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Friday August 2, 2013

  • 214th Day of 2013 /151 Remaining
  • 51 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

  • Sunrise:6:15
  • Sunset:8:16
  • 14 Hours 1 Minute of Daylight

  • Moon Rise:2:40am
  • Moon Set:5:19pm
  • Moon’s Phase:15 %

  • The Next Full Moon
  • August 20 @ 6:45 pm
  • Full Sturgeon Moon
  • Full Red Moon
  • Full Green Corn Moon
  • Full Grain Moon

The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.

  • Tides
  • High:9:58am/8:26pm
  • Low:3:06am/2:36pm

  • Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
  • Normal To Date:0.0
  • This Year:0.0
  • Last Year:0.01
  • Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

  • Holidays
  • National Night Out
  • National Ice Cream Sandwich Day

  • National Day-Macedonia
  • International Beer Day
     
  • On This Day In …
  • 0216 --- During the Second Punic War, Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated the Roman army in the Battle of Cannae.

  • 1776 --- Members of Congress affix their signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six congressional

    delegates in total signed the document, including some who were not present at the vote approving the declaration. The delegates signed by state from North to South, beginning with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and James Duane, Robert Livingston and John Jay of New York refused to sign. Carter Braxton of Virginia; Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; George Reed of Delaware; and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina opposed the document but signed in order to give the impression of a unanimous Congress. Five delegates were absent: Generals George Washington, John Sullivan, James Clinton and Christopher Gadsden and Virginia Governor Patrick Henry.

  • 1769 --- The city of Los Angeles was named on this day. Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain, and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, stopped on their way north from San Diego. They really liked the area and decided to name it Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, which means Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula -- Porciuncula being a chapel in Italy.

  • 1791 --- Samuel Briggs and his son Samuel Briggs, Jr. received a joint patent for their nail-making machine. They were the first father-son pair to receive a patent.

  • 1824 --- Fifth Avenue was opened in New York City. It became one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world, the home of many beautiful, fashionable stores.

  • 1858 --- In Boston and New York City the first mailboxes were

    installed along streets.

  • 1861 --- The United States Congress passed the first income tax. The revenues were intended for the war effort against the South. The tax was never enacted.

  • 1876 --- Wild Bill (James Butler) Hickok was gunned down by Jack McCall, a desperado from Texas, in Saloon #10 at Deadwood, in the Dakota Territory. Hickok was playing poker (with his back to the door) at the time of the shooting. McCall shot Wild Bill in the back, and was hanged for the shooting, never revealing his motive.  

    Hickok, a Union army spy, a scout for General Custer, a marshal for Abilene, Kansas, and a crack shot with a pistol, was handsome, longhaired, and a flamboyant gambler. Doc Pierce, who prepared Wild Bill for burial was quoted as saying, “Wild Bill was the prettiest corpse I have ever seen.” The poker hand Hickok was holding when he died consisted of a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights. This combination became known as the dead man’s hand.

  • 1892 --- Charles A. Wheeler patented the first escalator.

  • 1921 --- Eight White Sox players were acquitted of throwing the

    1919 World Series.

  • 1923 --- In a hotel in San Francisco, President Warren G. Harding dies of a stroke at the age of 58. Harding was returning from a presidential tour of Alaska and the West Coast, a journey some believed he had embarked on to escape the rumors circulating in Washington of corruption in his administration.

  • 1938 --- Bright yellow baseballs were used in a major league baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Cardinals. It was hoped that the balls would be easier to see.

  • 1939 --- U.S. President Roosevelt signed the Hatch Act. The act prohibited civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.

  • 1939 --- Albert Einstein writes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging "watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action" on the part of the United States in atomic research. Einstein feared that Nazi Germany had begun work on an atomic bomb. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller, profoundly disturbed by the lack of American atomic action, enlisted the aid of Einstein, hoping that a letter from such a renowned scientist would help attract Roosevelt's attention. After reading Einstein's letter, Roosevelt created the Uranium Committee, and in 1942 the highly secret U.S. and British atomic program became known as the Manhattan Project.

  • 1943 --- Future President John F. Kennedy is serving as commander of a torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands when his ship is fired upon by the Japanese navy. Kennedy and the

    crew of PT 109 were patrolling near the Solomon Islands. In the middle of the night on August 2, their boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and caught fire. Several of Kennedy's shipmates were blown overboard into a sea of burning oil. Kennedy dove in to rescue three of the crew and in the process swallowed some of the toxic mixture. (Kennedy would later blame this for chronic stomach problems.) For 12 hours, Kennedy and his crew clung to the wrecked hull, before he ordered them to abandon ship. Kennedy and the other good swimmers placed the injured on a makeshift raft, and then took turns pushing and towing the raft four miles to safety on a nearby island.

  • 1945 --- The last wartime conference of the "Big Three"--the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain--concludes after two

    weeks of intense and sometimes acrimonious debate. The conference failed to settle most of the important issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the Cold War that would begin shortly after World War II came to an end.

  • 1961 --- The Beatles began their engagement as regular headliners

    at Liverpool's Cavern Club. They performed about 300 shows over the next two years.

  • 1971 --- The Nixon administration officially acknowledges that the CIA is maintaining a force of 30,000 'irregulars' fighting the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos. The CIA trained and equipped this force of mountain tribesman, mostly from the Hmong tribe, to fight a secret war against the Communists and to sever the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. According to a once top-secret report released this date by the U.S. Defense and State Departments, U.S. financial involvement in Laos had totaled $284,200,000 in 1970.

  • 1983 --- U.S. House of Representatives approved a law that designated the third Monday of January would be a federal holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The law was signed by President Reagon on November 2

  • 1984 --- Charles Schulz’ award-winning comic strip was picked up by the Daily Times in Portsmouth, OH. With the addition of that paper, Peanuts, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Pigpen, Linus, Peppermint Pattie, Woodstock and the gang, became the first comic strip to appear in 2,000 newspapers.

  • 1992 --- Rollie Fingers, Bill McGowan, Hal Newhouser and Tom Seaver were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

  • 1992 --- Jackie Joyner-Kersee becomes the first woman ever to win two consecutive Olympic

    gold medals in the heptathlon.

  • 2007 --- Mattel recalled nearly a million Chinese-made toys from its Fisher-Price division that were found to have excessive amounts of lead.

  • Birthdays
  • James Baldwin
  • Elisha Gray
  • Mary Louise Parker
  • Myrna Loy
  • Peter O’Toole
  • Garth Hudson
  • Beatrice Straight
  • Wes Craven
  • Joanna Cassidy
  • Butch Patrick
  • Victoria Jackson
  • Apollonia
  • Kevin Smith
  • Carroll O’Connor
  • Hank Cochran
  • Lance Ito
  • Mojo Nixon
  • Pierre Charles L’Enfant