John Geary became the first mayor of San Francisco on this day in 1850.
Today is Friday, March 23, 2018, the 82nd day of the year with 283 days remaining.
- Sunrise: 7:08am
- Sunset: 7:24pm
...giving us 12 hours and 16 minutes of daylight. 29% of the waxing moon will be visible, rising at 11:28am.
Tides at the Golden Gate
- High: 4:13am/6:22pm
- Low: 11:00am/10:57pm
Special international celebrations today…
- Pakistan Day Pakistan
- World Meteorological Day
It’s also…
- Awkward Moments Day
- Forgive Mom and Dad Day
- National Biodiesel Day
- National Chip & Dip Day
- National Melba Toast Day
On this day in…
1026 - Koenraad II crowned himself king of Italy.
1066 - The 18th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet took place.
1490 - The first dated edition of Maimonides "Mishna Torah" was published.
1657 - France and England formed an alliance against Spain.
1775 - American revolutionary Patrick Henry declared, "give me liberty, or give me death!"
1792 Captain George Vancouver is first Englishman to enter San Francisco Bay
1794 - Josiah G. Pierson patented a rivet machine.
1806 - Explorers Lewis and Clark, reached the Pacific coast, and began their return journey to the ast.
1808 - Napoleon's brother Joseph took the throne of Spain.
1811 Russian settlers establish Ft Ross trading post, north of San Francisco
1835 1st building constructed at Yerba Buena (now San Francisco)
1835 - Charles Darwin reached Los Arenales, in the Andes.
1836 - The coin press was invented by Franklin Beale.
1839 - The first recorded printed use of "OK" [ollkorrect] occurred in Boston's Morning Post.
1840 - The first successful photo of the Moon was taken.
1846 Captain Montgomery claims Yerba Buena (San Francisco) for US
1847 1st San Francisco newspaper published (California Star)
1847 Yerba Buena renamed San Francisco (1/30)
1848 - Hungary proclaimed its independence of Austria.
1848 1st gold seekers arrive in Panama en route to San Francisco (December)
1849 1st boat load of gold rush prospectors arrives in San Francisco from east coast (late February)
1849 Stephen C Massett opens concert at San Francisco courthouse using only piano in California
1850 City of San Francisco incorporated
1850 John Geary becomes 1st mayor of San Francisco
1857 - Elisha Otis installed the first modern passenger elevator in a public building. It was at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.
1858 - Eleazer A. Gardner patented the cable streetcar.
1861 - John D. Defrees became the first Superintendent of the United States Government Printing Office.
1861 - London's first tramcars began operations.
1868 - The University of California was founded in Oakland, CA.
1880 - John Stevens patented the grain crushing mill. The mill increased flour production by 70 percent.
1881 - The Boers and Britain signed a peace accord ending the first Boer war.
1881 - A gas lamp caused a fire in an opera house in Nice, France. 70 people were killed.
1889 - U.S. President Harrison opened Oklahoma for white colonization.
1901 - Dame Nellie Melba, revealed the secret of her now famous toast.
1901 - It was learned that Boers were starving in British concentration camps in South Africa.
1901 - Shots were fired at Privy Councilor Pobyedonostzev, who was considered to be Russia's most hated man.
1902 - In Italy, the minimum legal working age was raised from 9 to 12 for boys and from 11 to 15 for girls.
1903 - The Wright brothers obtained an airplane patent.
1903 - U.S. troops were sent to Honduras to protect the American consulate during revolutionary activity.
1909 - British Lt. Shackleton found the magnetic South Pole.
1909 - Theodore Roosevelt began an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
1910 - In the Canary Islands, women offered candidates for legislative elections.
1912 - The Dixie Cup was invented.
1917 - Austrian Emperor Charles I made a peace proposal to French President Poincare.
1917 - In the Midwest U.S., four tornadoes kill 211 people over a four day period.
1918 - Lithuania proclaimed independence.
1919 - Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.
1920 - Britain denounced theU.S. because of their delay in joining the League of Nations.
1920 - The Perserikatan Communist of India (PKI) political party was formed.
1921 - Arthur G. Hamilton set a new parachute record when he safely jumped from 24,400 feet.
1922 - The first airplane landed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington,DC.
1923 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' was written by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. It was one of the most popular songs of the 1920s.
1932 - In theU.S., the Norris-LaGuardia Act established workers' right to strike.
1933 - The German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act. The act effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial legislative powers.
1934 - TheU.S. Congress accepted the independence of the Philippines in 1945.
1936 - Italy, Austria & Hungary signed the Pact of Rome.
1937 - The L.A. Railway Co. started using PCC streetcars.
1940 - "Truth or Consequences" was heard on radio for the first time.
1942 - The Japanese occupy the Andaman Islands.
1942 - During World War II, theU.S. government began evacuating Japanese-Americans from West Coast homes to detention centers.
