Today Wednesday, the 12th of October of 2016 is the 286th day of the year.
There are 80 days remaining until the end of the year.
27 days until Election Day.
12 days left to Register To Vote.
The sun will rise in San Francisco at 7:17 am
and sunset will be at 6:35 pm.
Today we will have 11 hours and 18 minutes of daylight.
The solar transit will be at 12:56 pm.
The first low tide was at 2:46 am
and the next low tide will be at 3:20 pm.
The first high tide will be at 9:45 am
and the next high tide at 9:26 pm.
The Moon is 82.4%illuminated, a Waxing Gibbous moon.
Moonrise Today: 4:41 PM↑ 101° East
Moonset Today: 3:10 AM↑ 256° West
Today is Cookbook Launch Day
Emergency Nurses Day
Freethought Day
International Moment of Frustration Scream Day
International Top Spinning Day
National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work and School Day
National Fossil Day
National Gumbo Day
National Pet Obesity Awareness Day
National Stop Bullying Day
National Take your Parents to Lunch Day
Old Farmers Day
Stop America's Violence Everywhere Today
World Arthritis Day
Yom Kippur
Discovery Day and National Youth Day (the Bahamas)
Feast for Life of Aleister Crowley, celebrated as "Crowleymas" (Thelema)
Fiesta Nacional de España (Spain)
Freethought Day (United States)
Independence Day (Equatorial Guinea), celebrates the independence of Equatorial Guinea from Spain in 1968.
UN Spanish Language Day (United Nations)
If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday to you, and Happy Birthday to...
1687Sylvius Leopold Weiss, German lute player and composer (d. 1750)
1860Elmer Sperry, the American inventor best known for perfecting the use of gyroscopes.
1866Ramsay MacDonald, Scottish journalist and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1937)
1872Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer and educator (d. 1958)
1875Aleister Crowley, English magician and author (d. 1947)
1921Art Clokey, American animator, producer, screenwriter, and voice actor, created Gumby (d. 2010)
1932Dick Gregory, American comedian, actor, and author
1935Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor and actor whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era in Modena, Italy.(d. 2007)
1947Chris Wallace, American journalist
1949Carlos the Jackal, Venezuelan terrorist and murderer
1955Jane Siberry, Canadian singer-songwriter and producer
1968Hugh Jackman, Australian actor, singer, and producer
On this day in history…
1279Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, is said to have inscribed the Dai-Gohonzon.
1492 (Old Style calendar; Oct. 21st New Style), Christopher Columbus's expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached the Indies.
1582Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1692The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1773America's first insane asylum opens.
1810The German festival Oktoberfest was first held in Munich to celebrate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.
1823Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1892The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.
1901President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
1928An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston.
1933The military Alcatraz Citadel becomes the civilian Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
1960Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy
being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960Television viewers in Japan unexpectedly witness the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, when he is stabbed and killed during a live
broadcast.
1970Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas
1971"Jesus Christ Superstar," a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, opened on Broadway.
1979The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams is published.
1998Matthew Shepard, a gay student at University of Wyoming, dies five days after he was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie, Wyoming.
2000The Navy destroyer Cole was attacked in an al-Qaeda suicide bombing while in port in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring dozens more.
2007Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.