- 202nd Day of 2012 / 164Remaining
- 64 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:6:04
- Sunset:8:28
- 14 Hours 24 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:7:44am
- Moon Set:9:15pm
- Moon’s Phase: 3 %
- The Next Full Moon
- August 1 @ 8:27pm
- 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:1:16pm
- Low:6:22am/6:24pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.01
- Last Year:0.08
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Moon Day
- National Lollipop Day
- National Creme Brulee Day
- Special Olympics Day
- Independence Day-Colombia
- Peace and Freedom Day-Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus)
- First Day Ramadan-Islam
- On This Day In …
- 1851 --- The first cheese factory in the U.S. to make cheese from scratch was started in Rome, New York in 1851 by Jesse Williams. He had his own dairy herd and purchased more milk from other local farmers to make his cheese. By combining the milk and making large cheeses he could produce cheese with uniform taste and texture. Before then, companies would buy small batches of home made cheese curd from local farmers to make into cheese, each batch of curds producing cheese with wide differences in taste and texture from one another.
- 1859 --- Brooklyn and New York played baseball at Fashion Park Race Course on Long Island, NY. The game marked the first time that admission had been charged for to see a ball game. It cost $.50 to get in and the players on the field did not receive a salary (until 1863).
- 1940 --- Billboard magazine published its first "Music Popularity Chart." The first #1 single was Tommy Dorsey’s "I’ll Never Smile Again," featuring vocalist Frank Sinatra.
- 1942 --- The first members of the WAACS, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps began training at Fort Des Moines, IA. In 1943, the name was changed to WACS (Women’s Army Corps) and the organization became a part of the U.S. Army. All WAACS were given the choice of joining the new WACS (and joining the army) or returning to civilian life (75% stayed on).
- 1944 --- Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. High German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him. A coup d'etat would follow, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies. That was the plan. This was the reality: Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, chief of the army reserve, had been given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Berchtesgaden, but was later moved to Hitler's "Wolf's Lair, a command post at Rastenburg, Prussia. Stauffenberg planted the explosive in a briefcase, which he placed under a table, then left quickly. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Fuhrer was standing. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb went off. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm—but he was very much alive. (He was even well enough to keep an appointment with Benito Mussolini that very afternoon. He gave Il Duce a tour of the bomb site.) Four others present died from their wounds.
- 1944 --- President Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
- 1968 --- The first Special Olympics were held in Chicago at Soldier Field
- 1969 --- Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy's bold proposal. At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous message: "The Eagle has landed." At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module's ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation. At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." He then planted his left foot on the gray, powdery surface, took a cautious step forward, and humanity had walked on the moon. "Buzz" Aldrin joined him on the moon's surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed. The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon--July 1969 A.D--We came in peace for all mankind."At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 p.m. on July 24.
- 1976 --- On the seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the Viking 1 lander, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, becomes the first spacecraft to successfully land on the surface of Mars. Viking 1 was launched on August 20, 1975, and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month of its orbit was devoted to imaging the surface to find appropriate landing sites. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter, touched down on the Chryse Planitia region of Mars, and sent back the first close-up photographs of the rust-colored Martian surface.
- 1985 --- Treasure hunters began hauling off $400 million in coins and silver ingots from the sea floor in the biggest underwater jackpot in history. The bounty came from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The Spanish galleon sank 40 miles off the coast of Key West, Florida in 1622. It was located by treasure hunter Mel Fisher. The 40 tons of gold and silver and was the richest treasure find since the opening of King Tut’s tomb in the 1930s.
- 2000 --- Seven skydivers set a world record for unassisted human flight by gliding from a Dutch island to the nearby town of Den Helder. From a height of 16,000 feet, they glided 2½ miles, the first time such a distance had been bridged by pure human flight. The skydivers wore special suits that gave them a longer glide path than normal. They opened their parachutes at 1,000 feet before touching down on the mainland.
- 2003 --- A prison guard in Betim, Brazil. went to a bar close to his jail and bumped into three inmates who had sneaked out for a drink. The owner said they were regulars who often popped in. The men said they weren't running away, they were only having a beer. The prisoners were returned to jail and an investigation was launched into security.
- Birthdays
- Carlos Santana
- Sir Edmund Hillary
- Kim Carnes
- Dianna Rigg
- Elliot Richardson
- Sen. Barbara Mikulski
- Theda Bara
- Natalie Wood
- Paul Cook
- Donna Dixon