- Coats and Toys For Kids Day
- Let’s Hug Day
- Make A Gift Day
- National Roof Over Your Head Day
- Admission Day-Illinois
- Special Kids Day
- National Ice cream Box Day
- International Day For The Abolition Of Slavery
- International Day For People With Disability
- On This Day
- 1818 --- Illinois (from an American Indian word meaning ‘tribe of superior men’) is the name of the 21st state to enter the United States of America. Many superior men have hailed from Illinois, the most famous being Abraham Lincoln. The ‘Illinois rail-splitter’ is buried in the city where he was married and began his legal career, Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Also known as the Prairie State, Illinois calls the tiny, but beautiful violet, the state flower, while state bird honors were bestowed on the brightly colored cardinal.
- 1833 --- Oberlin College in Ohio started classes as the first coed institution of higher learning in the United States. Looking at the school’s registration, one would have found a total of 44 students enrolled: 29 men and 15 women.
- 1839 --- Abraham Lincoln advances to another stage in his legal career when he is admitted to practice law in the U.S. Circuit Court. It was during his years practicing law that Lincoln honed his now famous oratorical skills.
- 1910 --- The neon lamp was displayed for the first time at the Paris Motor Show. The lamp was developed by French physicist Georges Claude.
- 1917 --- The Quebec Bridge opened for traffic after almost 20 years of planning and construction. The bridge suffered partial collapses in 1907 (August 29) and 1916 (September 11).
- 1925 --- The first jazz concerto for piano and orchestra was presented at Carnegie Hall in NYC. Commissioned by Walter Damrosch, American composer George Gershwin presented Concerto In F, and was also the featured soloist playing a flugelhorn in a slow, bluesy style as one of his numbers.
- 1931 --- Alka-Seltzer was introduced. It combined aspirin for relief of headaches, fevers, and body pain and bi-carbonate of soda to neutralize stomach acids and settle the stomach.
- 1947 --- Marlon Brando's famous cry of "STELLA!" first booms across a Broadway stage, electrifying the audience at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre during the first-ever performance of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. The 23-year-old Brando played the rough, working-class Polish-American Stanley Kowalski, whose violent clash with Blanche DuBois (played on Broadway by Jessica Tandy), a Southern belle with a dark past, is at the center of Williams' famous drama.
- 1948 --- The "Pumpkin Papers" came to public light. The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
- 1955 --- Elvis Presley’s first release on RCA Victor Records was announced. No, it wasn’t Hound Dog or Heartbreak Hotel. The first two sides were actually purchased from Sam Phillips of Sun Records: “Mystery Train” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”. Elvis was described by his new record company as “The most talked about personality in recorded music in the last 10 years.”
- 1960 --- Camelot opened at the Majestic Theatre in New York City. Richard Burton and Julie Andrews played the leading roles in the musical written by Lerner and Loewe. Robert Goulet also got rave reviews. Camelot had a run of 873 performances. Broadway went Hollywood in the 1967 film version of Camelot. Its run was not quite as successful.
- 1964 --- Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley who had occupied the administration building the previous day and staged a massive sit-in.
- 1965 --- The album "Rubber Soul" by the Beatles was released.
- 1968 --- The rules committee of Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that in 1969 the pitcher's mound would be lowered from 15 to 10 inches. This was done in order to "get more batting action."
- 1973 --- Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. The first outer-planetary probe had been launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on March 2, 1972.
- 1979 --- Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum before a rock concert by the Who. That evening's concert was scheduled to begin at 8:00 pm, but ticket-holders had begun to gather outside the Coliseum shortly after noon, and by 3:00 pm, police had been called in to maintain order as the crowd swelled into the thousands. By 7:00 pm, an estimated 8,000 ticket-holders were jostling for position in a plaza at the Coliseum's west gate, and the crowd began to press forward. When a police lieutenant on the scene tried to convince the show's promoters to open the locked glass doors at the west gate entrance, he was told that there were not enough ticket-takers on duty inside, and that union rules prevented them from recruiting ushers to perform that duty. At approximately 7:20, the crowd surged forward powerfully as one set of glass doors shattered and the others were thrown open. With Coliseum security nowhere in sight, the police on hand were aware almost immediately that the
situation had the potential for disaster, yet they were physically unable to slow the stream of people flowing through the plaza for at least the next 15 minutes. At approximately 7:45 pm, they began to work their way into the crowd, where they found the first of what would eventually turn out to be 11 concert-goers lying on the ground, dead from asphyxiation. Afraid of how the crowd might react to a cancellation, Cincinnati fire officials instructed the promoters to go on with the show, and the members of the Who were not told what had happened until after completing their final encore hours later.
- 1979 --- The last Pacer rolls off the assembly line at the American Motors Corporation (AMC) factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When the car first came on the market in 1975, it was a sensation, hailed as the car of the future. "When you buy any other car," ads said, "all you end up with is today's car. When you get a Pacer, you get a piece of tomorrow." By 1979, however, sales had faded considerably. Today, polls and experts agree: the Pacer was one of the worst cars of all time.
- 1984 --- In the early morning hours, one of the worst industrial disasters in history begins when a pesticide plant located in the densely populated region of Bhopal in central India leaks a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate into the air. Of the estimated one million people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 were killed immediately, at least 600,000 were injured, and at least 6,000 have died since. The leak was caused by a series of mechanical and human errors in the pesticide producing plant, operated by the Union Carbide Corporation, a U.S.-based multinational. For a full hour, the plant's personnel and safety equipment failed to detect the massive leak, and when an alarm was finally sounded most of the harm had already been done. To make matters worse, local health officials had not been educated on the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide plant and therefore there were no emergency procedures in place to protect Bhopal's citizens in the event of a chemical leak. If the victims had simply placed a wet towel over their face, most would have escaped serious injury.
- 1992 --- The Greek tanker "Aegean Sea" ran aground at La Coruna, Spain and spilled 21.5 million gallons of crude oil.
- 1999 --- Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet; the spacecraft was presumed destroyed.
- 1999 --- After rowing 2,962 miles in 81 days, Tori Murden of the United States eased her 23-foot boat,American Pearl, to the dock at Fort-du-Bas on the French Carribean island of Guadeloupe. She had justrowed across the Atlantic Ocean. Astonishingly, Murden appeared relaxed, even radiant, as she stood up to toss out a rope. “Next time, the Concorde,” she quipped, as she bounded out of the boat.
- Birthdays
- John Cale
- Octavia Hill
- Cleveland Abbe
- Charles Pilsbury
- Charles Ringling
- Anna Freud
- Ellen Swallow Richards
- Joseph Conrad
- Carlos Montoya
- Andy Williams
- Jaye P Morgtan
- Bobby Allsion
- Mary Alice
- Ozzy Osbourne
- Daryl Hannah
- Julianne Moore
- Katarina Witt
- Brendan Fraser
- 337th Day of 2014 / 28 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 18 Days
- Sunrise:7:08
- Sunset:4:50
- 9 Hours 42 Minutes
- Moon Rise:3:11pm
- Moon Set:4:05am
- Moon Phase:92%
- Next Full Moon December 6 @ 4:27am
- 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 Tide:7;47am/9:15pm
- Low Tide:1:25am/2:41pm
- Rainfall
- This Year to Date:4.89
- Last Year:1.70
- Avg YTD:4.93
- Annual Avg:23.80