- 230th Day of 2012 /136 Remaining
- 36 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:27
- Sunset:8:00
- 13 Hours 33 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:6:35am
- Moon Set:7:48pm
- New Moon
- The Next Full Moon
- August 31st @ 6:57am
- Blue Moon
But it’s Blue in name only. That’s because a Blue Moon is sometimes defined as the second full moon in a calendar month. The first full moon was August 1. The second full moon is August 31, 2012. There are two more definitions for Blue Moon. It can be the third of four full moons in a single season. Or, someday, you might see an actual blue-colored moon.
- Tides
- High:11:58am/11:18pm
- Low:5:18am/5:21pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.3
- Last Year:0.11
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Sand Castle Day
- National Vanilla Custard Day
- Coonskin Cap Day
- Drink Coffee at the Office from A Sippy Cup Day
- National Thriftshop Day
- #2 Pencil Day
- Independence Day-Gabon
- Independence Day-Indonesia
- Marcus Garvey's Birthday-Rastafarian
- On This Day In …
- 1903 --- The first Pulitzer Prize was awarded, as Joseph Pulitzer made a million-dollar donation to Columbia University. This provided the funding for the Pulitzer Prize awards to be made in Joseph Pulitzer’s name.
- 1933 --- New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig plays in his 1,308th consecutive game, breaking former Yankee Everett Scott’s record for consecutive games played. Gehrig would go on to play in 2,130 games in a row, setting a record that would stand for over half a century.
- 1939 --- Theatre goers first saw the magical “The Wizard of Oz” in a gala premiere. The first movie to use the combination of black and white and color film starred Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale; Bert Lahr as both the Cowardly Lion and Zeke; Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow and Hunk; and Jack Haley as both the Tin Woodsman and Hickory. Originally, Buddy Ebsen was in the role of the Tin Man; but he became ill and had to leave the production before its completion. The movie was based on L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, which he wrote in 1900 and adapted into a musical play. Directed by Victor Fleming, the Hollywood version took an Oscar for best movie score (Harold Arlen and E.Y. ‘Yip’ Harburg), and for best song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. With its superb acting, special effects, singing midgets and wonderful songs like “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” (the wicked witch was delightfully played by Margaret Hamilton while Billie Burke was equally charming as the good witch); Munchkinland, and “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”, “The Wizard of Oz” would probably have won the Best Picture Oscar. As fate would have it, there was another show-stopper filmed that year, “Gone with the Wind”, and only one film could win. “The Wizard of Oz” turned into such a triumph that television later clamored to get the rights to show it. William. S. Paley of CBS made sure his network (which also gave Garland the spotlight with her own show in the 1950s) was the one to bring “The Wizard of Oz” to new generations of viewers. The movie, now released on video, is still shown on TV and remains a popular favorite of young and old alike.
- 1957 --- Phillies outfielder Richie Ashburn smashed a line-drive foul ball that broke Philadelphia grandmother Alice Roths nose and left her bleeding. As she was being carried out on a stretcher, Ashburn lined another foul into the stands and hit her again. He took flowers to her in the hospital.
- 1969 --- The grooviest event in music history--the Woodstock Music Festival--draws to a close after three days of peace, love and rock 'n' roll in upstate New York. Conceived as "Three Days of Peace and Music," Woodstock was a product of a partnership between John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang. Their idea was to make enough money from the event to build a recording studio near the arty New York town of Woodstock. When they couldn't find an appropriate venue in the town itself, the promoters decided to hold the festival on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York--some 50 miles from Woodstock--owned by Max Yasgur. By the time the weekend of the festival arrived, the group had sold a total of 186,000 tickets and expected no more than 200,000 people to show up. By Friday night, however, thousands of eager early arrivals were pushing against the entrance gates. Fearing they could not control the crowds, the promoters made the decision to open the concert to everyone, free of charge. Close to half a million people attended Woodstock, jamming the roads around Bethel with eight miles of traffic. Soaked by rain and wallowing in the muddy mess of Yasgur's fields, young fans best described as "hippies" euphorically took in the performances of acts like Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Who performed in the early morning hours of August 17, with Roger Daltrey belting out "See Me, Feel Me," from the now-classic album "Tommy" just as the sun began to rise. The most memorable moment of the concert for many fans was the closing performance by Jimi Hendrix, who gave a rambling, rocking solo guitar performance of "The Star Spangled Banner." With not enough bathroom facilities and first-aid tents to accommodate such a huge crowd, many described the atmosphere at the festival as chaotic. There were surprisingly few episodes of violence, though one teenager was accidentally run over and killed by a tractor and another died from a drug overdose. A number of musicians performed songs expressing their opposition to the Vietnam War, a sentiment that was enthusiastically shared by the vast majority of the audience. Later, the term "Woodstock Nation" would be used as a general term to describe the youth counterculture of the 1960s.
- 1975 --- 22-year-old Michael Murphy left Stevenage, England, to ride his bicycle around the world. Almost two years later, after traveling 25,000 miles and with only 40 miles to go, his bike was accidentally crushed at a customs depot, and he had to hitchhike home.
- 1977 --- Following the death of Elvis Presley, Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) reported that in one day the number of orders for flowers to be delivered to Graceland had surpassed the number for any other event in the company's history.
- 1978 --- A transatlantic trip by air was not uncommon in 1978, unless you made the trip by hot-air balloon. Three American men had left Presque Isle, Maine six days earlier. After traveling 137 hours, 18 minutes and approximately 3,200 miles, Max Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman landed at Miserey, France on this day. The balloon that carried the three for this, the first completed transatlantic flight by balloon, was named the Double Eagle II.
- 1987 --- Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's former deputy, is found strangled to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, apparently the victim of suicide. Hess was the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle and the sole prisoner at Spandau since 1966. Hess, an early and devoted follower of Nazism, participated in Hitler's failed "Beer Hall Putsch" in 1923. He escaped to Austria but voluntarily returned to Germany to join Hitler in Landsberg jail. During his eight months in prison, Hitler dictated his life story--Mein Kampf--to Hess. In 1933, Hess became deputy Nazi party leader, but Hitler later lost faith in his leadership ability and made him second in the line of succession after Hermann Goering. In May 1941, Hess stole an airplane and landed it in Scotland on a self-styled mission to negotiate a peace between Britain and Germany. He was immediately arrested by British authorities. His peace proposal--met with no response from the British--was essentially the same as the peace offer made by Hitler in July 1940: an end to hostilities with Britain and its empire in exchange for a free German hand on the European continent. However, by May 1941 the Battle of Britain had been lost by Germany, and Hitler rightly condemned Hess of suffering from "pacifist delusions" in thinking that a resurgent Britain would make peace. Held in Britain until the end of the war, Hess was tried at Nuremberg after the war with other top Nazis. Because he had missed out on the worst years of Nazi atrocities and had sought peace in 1941, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was held in Spandau Prison in Berlin, and the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France shared responsibility in guarding him.
- 1995 --- Security guards carried Courtney Love offstage after she began fighting with Hole fans because they weren't cheering loud enough during the last night of the Lollapalooza tour in Mountain View, CA.
- 2002 --- In Santa Rosa, CA, the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened to the public.
- Birthdays
- Mae West
- Marcus Garvey
- Davy Crockett
- Robert DeNiro
- Sean Penn
- Maureen O'Hara
- Belinda Carlisle
- Maria McKee
- V.S. Naipaul
- Francis Gary Powers
- Samuel Goldwyn