- 344th Day of 2015 21 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 11 Days
- Sunrise: 7:14
- Sunset: 4:50
- 9 Hours 46 Minutes
- Moon Rise:6:18am
- Moon Set: 4:47pm
- Phase: 1% 29 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: 9:19am?11:12pm
- Low: 3:22am/4:17pm
- Rainfall
- This Year: 1.93
- Last Year: 7.24
- YTD Avg.: 5.91
- Annual Avg.: 23.80
- Holidays
- Human Rights Day
- National Lager Day
- Nobel Prize Day
- Dewey Decimal System Day
- Constitution Day-Thailand
- Foundation Day-Angola
- Ganga/Bois-Haiti
- Settler’s Day-Namibia
- On This Day
- 1520 --- Martin Luther publicly burned the papal edict. The papacy demanded that he recant or face excommunication. Luther refused and was formally expelled from the church in January 1521.
- 1817 --- Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state.
- 1869 --- Wyoming territorial legislators pass a bill that is signed into law granting women the right to vote. Western states led the nation in approving women’s suffrage, but some of them had rather unsavory motives. Though some men recognized the important role women played in frontier settlement, others voted for women’s suffrage only to bolster the strength of conservative voting blocks. In Wyoming, some men were also motivated by sheer loneliness–in 1869, the territory had over 6,000 adult males and only 1,000 females, and area men hoped women would be more likely to settle in the rugged and isolated country if they were granted the right to vote.
- 1898 --- In France, the Treaty of Paris is signed, formally ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire. The once-proud Spanish empire was virtually dissolved as the United States took over much of Spain’s overseas holdings. Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded to the United States, the Philippines were bought for $20 million, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate.
- 1901 --- The first Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The ceremony came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other high explosives. In his will, Nobel directed that the bulk of his vast fortune be placed in a fund in which the interest would be “annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Although Nobel offered no public reason for his creation of the prizes, it is widely believed that he did so out of moral regret over the increasingly lethal uses of his inventions in war.
- 1941 --- 4,000 Japanese troops land on the Philippine Islands, while Japanese aircraft sink the British warships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Guam, an American-controlled territory, was also seized. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally exclaims, “We have lost control of the sea.” The attack on Pearl Harbor was only one step in a larger plan to dominate the Pacific, which entailed knocking out first American, then British, naval opposition. Japanese bombing raids on Guam, Midway Island, and Wake Island followed the attack on the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.
- 1958 --- The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the U.S. when 111 passengers flew from New York to Miami on a National Airlines Boeing 707.
- 1967 --- When he left his final recording session in Memphis, Otis Redding intended to return soon to the song he’d been working on—he still had to replace a whistled verse thrown in as a placeholder with additional lyrics that he’d yet to write. In the meantime, however, there was a television appearance to make in Cleveland, followed by a concert in Madison, Wisconsin. On its final approach to Madison on this day in 1967, however, the private plane carrying soul-music legend Otis Redding would crash into the frigid waters of a small lake three miles short of the runway, killing seven of the eight men aboard, including Redding. “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay” would be released in its “unfinished” form several weeks later, with Redding’s whistled verse a seemingly indispensable part of the now-classic record. It would soon become history’s first posthumous #1 hit and the biggest pop hit of Redding’s career.
- 1974 --- Representative Wilbur D. Mills, a Democrat from Arkansas, resigns as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the aftermath of the first truly public sex scandal in American politics. Mills was stopped by Washington park police while driving at night with his lights off. The 65-year-old representative, an influential congressman and married man, was visibly intoxicated, his face was scratched, and his companion, 38-year-old Annabell Battistella, had bruised eyes. Battistella then proceeded to jump into the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial and had to be pulled out by the police. She was later identified as a popular stripper who went by the names “Fanne Foxe” and the “Argentine Firecracker.” Congressmen had been involved in these types of improprieties before but the details were generally kept quiet, saving the politicians from public disgrace. However, on this occasion, the story of Representative Mills’ sordid affair with the stripper was heavily publicized. At first, Mills denied all the allegations but later admitted he had joined a party Battistella was present at after “a few refreshments.” Mills was subsequently reelected to Congress, but because of the escalating scandal, he was forced to retire his chairmanship and later announced that he would not run for reelection.
- 1977 --- In Moscow, Soviet officials arrest four dissidents and prevent at least 20 others from attending a peaceful protest against communist political oppression on United Nations Human Rights Day. According to some of the protesters, Soviet officials threatened them with violence should the protest be held. The incident was more evidence of an increasingly hard line being taken by the Soviet government against any political protest. Approximately 25 protesters met at the statue of the Russian poet Pushkin in Moscow to assert their right to freedom of assembly, which had been guaranteed by the new Soviet constitution approved in October. Twenty other dissidents had been dissuaded from attending when they saw Soviet plainclothes police stationed outside their apartments. In addition, Soviet officials detained four other known dissidents to keep them from the protest. Andrei Sakharov, perhaps the most famous Soviet political dissident, refrained from attending because he feared that violence would break out.
- 1993 --- The crew of the space shuttle Endeavor deployed the repaired Hubble Space Telescope into Earth's orbit.
- 1998 --- Six astronauts opened the doors to the new international space station.
- 1998 --- The Amnesty International Concert for Human Rights Defenders took place at Bercy Stadium in Paris, France. The lineup included Alanis Morissette, Radiohead, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Shania Twain.
- 1999 --- After three years under suspicion of being a spy for China, computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested. He was charged with removing secrets from the Los Alamos weapons lab. Lee later pled guilty to one count of downloading restricted data to tape and was freed. The other 58 counts were dropped.
- 2001 --- "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the first in a three-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy, premiered in London.
- 2007 --- NFL star Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison for bankrolling a dogfighting operation and killing dogs that underperformed.
- 2009 --- “Avatar,” a 3-D science-fiction epic helmed by “Titanic” director James Cameron, makes its world debut in London and goes on to become the highest-grossing movie in history. Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver, the box-office mega-hit was praised for its state-of-the-art technology and earned nine Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best director.
- Birthdays
- Emily Dickinson
- Melvin Dewey
- Mary Norton
- Chet Huntley
- Dorothy Lamour
- Dan blocker
- Fionnula Flannagan
- Gloria Loring
- Susan Dey
- Kenneth Branagh
- Nia Peeples
- Meg White
- Bobby Flay
World Human Rights Day-KALW Almanac-12/10/2015
