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Daily Calendar for Sunday, May 31, 2026

Daily Calendar

View daily calendar information including holidays, advice, and daily features.

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Full Blue Moon

Since the Moon’s period of phases is 29 1/2 days, and most months have 30 or 31 days, it is possible for two full moons to occur in the same calendar month. When this happens, the second is called a Blue Moon. On average, Blue Moons happen once every 30 months.

 

 

Born

  • Walt Whitman (poet) –
  • Emily Perkins Bissell (social worker) –
  • Sir Victor Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire (Canadian Governor-General 1916-1921) –
  • Clint Eastwood (actor & director) –
  • Joe Namath (football player) –
  • Jim Craig (hockey player & Olympic gold medalist) –
  • Lea Thompson (actress) –
  • Brooke Shields (actress) –
  • Colin Farrell (actor) –

Died

  • Elizabeth Blackwell (first woman to earn an MD degree in the U.S.) –
  • Jack Dempsey (boxer) –
  • Alberta Martin (one of the last widows from the Confederate side, died nearly 140 years after the Civil War ended) –
  • Millvina Dean (last survivor of the RMS Titanic) –
  • Jean Stapleton (American actress ) –

Events

  • The first Catholic cathedral in the United States was dedicated in Baltimore, Maryland. –
  • The Great Clock (aka Big Ben) in London officially began keeping time. (On July 11, the Great Bell first struck the hour.) The 315-foot-high tower, part of the Houses of Parliament building, has no elevator; there are 334 steps to the belfry. The four quarter bells, or chimes, ring out every 15 minutes. The Great Bell tolls every hour. The minute hand measures almost 14 feet long. The clock mechanism weighs 5.6 tons, and is wound three times a week. The clock’s time is adjusted by changing the number of old pennies sitting on a shelf near the top of the pendulum. The tune played each hour is from the aria I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, part of Handel’s Messiah. –
  • 7.8 earthquake left over 60,000 dead in Peru –
  • 1,376-lb. Pacific blue marlin caught, Kaiwi Point, Kona, Hawaii –
  • A summer replacement television show called Seinfeld first aired on NBC –
  • The legendary source “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon was identified as W. Mark Felt –
  • Stratolaunch plane debuted –

Weather

  • Following seven inches of rain, the South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, burst, killing more than 2,200 people. –
  • 98 degrees F in Chicago, Illinois –
  • The National Weather Service office in Washington, D.C., reported the driest spring on record, with only 3.47 inches of precipitation from March 1 to May 31 –
  • Waterspout formed in Dollar Lake, Riverton, Wyoming –

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