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Almanac - Monday, 8/7/17

Week-end Beach Party by flickr user Dennis Candy

 
Today Monday, the 7th of August of 2017 is the 219th day of the year….

There are 146 days remaining until the end of the year.
 
456 days until Mid-Term elections on Tuesday November 6, 2018 (1 year 2 months and 30 days from today)
 
1184 days until the next Presidential election on Tuesday November 3, 2020 (3 years 2 months and 27 days from today)
 
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 6:20 am 
 
and the sun will set at 8:11 pm. 
 
Today we will have 13 hours and 51 minutes of daylight. 
 
The solar transit will be at 1:15 pm.
 
The first low tide will be at 6:07 am 
 
and the next low tide at 6:01 pm. 
 
The only high tide of the day will be at 1:11 pm.
 
The Moon is practically full: 99.9% illuminated; still a Waxing Gibbous
 
It will be come a proper Full Moon later today at 11:10 am
 
Moon Direction: ↑ 240.73° WSW
 
Moon Altitude: 8.99°
 
Moon Distance: 245812 mi
 
Next New Moon: Aug 21, 2017 at 11:30 am
 
same day as the solar eclipse, two weeks from today.
 
Next Moonset: Today at 6:12 am 
 
Today is Assistance Dog Day
 
Beach Party Day
 
National Lighthouse Day
 
National Sea Serpent Day
 
Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day
 
Professional Speakers Day
 
Purple Heart Day
 
Raspberries 'n Cream Day
 
Tu B'Av
Observed the 15th of Av in the Hebrew calendar
 
It's also…
 
Assyrian Martyrs Day 
 
Battle of Boyacá Day in Colombia
 
Emancipation Day in Saint Kitts and Nevis
 
Republic Day in Ivory Coast
 
Youth Day in Kiribati
 
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You!  You share this special day with
 
1726 – James Bowdoin, American banker and politician, 2nd Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1790)
 
63Paulina Kellogg Davis 8/7/1813 - 8/24/1876American feminist and social reformer
 
1876 – Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (d. 1917)
 
1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, American author and activist (d. 1964)
 
1903 – Louis Leakey, Kenyan-English palaeontologist and archaeologist (d. 1972)
 
1904 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
 
1921 – Manitas de Plata, French guitarist (d. 2014)
 
1926 – Stan Freberg, American puppeteer, voice actor, and singer (d. 2015)
 
1935 – Rahsaan Roland Kirk, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1977)
 
1942 – Garrison Keillor, American humorist, novelist, short story writer, and radio host
 
1949 – Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese journalist and politician
 
1950 – Rodney Crowell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 
1953 – Anne Fadiman, American journalist and author
 
1954 – Jonathan Pollard, Israeli spy
 
1954 – Alan Reid, Scottish politician
 
1962 – Alison Brown, American banjo player, songwriter, and producer
 
1963 – Marcus Roberts, American pianist and educator
 
1975 – Charlize Theron, South African-American actress and producer
 
On this day in history….
 
1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
 
1819 – Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
 
1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
 
1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
 
1947 – Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
 
1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
 
1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.
 
1960 – Ivory Coast becomes independent from France.
 
1962 – Canadian-born American pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey awarded the U.S. President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for her refusal to authorize thalidomide.
 
1964 – Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
 
1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
 
1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.
 
1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
 
1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union
 
2002 – Major league baseball players and owners agreed on the sport's first tests for steroids.
 
2007 – Barry Bonds became baseball's career home run leader when he hit No. 756 during a home game in San Francisco, passing Hank Aaron's mark.
 
2009 – Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused President Barack Obama of proposing a "death panel" that would decide who receives treatment in his health care plan.
 
2010 – Elena Kagan was sworn in as the 112th justice and fourth woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.