1951 -U.S. paratroopers descended from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.
1956 - Pakistan became the first Islamic republic. It was still within the British Commonwealth.
1956 - Sudan became independent.
1957 - TheU.S. Army sold the last of its homing pigeons.
1965 - America's first two-person space flight took off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard. The craft was the Gemini 3.
1965 - The Moroccan Army shot at demonstrators. About 100 people were killed.
1967 - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.
1970 - Mafia "Boss" Carlo Gambino was arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.
1972 - TheU.S. called a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.
1972 -Evel Knievel broke 93 bones after successfully jumping 35 cars.
1973 - The last airing of "Concentration" took place. The show had been on NBC for 15 years.
1980 - The deposed shah of Iran, Muhammad Riza Pahlavi, left Panama for Egypt.
1981 -U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.
1981 - CBS Television announced plans to reduce "Captain Kangaroo" to a 30-minute show each weekday morning.
1983 -U.S. President Reagan first proposed development of technology to intercept enemy missiles. The proposal became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative and "Star Wars."
1983 - Dr. Barney Clark died after 112 days with a permanent artificial heart.
1989 - A 1,000-foot diameter asteroid missed Earth by 500,000 miles.
1989 - Joel Steinberg was sentenced to 25 years for killing his adopted daughter.
1989 - Two electrochemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, announced that they had created nuclear fusion in a test tube at room temperature.
1990 - Former Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood was ordered to help clean up Prince William Sound and pay $50,000 in restitution for the 1989 oil spill.
1993 - U.N. experts announced that record ozone lows had been registered over a large area of the Western Hemisphere.
1994 - Luis DonaldoColosio, Mexico's leading presidential candidate, was assassinated in Tijuana. Mario Aburto Martinez was arrested at the scene and confessed to the killing.
1994 -Wayne Gretzky brokeGordie Howe's National Hockey League (NHL) career record with his 802nd goal.
1994 - Howard Stern formally announced his Libertarian run for New York governor.
1996 - Taiwan held its first democratic presidential elections.
1998 - Germany's largest bank pledged $3.1 million to Jewish foundations as restitution for Nazi looting.
1998 - TheU.S. Supreme Court ruled that term limits for state lawmakers were constitutional.
1998 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Cabinet.
1998 - The movie"Titanic" won 11 Oscars at the Academy Awards.
1998 - The German company Bertelsmann AG agreed to purchase the American publisher Random House for $1.4 billion. The merger created the largest English-language book-publishing company in the world.
1999 - Paraguay's Vice President Luis Maria Argana was shot to death by two gunmen.
1999 - NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave formal approval for air strikes against Serbian targets.
1999 - Near MandiBahauddin, Pakistan, a bus fell into a fast-moving canal. Nine were confirmed dead, 31 were missing and presumed dead, and 20 were injured.
2001 - Russia's orbiting Mir space station plunged into the South Pacific after its 15-years of use.
Today’s birthday celebrants include (or included)...
- Lorenzino de' Medici, Italian writer and assassin 1514
- Juan Gris, Spanish painter and sculptor 1887 Erich Fromm 1900 - German-American psychologist and humanistic philosopher
- Joan Crawford 1905 - Actress (Mildred Pierce, The Unknown), Born: Lucille Fay LeSueur
- Akira Kurosawa 1910 - Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter (Sugata Sanshiro, Madadayo)
- Wernher Von Braun (Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun) 1912
- Johnny Guarnieri 1917 - Musician
- Marty Allen 1922 - Comedian
- Martha Wright 1926 - Actress
- Roger Gilbert Bannister 1929 - Neurologist, British athlete, first man to run the mile in less than four minutes
- Warren Godfrey 1931 - Hockey player
- Monique Van Vooren 1933 - Actress
- Mark Rydell 1934 - Director
- Ric Ocasek 1949 - Musician (The Cars), producer
- Chaka Khan 1953 - Singer ("I Feel For You")
- Moses Malone 1954 - Basketball player
- Teresa Ganzel 1957 - Comedienne, actress
- Amanda Plummer 1957 - Actress
- Richard Grieco 1965 - Actor
- Hope Davis 1964 - Actress
- Kevin Griffin 1965 - Country musician (Yankee Grey)
- Marti Pellow 1966 - Musician (Wet, Wet, Wet)
- Marin Hinkle 1966 - Actress ("Two and a Half Men", "Once and Again")
- Damon Albarn 1968 - Musician (Blur)
- John Humphrey 1970 - Musician (The Nixons)
- Michelle Monaghan 1976 - Actress
- Keri Russell 1976 - Actress ("Felicity," "The Americans")
- Nicholle Tom 1978 - Actress
- Paul Martin 1978 - Country singer (Marshall Dyllon)
- Jan Liesiecki 1995
