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KALW Almanac: Wednesday Aug. 24, 2016

peach pie! kinda flaky pie crust, by flickr user jensteele (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 
August 24 is the 237th day of the year. 
 
There are 129 days remaining until the end of the year. 
 
Today Wednesday, 24th of August of 2016, 
 
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 6:34 am 
 
and sunset will be at 7:49 pm. 
 
Today we will have 13 hours and 15 minutes of sun. 
 
The solar transit will be at 1:12 pm.

The first high tide was at 5:21 am 
 
and the next high tide will be at 5:15 pm. 
 
The first low tide will be at 10:35 am 
 
and the next low tide at 11:55 pm.

The Moon is 57.4% illuminated, a Waning Gibbous moon

Moonset Today: 1:30 PM↑ 289° West

Last Quarter Moon will be tonight, 24th of August of 2016 at 8:41 pm

We will have a New Moon 1st of September of 2016 at 2:03 am in 8 days

Today is Can Opener Day

International Day Against Intolerance, Discrimination and Violence Based on Musical Preferences, Lifestyle and Dress Code

Today is International Strange Music Day

National Knife Day

National Peach Pie Day

National Waffle Day

Pluto Demoted Day

Shooting Star Day

Vesuvius Day

Weather Complaint Day

William Wilberforce Day

It's also...

Flag Day in Liberia

Independence Day or Den' Nezalezhnosti, celebrates the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991

Nostalgia Night in Uruguay

Willka Raymi in Cusco, Peru

Kobe Bryant Day in Los Angeles

If today is your birthday…

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

1890 – Jean Rhys, Dominican-English author (d. 1979)

1898     Malcolm Cowley, American literary editor of The New Republic from 1929 to 1944

1899 – Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian - Swiss author of essays and short stories, poetry, and criticism (d. 1986)

1922 – René Lévesque, Canadian journalist and politician, 23rd Premier of Quebec (d. 1987)

1922 – Howard Zinn, American historian, author, and activist (d. 2010)

1929 – Yasser Arafat, Egyptian-Palestinian engineer and politician, 1st President of the Palestinian National Authority (d. 2004)

1936 – A. S. Byatt, English author and poet

1938 – Mason Williams, American guitarist and composer

1942 – Max Cleland, American captain and politician, 23rd Secretary of State of Georgia

1943 – John Cipollina, American guitarist (Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Dinosaurs, and Man) (d. 1989)

1945 – Ronee Blakley, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress

1947 – Paulo Coelho, Brazilian author and songwriter

1951 – Orson Scott Card, American author and critic

1951 – Oscar Hijuelos, American author and academic (d. 2013)

1952 – Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jamaican-English poet and singer (Poet and the Roots)

1955 – Mike Huckabee, American minister and politician, 44th Governor of Arkansas

1960 – Cal Ripken, Jr., American baseball player and coach

1973 – Dave Chappelle, American comedian, actor, producer and screenwriter

1979 – Kaki King, American guitarist and composer

On this day in history...

On Aug. 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida, causing record damage; 55 deaths in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas were blamed on the storm.

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash  An estimated 20,000 people died.  (note: this traditional date has been challenged, and many scholars 
believe that the event occurred on October 24).

394 – The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, the latest known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, was written.

1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

1932Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours.

1950 – Edith Sampson becomes the first black U.S. delegate to the United Nations.

1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party temporarily disrupts trading at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing 
trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them.

1970A bomb planted by anti-war extremists exploded at the University of Wisconsin's Army Math Research Center in Madison, killing a researcher.

1981Mark David Chapman was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of rock musician John Lennon.

1989Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Pete Rose from the game for gambling.

1992 – Hurricane Andrew makes landfall just south of Miami as a Category 5 hurricane.

1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 was released to the public in North America.

2006The International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto was no longer a planet, demoting it to the status of a "dwarf planet."

2007James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to three life terms for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of two black teenagers in Mississippi.

2011Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple Inc.