- 199th Day of the Year / 166 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 66 Days
- Sunrise:6:02
- Sunset:8:29
- 14 Hours 27 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:01am
- Moon Set:1:17pm
- Moon’s Phase: Last Quarter
- Holidays
- National Get Out Of The Doghouse Day
- National Caviar Day
- Constitution Day-Uruguay
- Nelson Mandela Day-South Africa
- On This Day
- 0064 --- The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.
- 1536 --- Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England.
- 1818 --- A plague of grasshoppers devastates crops and everything green in Red River, Manitoba.
- 1872 --- The Ballot Act was passed in Great Britain, providing for secret election ballots.
- 1925 --- Seven months after being released from Landsberg jail, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf. Dictated by Hitler during his nine-month stay in prison, Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle," was a bitter and turgid narrative filled with anti-Semitic outpourings, disdain for morality, worship of power, and the blueprints for his plan of Nazi world domination
- 1927 --- Ty Cobb set a major league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit. He hit 4,191 before he retired in 1928.
- 1936 --- Every now and then a commercial jingle becomes something other than a commercial. It becomes a part of Americana. And so it goes with the Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle (“I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener...”). But long before the jingle/song entered our lives, Carl Mayer, nephew of Oscar Mayer, invented another quaint entry into Americana: the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The first Wienermobile rolled out of General Body Company’s factory in Chicago 77 years ago. The Wienermobile tours around the U.S. fascinating children of all ages as it promotes the famous Oscar Mayer wiener. If you’ve had the pleasure of seeing the Wienermobile in person, don’t think only the folks in your part of the U.S.A. are the lucky ones, because today there are six of the silly-looking cars.
- 1936 --- The Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in North Africa.
- 1940 --- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America's 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.
- 1947 --- U.S. President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
- 1951 --- After trying four times without success, ‘Jersey’ Joe Walcott became the world heavyweight boxing champ by knocking out Ezzard Charles (whose real name was actually Charles Ezzard) in Pittsburgh, PA. Walcott became the oldest heavyweight titlist to the time (age 37).
- 1968 --- 'Grazing in the Grass' by Hugh Masekela is #1 on the charts.
- 1968 --- The Grateful Dead released their 2nd album, "Anthem of the Sun."
- 1968 --- President Lyndon B. Johnson meets South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in Honolulu to discuss relations between Washington and Saigon. Johnson reaffirmed his administration's commitment "to defend South Vietnam." Thieu stated that he had "no apprehensions at all" concerning the U.S. commitment. In a joint communique, Thieu further asserted that his government was determined "to continue to assume all the responsibility that the scale of forces of South Vietnam and their equipment will permit," thus tacitly accepting current U.S. efforts to "Vietnamize" the war.
- 1969 --- Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, received a two-month suspended sentence, and had his license suspended for a year. That evening, in a televised statement, he called the delayed reporting of the accident "indefensible" but vehemently denied that he been involved in any improprieties with Kopechne. He also asked his constituents to help him decide whether to continue his political career. Receiving a positive response, he resumed his senatorial duties at the end of a month. There is speculation that he used his considerable influence to avoid more serious charges that could have resulted from the episode. Although the incident on Chappaquiddick Island helped to derail his presidential hopes, Kennedy continued to serve as a U.S. senator of Massachusetts into the 21st century.
- 1970 --- Ron Hunt of the San Francisco Giants was hit by a pitch for the 119th time in his career, earning him the dubious distinction of being the most-beaned baseball player in the major leagues.
- 1974 --- The U.S. Justice Department ordered John Lennon out of the country by September 10. The Immigration and Naturalization Service denied him an extension of his non-immigrant visa because of his guilty plea in England to a 1968 marijuana possession charge.
- 1976 --- Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old star gymnast from Romania, stunned those watching the Olympic Games by executing perfect form to collect a perfect score of ‘10’ from the judges. This was the first perfect score ever recorded on the uneven parallel bars. Nadia went on to collect seven perfect scores, three gold medals, a silver and a bronze. She also won two gold and two silver medals in the 1980 Olympics. Pretty heavy stuff for the tiny lady.
- 1995 --- The oldest known musical instrument in the world was found in the Indrijca River Valley in Slovenia. The 45,000 year-old relic was a bear bone with four artificial holes along its length.
- 1999 --- David Cone of the New York Yankees pitched the 14th perfect game in modern major league baseball history in a game against the Montreal Expos.
- 2001 --- A train derailed, involving 60 cars, in a Baltimore train tunnel. The fire that resulted lasted for six days and virtually closed down downtown Baltimore for several days.
- Birthdays
- Hunter S Thompson
- Nelson Mandela
- Andrei Gromyko
- Sen Mark Udall
- John Glenn
- Dick Button
- Dion DiMucci
- Martha Reeves
- Ricky Skaggs
- Sen S.I. Hayakawa
- Clifford Odets
- Chill Wills
- Hume Cronyn
- Red Skelton
- Harriet Nelson
- Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
