- 342ned Day of 2015 23 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 13 Days
- Sunrise: 7:13
- Sunset: 4:50
- 9 Hours 37 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 4:26am
- Moon Set: 3:24pm
- Phase: 7% 27 days
- Next Full Moon December 25 @ 3:11am
- The Full Cold Moon; or the Full Long Nights Moon – December During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.
- Tides
- High:8:11am/9:50pm
- Low: 2;05am/3:10pm
- Holidays
- National Brownie Day
- National Christmas Tree Day
- Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day
- Take It The Ear Day
- Mother’s Day-Panama
- On This Day
- 1776 --- George Washington's retreating army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War.
- 1813 --- Ludwig van Beethoven's "Opus 92: Symphony No. 7 in A major" had it's premiere in Vienna.
- 1863 --- President Abraham Lincoln offers his conciliatory plan for reunification of the United States with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. By this point in the Civil War, it was clear that Lincoln needed to make some preliminary plans for postwar reconstruction. The Union armies had captured large sections of the South, and some states were ready to have their governments rebuilt. The proclamation addressed three main areas of concern. First, it allowed for a full pardon for and restoration of property to all engaged in the rebellion with the exception of the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. Second, it allowed for a new state government to be formed when 10 percent of the eligible voters had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Third, the Southern states admitted in this fashion were encouraged to enact plans to deal with the freed slaves so long as their freedom was not compromised.
- 1925 --- The Marx Brothers 'The Cocoanuts' opened on Broadway.
- 1940 --- The Chicago Bears trounce the Washington Redskins in the National Football League (NFL) Championship by a score of 73-0, the largest margin of defeat in NFL history. The Bears, coached by George Halas, brought a 6-2 record to their regular-season meeting with the Redskins in Washington on November 17, 1940. After Chicago lost 3-7, the Redskins coach, George Preston Marshall, told reporters that Halas and his team were “quitters” and “cry babies.” Halas used Marshall’s words to galvanize his players, and the Bears scored 78 points in their next two games to set up a showdown with the Redskins in the league’s championship game on December 8, also in Washington.
- 1941 --- President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war on Japan in perhaps the most memorable speech of his career. The speech, in which he called Japan’s act a “deliberate deception,” received thunderous applause from Congress and, soon after, the United States officially entered the Second World War. Montanan Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and a dedicated lifelong pacifist, casts the sole Congressional vote against the U.S. declaration of war on Japan. She was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. involvement in both World Wars, having been among those who voted against American entry into World War I nearly a quarter of a century earlier.
- 1963 --- Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped. He was released after a $240,000 ransom was paid.
- 1969 --- Testifying at his trial for possession of hashish and heroin in the Toronto Supreme Court, Jimi Hendrix claimed that he had now "outgrown" drugs. The jury found him not guilty after eight hours of deliberations.
- 1980 --- Former Beatle John Lennon is shot and killed by Mark David Chapman. For those who were listening to the radio on that evening, the news was probably broken by a disc jockey reading from the sketchy initial bulletin that came over the Associated Press newswire shortly after 11:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time: “There’s a report that John Lennon has been shot. It happened in New York. On the Upper West Side.” In fact, Lennon had been declared dead some 10 minutes earlier in the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital—news that millions of Americans would receive, jarringly, from Monday Night Football announcer Howard Cosell, breaking into the regular commentary on that evening’s contest between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots
- 1982 --- Norman D. Mayer demanding an end to nuclear weapons held the Washington Monument hostage. He threatened to blow it up with explosives he claimed were inside a van. 10 hours later he was shot to death by police.
- 1982 --- Sophie’s Choice, starring the actress Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor, opens in theaters. Directed by Alan J. Pakula (All The President’s Men, The Pelican Brief) and based on a 1979 novel of the same name by William Styron, Sophie’s Choice co-starred Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol. The “choice” in the film’s title refers to a terrible decision Streep’s character is forced to make, about which of her two children will live or die while in a concentration camp. Streep went on to win a Best Actress Oscar for Sophie’s Choice, firmly establishing herself as one of the greatest actresses of her generation in Hollywood. To date, she has received more Academy Award nominations than any other actor in history.
- 1987 --- At a summit meeting in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the first treaty between the two superpowers to reduce their massive nuclear arsenals. Previous agreements had merely been attempts by the two Cold War adversaries to limit the growth of their nuclear arsenals. The historic agreement banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles, of which the two nations collectively possessed 2,611, most located in Europe and Southeast Asia.
- 1991 --- Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine declared the Soviet national government to be dead. They forged a new alliance to be known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. The act was denounced by Russian President Gorbachev as unconstitutional.
- 1993 --- The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Clinton said he hoped the agreement would encourage other nations to work toward a broader world-trade pact.
- 1997 --- Jenny Shipley was sworn in as the first female prime minister of New Zealand.
- Birthdays
- Sammy Davis Jr
- Eli Whitney
- Mary Queen of Scots
- Jean Sibelius
- Diego Rivera
- James Thurber
- Josephine Bell
- Horace (65 b.c.)
- Flip Wilson
- Gregg Allman
- Teri Hatcher
- Nicki Minaj
National Brownie Day-KALW Almanac-12/08/2015
