- 242nd Day of 2013 / 123 Remaining
- 23 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:39
- Sunset:7:40
- 13 Hours 1 Minute of Daylight
- Moon Rise:1;24am
- Moon Set:3:59pm
- Moon’s Phase: 28 %
- The Next Full Moon
- September 19 @ 4:12am
- Full Corn Moon
- Full Barley Moon
This full Moon corresponds with the time of harvesting corn. It is also called the Barley Moon, because it is the time to harvest and thresh the ripened barley. The Harvest Moon is the full Moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which can occur in September or October and is bright enough to allow finishing all the harvest chores.
- Tides
- High:8:36am/7:03pm
- Low:1:34am/1:25pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.00
- This Year:0.04
- Last Year:0.02
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Toasted Marshmallow Day
- National Holistic Pet Day
- Huey P. Long Day-Louisiana
- Saint Rose of Lima Day-Peru
- Victory Day-Turkey
- Agou-Haiti
- Children’s Day-Afghanistan
- On This Day In …
- 30 BC --- Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, takes her life following the defeat of her forces against Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome. Cleopatra, born in 69 B.C., was made Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, upon the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, in 51 B.C. Her brother was made King Ptolemy XIII at the same time, and the siblings ruled Egypt under
the formal title of husband and wife. Cleopatra and Ptolemy were members of the Macedonian dynasty that governed Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Although Cleopatra had no Egyptian blood, she alone in her ruling house learned Egyptian. To further her influence over the Egyptian people, she was also proclaimed the daughter of Re, the Egyptian sun god. Cleopatra soon fell into dispute with her brother, and civil war erupted in 48 B.C.
- 1682 --- William Penn sailed from England and later established the colony of Pennsylvania in America.
- 1780 --- General Benedict Arnold secretly promised to surrender the West Point fort to the British army.
- 1905 --- Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb made his major league
debut with the Detroit Tigers.
- 1918 --- After speaking at a factory in Moscow, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin is shot twice by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary party. Lenin was seriously wounded but survived the attack. The assassination attempt set off a wave of reprisals by the Bolsheviks against the Social Revolutionaries and other political opponents. Thousands were executed as Russia fell deeper into civil war.
- 1922 --- The New Orleans Rhythm Kings recorded Tiger Rag, one of the most familiar ragtime jazz tunes ever. It was released on the General record label.
- 1939 --- The first Wheaties commercial (live) aired when host Red Barbar promoted it during a Brooklyn Dodgers game.
- 1941 --- German forces severed the last railroad link between
Leningrad and the rest of the Soviet Union, as Nazi forces began a siege of Leningrad during World War II that lasted nearly two and a half years.
- 1963 --- Two months after signing an agreement to establish a 24-hour-a-day "hot line" between Moscow and Washington, the system goes into effect. The hot line was supposed to help speed communication between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union and help prevent the possibility of an accidental war. John F. Kennedy became the first U.S. president to have a direct phone line to the Kremlin in Moscow.
- 1967 --- Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. He would remain on the Supreme Court for 24 years before retiring for health reasons, leaving a legacy of upholding the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution
- 1968 --- The stars came out for charity as John and Yoko Lennon hosted the One on One concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Among the music greats appearing were Stevie Wonder
and Roberta Flack. Over $250,000 was raised to aid mentally retarded children.
- 1969 --- Ho Chi Minh's reply to President Nixon's letter of July 15 is received in Paris. Ho accused the United States of a "war of aggression" against the Vietnamese people, "violating our fundamental national rights" and warned that "the longer the war goes on, the more it accumulates the mourning and burdens of the American people." Ho said he favored the National Liberation Front's 10-point plan as "a logical and reasonable basis for the settlement of the Vietnamese problem." Ho demanded that the United States "cease the war of aggression," withdraw its troops from Vietnam and allow self-determination for the Vietnamese people. President Nixon would not reveal that he had received this communication until his speech to the nation on November 3.
- 1974 --- A train entering a Zagreb, Yugoslavia, station derails, killing 153 people. It was the worst rail accident in the country's history to that date and remains one of the worst in Europe's history.
- 1974 --- The largest fountain in America, the visual symbol of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was dedicated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania this day. The fountain takes up one-fifth of 36-acre Point State Park at the convergence of the
Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. 90 percent of the fountain is unseen. That’s the part that pumps water from an underground river (a fourth, unnamed river that runs under the city and flows south, unlike the other three rivers), stores it and feeds it into the fountain. Designed by Charles Stotz and Louis Fosner and built by Robert R. Busse, the fountain is controlled by computers and operates automatically. Wind velocity specifies the height of the water column (2 feet in diameter by up to 200 ft. high. 24 white and gold quartz-iodine lights present a dramatic display of shifting colors by night. The most interesting structural fact and a very complicated procedure -- this fountain was built to withstand water pressure from beneath, so the pressure would not push it up and cause it to float.
- 1983 --- Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the
first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m.
- 1989 --- A federal jury in New York found "hotel queen" Leona Helmsley guilty of income tax evasion.
- 1993 --- Late Show with David Letterman debuted on CBS-TV. CBS remodeled the Ed Sullivan Theater (on 54th Street in New York City) for Letterman, who had just spent over a decade on NBC (Late Night with David Letterman). The first musical guest to appear on the new show was Billy Joel.
- 1995 --- James Taylor and former wife Carly Simon got back together for their first concert together in 16 years. Livestock ’95 was a benefit performance on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusettes to raise funds for a new barn for the island’s agricultural society.
- Birthdays
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Emily Bronte
- Maria Montessori
- Roy Wilkins
- John Phillips
- Ted Williams
- Fred MacMurray
- Shirley Booth
- Huey P. Long
- Cameron Diaz
- Elizabeth Ashley
- R Crumb
- Jean-Claude Killy
- Lewis Black
- Peggy Lipton
- Lisa Ling
- Kitty Wells
- Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa (Mokcsa imported 1,400 varieties of grapevines to California in 1862 and planted the first large vineyard in California in the Sonoma Valley. After a devastating blight destroyed much of Europe’s vineyards, some of these same vines, now on resistant root stock, helped rescue the French and German wine industries.)