- 362nd Day of 2012 / 4 Remaining
- 83 Days Until The First Day of Spring
- Sunrise:7:24
- Sunset:4:59
- 9 Hours 35 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:4:45pm
- Moon Set:6:40am
- Moon’s Phase: 98 %
- The Next Full Moon
- December 28 @ 2:22 am
- 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: 10:21am
- Low: 4:34am/5:25pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:12.79
- Last Year:3.32
- Normal To Date:8.50
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Fruitcake Day
- Anniversary of the Constitution-North Korea
- Family Day-Vanuatu
- St. Stephen’s Day
- On This Day In …
- 1831 --- British naturalist Charles Darwin sets out from Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle on a five-year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse places as the Galapagos Islands and New Zealand, Darwin acquired an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and geology of many lands. This information proved invaluable in the development of his theory of evolution, first put forth in his groundbreaking scientific work of 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
- 1900 --- Carrie Nation staged her first raid on a saloon at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas. She broke each and every one of the liquor bottles she could see, which means, about all of them behind the bar, for sure. Nation usually did her damage with a hatchet; calling her vandalism, hatchetation.
- 1903 --- The barbershop quartet favorite, Sweet Adeline, was sung for the first time -- in New York City. The song was composed by Henry Armstrong with the words of Richard Gerard. The title of the song came from a theatre marquee that promoted the great operatic soprano, Adelina Patti. Now female barbershop quartets call themselves Sweet Adelines.
- 1927 --- Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.
- 1927 --- The Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) musical, “Show Boat”, opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City. Its star, Helen Morgan, received excellent reviews from critics of the show; a musical about riverboat show people and their romances and disappointments. It was inspired by the novel, “Show Boat”, written by Edna Ferber in 1926. Ms. Ferber was inspired by the 19th century steam boats that traveled up and down the Mississippi and other large rivers, carrying entertainers to rural communities where the performers presented on-board shows. The largest showboat that traveled “Ol’ Man River” could seat 3,400 showgoers and was called the “Floating Circus Palace”. It’s amazing what a little inspiration can accomplish. ‘Show Boat” went showboatin’ along for 572 performances; then Hollywood got into the act, filming its first version in 1929; then Ziegfeld put it on stage again in 1932 as “Life Aboard a Real Showboat”. Hollywood, not to be outdone, did it for the silver screen again in 1936, starring Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Paul Robeson, Hattie McDaniel, Joe E. Brown and Helen Morgan. In 1951, a third version of “Show Boat” was made. This time, Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ava Gardner, William Warfield, Joe E. Brown, Agnes Moorehead and Gower Champion were in the spotlight. “Cotton Blossom”, the showboat in the film, cost $126,468 to build. Nineteen years later, it sold at auction for $15,000.
- 1932 --- At the height of the Great Depression, thousands turn out for the opening of Radio City Music Hall, a magnificent Art Deco theater in New York City. Radio City Music Hall was designed as a palace for the people, a place of beauty where ordinary people could see high-quality entertainment. Since its 1932 opening, more than 300 million people have gone to Radio City to enjoy movies, stage shows, concerts, and special events. Radio City Music Hall was the brainchild of the billionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who decided to make the theater the cornerstone of the Rockefeller Complex he was building in a formerly derelict neighborhood in midtown Manhattan. The theater was built in partnership with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and designed by Donald Deskey. The result was an Art Deco masterpiece of elegance and grace constructed out of a diverse variety of materials, including aluminum, gold foil, marble, permatex, glass, and cork. Geometric ornamentation is found throughout the theater, as is Deskey's central theme of the "Progress of Man." The famous Great Stage, measuring 60 feet wide and 100 feet long, resembles a setting sun. Its sophisticated system of hydraulic-powered elevators allowed spectacular effects in staging, and many of its original mechanisms are still in use today. In its first four decades, Radio City Music Hall alternated as a first-run movie theater and a site for gala stage shows. More than 700 films have premiered at Radio City Music Hall since 1933. In the late 1970s, the theater changed its format and began staging concerts by popular music artists. The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, which debuted in 1933, draws more than a million people annually. The show features the high-kicking Rockettes, a precision dance troupe that has been a staple at Radio City since the 1930s.
- 1939 --- "The Glenn Miller Show," also known as "Music that Satisfies," debuted on CBS radio.
- 1944 --- President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders his secretary of war to seize properties belonging to the Montgomery Ward company because the company refused to comply with a labor agreement. In an effort to avert strikes in critical war-support industries, Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board in 1942. The board negotiated settlements between management and workers to avoid shut-downs in production that might cripple the war effort. During the war, the well-known retailer and manufacturer Montgomery Ward had supplied the Allies with everything from tractors to auto parts to workmen's clothing--items deemed as important to the war effort as bullets and ships. However, Montgomery Ward Chairman Sewell Avery refused to comply with the terms of three different collective bargaining agreements with the United Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union hammered out between 1943 and 1944. In April 1944, after Sewell refused a second board order, Roosevelt called out the Army National Guard to seize the company's main plant in Chicago. Sewell himself had to be carried out of his office by National Guard troops. By December of that year, Roosevelt was fed up with Sewell's obstinacy and disrespect for the government's authority. (The uber-capitalist Sewell's favorite insult was to call someone a "New Dealer"--a direct reference to Roosevelt's Depression-era policies.) On December 27, Roosevelt ordered the secretary of war to seize Montgomery Ward's plants and facilities in New York, Michigan, California, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon. In his announcement that day, Roosevelt emphasized that the government would "not tolerate any interference with war production in this critical hour." He issued a stern warning to labor unions and industry management alike: "strikes in wartime cannot be condoned, whether they are strikes by workers against their employers or strikes by employers against their Government." Sewell took the fight to federal court, but lost.
- 1947 --- “Hey kids... What time is it? It’s Howdy Doody time!” Buffalo Bob (Smith), Clarabelle the Clown (Bob Keeshan), Judy Canova and a host of others joined Howdy Doody on NBC-TV. The show stayed on the air for 13 years.
- 1951 --- In Cincinnati, OH, a Crosley automobile, with a steering wheel on the right side, became the first vehicle of its kind to be placed in service for mail delivery.
- 1964 --- The Supremes made their first appearance on TV's "Ed Sullivan Show."
- 1980 --- The John Lennon hit, (Just Like) Starting Over, began a five-week stay at #1 on the pop charts. The hit was from the album, Double Fantasy. Lennon was murdered on December 8th of that year, as the single and LP had started their climb up the charts.
- 1986 --- Corazon Aquino, President of the Philippines, was named TIME magazine’s Man of the Year. The only other women who had been so named were Queen Elizabeth II in 1952; and the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Warfield Simpson, in 1936.
- 2001 --- U.S. President George W. Bush granted China permanent normal trade status with the United States.
- 2007 --- Benazir Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister and the first democratically elected female leader of a Muslim country, is assassinated at age 54 in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi. A polarizing figure at home and abroad, Bhutto had spent three decades struggling to stay afloat in the murky waters of Pakistani politics. To many of her supporters, she represented the strongest hope for democratic and egalitarian leadership in a country unhinged by political corruption and Islamic extremism.
- Birthdays
- Marlene Dietrich
- Louis Pasteur
- Scotty Moore
- Cokie Roberts
- Sarah Vowell
- Mick Jones
- Gerard Depardieu
- Johannes Kepler
- John Amos
- Tracy Nelson
- Karla Bonoff
- Sydney Greenstreet