamWorks
1950 – Leonard Maltin, American historian, author, and critic
1963 – Brad Pitt, American actor and producer
1970 – DMX, American rapper and actor (d. 2021
1980 – Christina Aguilera, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
2001 – Billie Eilish, American singer
….and on this day in history….
1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China.
1777 – The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving
1787 – New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1865 – US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.
1867 – A magnitude 7.0 earthquakes strikes off the coast of Taiwan, triggering a tsunami and killing at least 580 people.
1892 – Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
1917 – The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress.
1958 – Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched.
2002 – California gubernatorial recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier.
2006 – United Arab Emirates holds its first-ever elections.
2018 – List of bolides: A meteor exploded over the Bering Sea with a force over 10 times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
2019 – The United States House of Representatives impeaches Donald Trump for the first time.
