Today is Thursday, the 15th of January of 2026,

January 15 is the 15th day of the year

350 days remain until the end of the year

63 days until spring begins

Sunrise at 7:23:51 am

and sunset will be at 5:15:57 pm.

We will have 9 hours and 52 minutes of daylight

The solar transit will be at 12:19:54 pm.

Water temperature in San Francisco Bay today is 52.7°F.

The first low tide will be at 1:58 am at 3.43 feet

The first high tide will be at 7:39 am at 6.11 feet

The next low tide at 3:12 pm at -0.29 feet

and the final high tide at Ocean Beach will be at 10:24 pm at 4.63 feet

The Moon is currently 10.1% visible

It’s a Waning Crescent moon

We’ll have a New Moon in 3 days on Sunday the 18th of January of 2026 at 11:52 am

Today is….

Get to Know Your Customers Day

Humanitarian Day

National Bagel Day

National Booch Day

National Fresh Squeezed Juice Day

National Hat Day

National Pothole Day in the UK

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

Wikipedia Day

Today is also….

Arbor Day in Egypt

Armed Forces Remembrance Day in Nigeria

Army Day in India

John Chilembwe Day in Malawi

Korean Alphabet Day in North Korea

Ocean Duty Day in Indonesia

Teacher’s Day in Venezuela

If today is your birthday, Happy Birthday To You! You share your special day with….

1622 – Molière, French actor and playwright (died 1673

1902 – Saud of Saudi Arabia (died 1969)

1908 – Edward Teller, Hungarian-American physicist and academic (died 2003)

1909 – Jean Bugatti, German-French engineer (died 1939)

1909 – Gene Krupa, American drummer, composer, and actor (died 1973)

1913 – Lloyd Bridges, American actor (died 1998)

1918 – Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian colonel and politician, second President of Egypt (died 1970)

1929 – Martin Luther King Jr., American minister and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)

1941 – Captain Beefheart, American singer-songwriter, musician, and artist (died 2010)

1945 – Vince Foster, American lawyer and political figure (died 1993)

1945 – Princess Michael of Kent

1947 – Andrea Martin, American-Canadian actress, singer, and screenwriter

1957 – Mario Van Peebles, Mexican-American actor and director

1971 – Regina King, American actress

1981 – Pitbull, American rapper and producer

1984 – Ben Shapiro, American author and commentator

….and on this day in history….

1759 – The British Museum opens to the public.

1782 – Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris addresses the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

1870 – Thomas Nast publishes a political cartoon symbolizing the Democratic Party with a donkey (“A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion”) for Harper’s Weekly.

1889 – The Coca-Cola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is incorporated in Atlanta.

1892 – James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball.

1908 – The Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority becomes the first Greek-letter organization founded and established by African American college women.

1962 – The Derveni papyrus, Europe’s oldest surviving manuscript dating to 340 BC, is found in northern Greece.

1967 – The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles. The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10.

1981 – Pope John Paul II receives a delegation from the Polish trade union Solidarity at the Vatican led by Lech Wałęsa.

2001 – Wikipedia, a free wiki content encyclopedia, is launched

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The debate surrounding the authenticity of the image of John Chilembwe on Malawian currency has been attracting mixed reactions from different quarters. Some Malawians question whether the image aligns with several other available images of Chilembwe. Maybe the one on the currency went ‘ku HD’. However, here is what a political analyst, Wonderful Mkhutche, has to say on those sentiments.

“The one on the currency is John Chilembwe. Arguing against this is trivial for people who do not have substance to talk about the life of John Chilembwe. There are so many things to talk about Chilembwe,” says Mkhutche.

He further argues that Malawians should continue remembering Chilembwe as an autonomist who gave his life for the country’s scuffle.

“We should remember Chilembwe as a nationalist who gave his life for this country’s struggle. We too should have the same spirit,” he posits.

Meanwhile, John Chilembwe was born in Chiradzulu district in June 1871, though some quarters argue that it is not the exact year Chilembwe was born, as in those days it was hard to keep records of one’s age. According to the Dictionary of African History Biography, around 1880, Chilembwe became a pupil at the Church of Scotland mission in Blantyre, but he was converted by Joseph Booth, a British Baptist missionary, and became his assistant from 1892 until 1895.

Booth worked for a number of churches and had no denominational loyalty; he taught a radical equality that resonated with Chilembwe’s own sense of black pride. In 1897, Booth took Chilembwe to the United States, where a Baptist church sponsored him through Virginia Theological College. Here, he seems to have come into contact with contemporary African-American thinking, especially that of Booker T. Washington.

He returned to Nyasaland in 1900 as an ordained Baptist and founded the Providence Industrial Mission, which developed into seven schools.

Events after 1912 disillusioned Chilembwe. A famine in 1913 brought great hardship and starvation to many peasant farmers. Mozambican refugees flooded into Nyasaland, and Chilembwe deeply resented the way they were exploited by white plantation owners. When World War I broke out the following year, Africans were conscripted into the British army, and Chilembwe protested both from the pulpit and in the local press.

The white landowners were infuriated by his nationalist appeal, and several of his schools were burned down. Added to personal problems of declining health, financial difficulties, and the death of a beloved daughter, Chilembwe’s sense of betrayal deepened into fury.

In careful detail, Chilembwe planned an attack on the worst of the area plantations, which was known for cruelty to its African workers. With 200 followers, he struck swiftly, and three plantation managers were killed. One of these, a cousin of David LIVINGSTONE, was notorious for burning down tenants’ chapels, whipping workers, and denying them their wages.

His head was cut off and displayed on a pole in Chilembwe’s church. The rebels, however, scrupulously observed Chilembwe’s orders not to harm any women or children. The colonial response was immediate and ruthless, resulting in the death of many Africans.

Chilembwe and his followers–mostly educated, Christian, small businessmen–demanded for themselves the same place in the modern world that they saw Europeans enjoying. Meanwhile, John Chilembwe died on February 3, 1915, at the age of 43 after being killed by the white people.

Source: Dictionary of African History Biography

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