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Thursday December 19, 2013

  • 353rd Day of 2013 / 12 Remaining
  • 2 Days Until The First Day of Winter

  • Sunrise:7:20
  • Sunset:4:53
  • 9 Hours 33 Minutes of Daylight

  • Moon Rise:7:22pm
  • Moon Set:8:45am
  • Moon’s Phase: 95 %

  • Full Moon
  • December 17 @ 1:29am
  • Full Cold Moon
  • Full Long Nights Moon

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:12:40am/11:03am
  • Low:5:31am/6:05pm

  • Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
  • This Year: 2.09
  • Last Year:9.36
  • Normal To Date:7.23
  • Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

  • Holidays
  • Oatmeal Muffin Day
  • National Hard Candy Day

  • Separation Day-Anguilla
  • Las Posadas-Mexico
  • Sveti Nikola-Serbia

  • On This Day In …
  • 1732 --- Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia first published Poor Richard's Almanack. The book, filled with proverbs preaching
    industry and prudence, was published continuously for 25 years and became one of the most popular publications in colonial America, selling an average of 10,000 copies a year.

  • 1777 --- With the onset of the bitter winter cold, the Continental Army under General George Washington, still in the field, enters its
    winter camp at Valley Forge, 22 miles from British-occupied Philadelphia. Washington chose a site on the west bank of the Schuylkill River that could be effectively defended in the event of a British attack.

  • 1843 --- Charles Dickens' Yuletide tale, "A Christmas Carol," was first published in Britain.

  • 1871 --- Albert L. Jones of New York received patent No. 122,023 for corrugated paper, an "improvement in paper for packing" which could be used to make boxes.

  • 1903 --- The Williamsburg Bridge opened in New York City. It opened as the largest suspension bridge on Earth and remained the largest until 1924. It was also the first major suspension bridge to use steel towers to support the main cable. Originally open to
    horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and pedestrians, the Williamsburg Bridge soon became a vital transportation route for trolleys and elevated subway trains, spurring the growth of Brooklyn's working-class neighborhoods.

  • 1907 --- A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pa., killed 239 workers.

  • 1917 --- Four teams of the National Hockey League (NHL) play in the fledgling league’s first two games. At the time of its inception, the NHL was made up of five franchises: the Canadiens and the Wanderers (both of Montreal), the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec
    Bulldogs and the Toronto Arenas. The Montreal teams won two victories that first day, as the Canadiens beat Ottawa 7-4 and the Wanderers triumphed over Toronto 10-9.

  • 1918 --- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It or Not" column in "The New York Globe".
  • 1946 --- War broke out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launched widespread attacks against the French.

  • 1955 --- Carl Perkins recorded the hit "Blue Suede Shoes."

  • 1957 --- Meredith Willson’s The Music Man opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York City. The Broadway show starred Robert
    Preston and had a run of 1,375 shows. It also had 76 trombones and 101 cornets in the band ... and a librarian named Marian, remember?

  • 1960 --- Frank Sinatra recorded his first session with his very own record company, Reprise Records. Frank did "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" and "Let’s Fall in Love."

  • 1972 --- The Apollo lunar-landing program ends, when the last three astronauts to travel to the moon splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before. In July 1969, after three years of preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accomplished President John F. Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth with Apollo 11. From 1969 to 1972, there were six successful lunar landing missions, and
    one aborted mission, Apollo 13. During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt stayed for a record 75 hours on the surface of the moon, conducting three separate surface excursions in the Lunar Rover vehicle and collecting 243 pounds of rock and soil samples.

  • 1973 --- Johnny Carson pulled a good one before a nationwide late-night audience on NBC. Carson started a fake toilet-paper scare. In his Tonight Show monologue, he told his huge audience that a Wisconsin congressman had warned that toilet paper was disappearing from supermarket shelves. Toilet paper soon became a scarce commodity in many areas of the United States after the gag.

  • 1974 --- Nelson A. Rockefeller was sworn in as vice president, replacing Gerald R. Ford, who became president when Richard M. Nixon resigned.
  • 1984 --- In the Hall of the People in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement committing Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong--a small peninsula and group of islands jutting out from China's Kwangtung province--was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.

  • 1985 --- Jan Stenerud announced his retirement from the NFL. The football kicker holds the record for the most career field goals with
    373. He made those field goals while kicking for the Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings beginning in 1967.

  • 1986 --- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, from their internal exile in Gorky, a major city on the Volga River that was then closed to foreigners. The move was hailed as evidence of Gorbachev's commitment to lessening political repression inside the Soviet Union.
  • 1990 --- Bo Jackson (Los Angeles Raiders) became the first athlete to be chosen for All Star Games in two sports.

  • 1996 --- The school board of Oakland, voted to recognize Black English, also known as "ebonics." The board later reversed its stance.

  • 2000 --- A volcano outside Mexico City spewed a fiery fountain of ash and rock in its most spectacular eruption in more than a millennium. It left towns around the mountain’s base deserted as
    frightened residents fled. The eruption of the 17,886-foot mountain was its biggest show in 1,200 years, as the mountain, known locally as ‘Popo’, filled nearby valleys with lava.

  • 2008 --- U.S. President George W. Bush signed a $17.4 billion rescue package of loans for ailing auto makers General Motors and Chrysler.

  • Birthdays
  • Leonid Brezhnev
  • Jake Gyllenhaal
  • Jennifer Beals
  • Cicely Tyson
  • Al Kaline
  • Maurice White
  • Alvin Lee
  • Alyssa Milano
  • Edwin Stanton
  • Edith Piaf
  • David Susskind
  • Phil Ochs
  • Tim Reid