- 341st Day of 2015 24 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 14 Days
- Sunrise: 7:12
- Sunset: 4:50
- 9 Hours 38 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 3:30am
- Moon Set:2:49pm
- Phase: 13% 26 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: 7:38am/9:03pm
- Low: 1:23am/2:35pm
- Rainfall
- This Year: 1.94
- Last Year: 7.23
- YTD Avg.: 5.48
- Annual Avg.: 23.80
- Holidays
- Letter Writing Day
- National Cotton Candy Day
- Pearl Harbor Day
- International Civil Aviation Day
- Good Neighbourliness Day-Turkmenistan
- National Day-Ivory Coast
- On This Day
- 1787 --- Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. constitution becoming the first of the United States.
- 1796 --- Electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the United States.
- 1842 --- The New York Philharmonic gave its first concert.
- 1909 --- Leo Hendrik Baekeland was issued a patent for 'Bakelite,' the first plastic that did not soften when heated. Those black plastic knobs on stoves, and distributor caps for car engines are examples.
- 1926 --- The Electrolux Servel Corp. received the first U.S. patent for a household refrigerator cooled by a sealed gas refrigerant.
- 1941 --- At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
- 1963 --- Videotaped instant replay was used for the first time in a live sports telecast during the Army-Navy football game on CBS.
- 1963 --- During a unique moment in pop-music history a Belgian nun ascended to the American pop charts with a jaunty tune about a Catholic saint—sung in French, no less. That’s exactly what happened when Soeu Sourire—billed in English as “The Singing Nun”—scored a #1 hit with the song “Dominique.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10mMDtpfcQM
- 1964 --- The New York City Board of Estimate votes to revive a controversial plan to build a 10-lane, $100 million elevated expressway across Lower Manhattan from the Holland Tunnel on the west to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges on the east.
- 1968 --- Janis Joplin made her final appearance with Big Brother & the Holding Company.
- 1972 --- America's last moon mission was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
- 1987 --- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives for his summit with President Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, charmed the American public and media by praising the United States and calling for closer relations between the Soviet Union and America. Aside from the excitement surrounding Gorbachev (whose face was soon plastered on T-shirts, cups, and posters), the summit with Reagan resulted in one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War. Reagan and Gorbachev signed off on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, which called for the elimination of all ground cruise and ballistic missiles and launchers in Europe with ranges of 320 to 3,400 miles. By June 1991, the United States had eliminated over 800 missiles and the Soviets had eliminated 1,800 such weapons.
- 1988 --- Two earthquakes hit Armenia, killing 60,000 people and destroying nearly half a million buildings. The two tremors, only minutes apart, were measured at 6.9 and 5.8 in magnitude and were felt as far away as Georgia, Turkey and Iran. It was 11:41 a.m. when the first, more powerful, earthquake hit three miles from Spitak, a city of about 30,000, and 20 miles northwest of Kirovakan. The epicenter was not far below the surface, which accounts in part for the terrible destruction. Also, only four minutes later, the 5.8-magnitude tremor struck nearby, collapsing buildings that had barely managed to hold during the first quake. An eight-mile rupture of the earth—several feet wide in spots—was later found to have been caused by the quakes.
- 1989 --- Sugar Ray Leonard triumphs over a lackluster Roberto Duran in a unanimous 12-round decision at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Though 16,000 fans showed up to watch the much-hype third meeting between Leonard and Duran, they were greatly disappointed, as the 33-year-old Leonard won a tactically superior but unexciting bout over a lethargic 38-year-old Duran. In fact, fans booed both fighters throughout the match, and Duran’s lackluster performance did nothing to quell the controversy still swirling around his decision to quit in New Orleans almost a decade earlier.
- 1993 --- Colin Ferguson opens fire on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train from New York City, killing 6 and injuring 19. Other train passengers stopped the perpetrator by tackling and holding him down. Ferguson later attributed the shooting spree to his deep-seated hatred of white people. Colin Ferguson was a mentally unbalanced man from Jamaica who spent years on the West Coast before coming to New York in 1993. On December 7, he boarded a 5:33 p.m. train out of Penn Station carrying an automatic pistol, and as the train pulled into Garden City, Ferguson began running down the aisle and shooting passengers at random.
- 1995 --- A 746-pound probe from the Galileo spacecraft hurtled into Jupiter's atmosphere, sending back data to the mothership before it was destroyed.
- 2002 --- In Amsterdam, Netherlands, two Van Gogh paintings were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum. The two works were "View of the Sea st Scheveningen" and "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen." On July 26, 2004, two men were convicted for the crime and were sentenced to at least four years in prison each.
- 2003 --- A 12-inch by 26-inch painting of a river landscape and sailing vessel by Martin Johnson Heade was sold at auction for $1 million. The painting was found in the attic of a suburban Boston home where it had been stored for more than 60 years.
- 2004 --- Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president.
- 2011 --- Ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption.
- Birthdays
- Willa Cather
- Harry Chapin
- Clarence Nash
- RW Sears
- Heywood Hale Broun
- Eli Wallach
- Ted Knight
- Ellen Burstyn
- Tom Waits
- Larry Bird
- Priscilla Barnes
National Letter Writing Day-KALW Almanac-12/07/2015
