- 206th Day of the Year / 159 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 59 Days
- Sunrise:6:08
- Sunset:8:24
- 14 Hours 16 Minutes
- Moon Rise:5:11am
- Moon Set:7:27pm
- Moon’s Phase 1%
- Full Moon August 10 @ 11:10am
- Full Sturgeon 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 Tide:11:48am/10:27pm
- Low Tide:4:56am/4:40pm
- Holidays
- National Hot Fudge Sundae Day
- Culinarians Day
- National Carousel / Merry-Go-Round Day
- National Talk In An Elevator Day
- System Administrator Appreciation Day
- Thread The Needle Day
- Constitution Day-Puerto Rico
- Republic Day-Tunisia
- Galicia National Day-Spain
- Guanacaste Day-Costa Rica
- Yalong Cultural Festival-Tibet
- On This Day
- 1587 --- Japanese strong-man Hideyoshi banned Christianity in Japan and ordered all Christians to leave.
- 1897 --- Jack London leaves for the Klondike to join the gold rush, where he will write his first successful stories.
- 1898 --- During the Spanish-American War, U.S. forces launch their invasion of Puerto Rico, the 108-mile-long, 40-mile-wide island that was one of Spain's two principal possessions in the Caribbean.
- 1909 --- Louis Bleriot of France crossed the English Channel in a 28-hp monoplane with a wingspan of just 23 feet. It was the first time that trick had been accomplished. Actually, it was the world’s first international, overseas flight.
- 1917 --- Mata Hari was tried in a military court and sentenced to execution by firing squad. As the Times of London reported on October 15, 1917, the day of her execution, "She was in the habit of meeting notorious German spy-masters outside French territory, and she was proved to have communicated important information to them, in return for which she had received several large sums of money since May 1916." Her trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, however, and many believed the French authorities, as well as the press, trumped her up as "the greatest woman spy of the century" as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the Western Front. Viewed by many as a victim due to her career as a dancer and courtesan and the French need to find a scapegoat, Mata Hari remains one of the most glamorous figures to come out of the shadowy world of espionage, and the archetype of the female spy.
- 1925 --- Station 2XAG in Schenectady, NY became the first radio station in the U.S. to broadcast with a 50,000-watt transmitter. The station, soon known as WGY Radio, could broadcast with 50,000 watts, since it was owned by the General Electric Company -- a company that knew lots about watts. Today, WGY still broadcasts with its original call letters and is still using 50,000 watts of power.
- 1943 --- King Victor Emmanuel announced to Italy that he had accepted the “resignations” of Premier Benito Mussolini and his entire cabinet, leading to the end of Italy’s alliance with Nazi Germany in World War II.
- 1946 --- The U.S. detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It was the first underwater test of the device.
- 1946 --- Crooner Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis staged their first show as a team at Club 500 in Atlantic City, NJ. Actually, the two had met while performing -- separately -- at the Glass Hat in New York City and decided to try an ad-lib act together. The rest is entertainment history.
- 1956 --- 52 of the 1,662 passengers and crew on board the Andrea Doria died in a collision with the Swedish-American liner Stockholm near Cape Cod. Launched on June 16, 1951 and named after a famous Italian admiral, the Andrea Doria was Italy’s most luxurious liner. For three years the Andrea Doria reigned supreme on the Atlantic cruise routes while gaining the moniker ‘Grand Dame of the Sea’. At 11:10 p.m., sixty miles from Nantucket Island, the heavily reinforced bow of the Stockholm tore through the starboard side of the Andrea Doria. Thanks to the ship’s S.O.S. signals, a group of ships soon arrived and provided much-needed lifeboats to complete the abandonment of the Andrea Doria. Newsmen and cameras caught her eventual fate and the entire world listened on the radio as she slid beneath the waves to settle in 225 feet of water at 10:09 a.m. All of the 52 who were lost died as a direct result of the initial collision.
- 1965 --- Bob Dylan rocks the world of folk music when he performs at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and abandons his acoustic guitar for an electric one. By going electric, Dylan eventually moved rock and folk music closer together. He also infused rock and roll, known then for its mostly lightweight lyrics, with a more intellectual, poetic sensibility. In 1965, Dylan released "Bringing It All Back Home," a half-acoustic, half-electric recording in which he was backed by a nine-piece band, a departure from his previous pared-down performances. That summer, he made his historic live performance with an electric guitar at the folk festival in Newport, where he played such songs as "Maggie's Farm" and "Mr. Tambourine Man." Some fans reportedly booed Dylan at the time, although it's long been a topic of debate as to whether the crowd was unhappy with Dylan or the poor sound system. Regardless, after Newport, Dylan's popularity continued to soar as his musical style continued to evolve and he became known for his innovative, poetic and sometimes cryptic lyrics.
- 1969 --- Neil Young made his first appearance with Crosby, Stills and Nash.
- 1975 --- The musical "A Chorus Line" opened on Broadway.
- 1978 --- Louise Joy Brown, the world's first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown.
- 1984 --- Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She was aboard the orbiting space station Salyut 7.
- 1985 --- Rock Hudson, a quintessential tall, dark and handsome Hollywood leading man of the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 60 films during his career, announces through a press release that he is suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). With that announcement, Hudson became the first major celebrity to go public with such a diagnosis.
- 1990 --- Rosanne Barr sang the National Anthem in San Diego before a Padres baseball game. She was booed for her performance.
- 2000 --- An Air France Concorde jet crashes upon takeoff in Paris on this day in 2000, killing everyone onboard as well as four people on the ground. The Concorde, the world's fastest commercial jet, had enjoyed an exemplary safety record up to that point, with no crashes in the plane's 31-year history. Air France Flight 4590 left DeGaulle Airport for New York carrying nine crew members and 96 German tourists who were planning to take a cruise to Ecuador. Almost immediately after takeoff, however, the plane plunged to the ground near a hotel in Gonesse, France. A huge fireball erupted and all 105 people on the plane were killed immediately.
- 2008 --- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that will ban trans fats in restaurants and retail food establishments. The ban goes into effect on January 1, 2010. California is the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants. There are several cities that have banned them, and California and Oregon have previously banned trans fats in school meals.
- Birthdays
- Walter Brennan
- Nate Thurmond
- Verdine White
- Matt LeBlanc
- Maria Weston Chapman
- Maxfield Parrish
- Johnny Hodges
- Iman
- Jack Gilford
- Walter Payton