May 16 is the 137th day of the year
There are 229 days remaining until the end of the year.
Today we will have 14 hours and 17 minutes of sun. The solar transit will be at 1:06 pm.
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 5:58 am
and sunset will be at 8:15 pm.
the first low tide was at 3:02 am
and the next low tide will be at 2:41 pm.
The first high tide will be at 9:01 am
and the next high tide at 9:33 pm.
the moon will rise again in the east (90º) at 3:41 pm.
The lunar transit is the time the moon takes to cross the meridian (San Francisco, 122.5º W) at 9:48 pm.
Today is…
NATIONAL COQUILLES SANT JACQUES DAY –
NATIONAL SEA MONKEY DAY –
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHER’S DAY –
NATIONAL LOVE A TREE DAY –
NATIONAL PIERCING DAY
Martyrs of Sudan (Episcopal Church (USA))
Mass Graves Day (Iraq)
National Day, declared by Salva Kiir Mayardit (South Sudan)
Teachers' Day (Malaysia)
if today is your birthday, Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday also to...
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody(5/16/1804 - 1/3/1894)American educator; opened the first kindergarten in the United States
1905 – Henry Fonda, American actor, singer, and producer (d. 1982)
1906 – Margret Rey, German author and illustrator (d. 1996)
1912 – Studs Terkel, American historian and author (d. 2008)
1913 – Woody Herman, American singer, saxophonist, and clarinet player (d. 1987)
1919 – Liberace, American pianist and entertainer (d. 1987)
1928 – Billy Martin, American baseball player and coach (d. 1989)
1929 – Betty Carter, American singer-songwriter (d. 1998)
1929 – Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist, and feminist (d. 2012)
1930 -- Betty Carter American jazz singer (d.9/26/1998)
1931 – Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., American soldier and politician, 85th Governor of Connecticut
1944 – Billy Cobham, Panamanian-American drummer, composer, and bandleader (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jazz Is Dead, and Bobby and the Midnites)
1946 – Robert Fripp, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer (King Crimson, The League of Gentlemen, Giles, Giles and Fripp, and Fripp & Eno)
1953 – Pierce Brosnan, Irish-American actor and producer
1965 – Krist Novoselic, American bass player and songwriTer (Nirvana, Flipper, Sweet 75, The No WTO Combo, and Eyes Adrift)
1966 – Janet Jackson, American singer-songwriter, producer, dancer, and actress
1973 – Tori Spelling, American actress, reality television personality, and author
1986 – Megan Fox, American actress
on this day in history…
1770Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
1866 – The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.
1868 – United States President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.
On May 16, 1882, Anne O'Hare McCormick, the American journalist who became the first woman on the editorial board of The New York Times, was born.
1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.
1891 – The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric
current (the most common form today).
1916 – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic sign the secret wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioning former Ottoman territories
such as Iraq and Syria.
1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two
years later.
1919 – A naval Curtiss NC-4 aircraft commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
1920Joan of Arc was canonized.
1929The first Academy Awards were presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel..
1943 – The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.
1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in
London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
On May 16, 1960, a harsh exchange between Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President Dwight D. Eisenhower doomed a much heralded summit conference between the two nations, following the Soviet downing of an American U-2 reconnaissance plane.
1961 – Park Chung-hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.
1966 – The Communist Party of China issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1966The album "Blonde on Blonde" by Bob Dylan was released.
1966The album "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys was released.
1975 – Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1988 – A report by the Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.
1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
1997Zaire's president, Mobutu Sese Seko, ended 32 years of autocratic rule, giving control of the country to rebel forces.
2005 – Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35–23 National Assembly vote.
2005Newsweek magazine retracted a story that claimed investigators had found evidence the Quran was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay. The story had sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan.
2007Nicolas Sarkozy took over from Jacques Chirac as France's president.