Today is Friday, February 17th, 2017.
- Sunrise: 6:57am
- Sunset: 5:51pm
68% of the waning moon visible, setting at 10:46am
Tides at the Golden Gate:
- High: 3:50am/4:46pm
- Low: 10:24am/10:02pm
Special celebrations today:
- National Public Science Day
- Random Acts of Kindness Day
- World Information Architecture Day
- World Human Spirit Day
It’s also…
- National Cafe Au Lait Day
- Feast of Shesmu, Egyptian god of the Wine Press
- Fornacalia: Old Roman Bread Festival or Feast of Ovens
On this day in…
1801 - The U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Jefferson was elected president and Burr became vice president.
1817 - The first gaslit streetlights appeared on the streets of Baltimore, MD.
1865 - Columbia, SC, burned. The Confederates were evacuating and the Union Forces were moving in.
1876 - Julius Wolff was credited with being the first to can sardines.
1878 - In San Francisco, CA, the first large city telephone exchange opened. It had only 18 phones.
1897 - The National Congress of Mothers was organized in Washington, DC, by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. It was the forerunner of the National PTA.
1913 - The Armory Show opened at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. The full-scale exhibition was of contemporary paintings and was organized by the Association of Painters and Sculptors.
1924 - Swimmer Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in the 100-yard freestyle. He did it with a time of 57-2/5 seconds in Miami, FL.
1933 - "Newsweek" was first published.
1933 - Blondie Boopadoop married Dagwood Bumstead three years after Chic Young’s popular strip first debuted.
1934 - The first high school automobile driver’s education course was introduced in State College, PA.
1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Eniwetok Atoll began. U.S. forces won the battle on February 22, 1944.
1947 - The Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
1964 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be approximately equal in population. (Westberry v. Sanders)
1965 - Comedienne Joan Rivers made her first guest appearances on "The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson" on NBC-TV.
1968 - The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opened in Springfield, MA.
1985 - U.S. Postage stamp prices were raised from 20 cents to 22 cents for first class mail.
1992 - In Milwaukee, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison. In November of 1994, he was beaten to death in prison.
1995 - Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings. He was later sentenced to a minimum of 200 years in prison.
1996 - World chess champion Garry Kasparov beat the IBM supercomputer "Deep Blue" in Philadelphia, PA.
1997 - Pepperdine University announced that Kenneth Starr was leaving the Whitewater probe to take a full-time job at the school. Starr reversed the announcement four days later.
2005 - U.S. President George W. Bush named John Negroponte as the first national intelligence director.
Birthday celebrants today include (or included)…
- Thomas Malthus 1766
- Raphael Peale 1774
- Rene Laennec 1781
- Montgomery Ward 1843
- H.L. Hunt 1889
- Marian Anderson 1902
- Red Barber 1908
- Marjorie Lawrence 1909
- Arthur Kennedy 1914
- Wayne (DeWayne) Morris 1914
- Raf (Raffaele) Vallone 1918
- Kathleen Freeman 1919
- Buddy (Boniface) DeFranco 1923
- Hal Holbrook 1925 - Actor
- Chaim Potok 1929
- Bobby Lewis 1933
- Alan Bates 1934
- Dame Edna 1934 - Comedian
- Johnny Bush 1935 - Country singer
- Jim Brown 1936 - Football player
- Mary Ann Mobley 1939 - Actress
- Gene Pitney 1941
- Brenda Fricker 1945
- Dodie Stevens 1947
- Zina Bethune 1950
- Rene Russo 1954 - Actress
- Richard Karn 1956
- Lou Diamond Phillips 1962 - Actor
- Larry the Cable Guy 1963 - Actor, comedian ("Blue Collar TV")
- Michael Jordan 1963 - Basketball player
- Michael Bay 1964 - Director
- Timothy J. Mahoney 1970 - Musician (311)
- Denise Richards 1971 - Actress
- Taylor Hawkins 1972 - Musician (Foo Fighters)
- Billie Joe Armstrong 1972 - Musician (Green Day)
- Bryan White 1974
- Jerry O'Connell 1974 - Actor
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt 1981 - Actor ("3rd Rock From the Sun")
- Paris Hilton 1981
