Yesterday

$ date -d "yesterday"
Wed Dec 14 21:38:02 CET 2011
$ date -d "last day"
Wed Dec 14 21:38:03 CET 2011
$ date -d "-1 day"
Wed Dec 14 21:38:05 CET 2011

OpenBSD

$ date -r `expr $(date +%s) - 86400` 
Wed Dec 14 22:15:09 CET 2011

FreeBSD