- 209th Day of 2012 / 157 Remaining
- 57 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:6:09
- Sunset:8:23
- 14 Hours 14 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:3:25pm
- Moon Set:12:46am
- Moon’s Phase: 66 %
- 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:6:58am/6:12pm
- Low:12:22am/11:40am
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.03
- Last Year:0.08
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Korean War Veterans Armistice Day
- Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day
- Walk on Stilts Day
- National Scotch Day
- Form A Company Quartet Day
- RAGBRAI begins today. (That's the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride across Iowa. The expect 10,000 riders to make the 7-day leisurely ride from the western Iowa border to the Mississippi River.)
- Revolution Day-Cuba
- Victory Day-North Korea
- On This Day In …
- 1663 --- The British Parliament passed a second Navigation Act, which required all goods bound for the colonies be sent in British ships from British ports.
- 1789 --- The Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the U.S. Congress and President George Washington. The agency later was named the Department of State -- or the State Department.
- 1794 --- Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, is overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety from 1793, Robespierre encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the Revolution. The day after his arrest, Robespierre and 21 of his followers were guillotined before a cheering mob in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. On June 4, 1794, Robespierre was almost unanimously elected president of the National Convention. Six days later, a law was passed that suspended a suspect's right to public trial and to legal assistance. In just a month, 1,400 enemies of the Revolution were guillotined. The Terror was being escalated just when foreign invasion no longer threatened the republic, and an awkward coalition of the right and the left formed to oppose Robespierre and his followers. On July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor in the Revolutionary calendar), Robespierre and his allies were placed under arrest by the National Assembly. Robespierre was taken to the Luxembourg prison in Paris, but the warden refused to jail him, and he fled to the Hotel de Ville. Armed supporters arrived to aid him, but he refused to lead a new insurrection. When he received word that the National Convention had declared him an outlaw, he shot himself in the head but only succeeded in wounding his jaw. Shortly thereafter, troops of the National Convention attacked the Hotel de Ville and seized Robespierre and his allies. The next evening--July 28--Robespierre and 21 others were guillotined without a trial in the Place de la Revolution. During the next few days, another 82 Robespierre followers were executed. The Reign of Terror was at an end.
- 1804 --- The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. With the amendment Electors were directed to vote for a President and for a Vice-President rather than for two choices for President.
- 1921 --- Scientists at the University of Toronto isolated the drug insulin for the first time.
- 1931 --- A swarm of grasshoppers destroyed thousands of acres of crops in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The corn fields were totally destroyed, without a stalk left standing.
- 1940 --- Bugs Bunny debuted in the movie cartoon A Wild Hare. Artist Bob Clampett created Bugs after seeing actor Clark Gable munching a carrot in the movie It Happened One Night. According to “Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare”, Bugs was born on July 27, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York in a warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In reality, he was created by Clampett with help from Tex Avery, who directed “A Wild Hare”, Bugs' debut role, and Robert McKimson, who created the definitive "Bugs Bunny" character design. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs has a Flatbush accent. Bugs has had numerous catchphrases, the most prominent being a casual "Eh... What's up, doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot.
- 1953 --- The armistice agreement that ended the Korean War was signed at Panmunjon, Korea. The war lasted three years and 32 days. The truce negotiations between North Korean and U.S. delegates (representing South Korea) lasted two years and seventeen days.
- 1959 --- Brothers, Santo and Johnny (Farina) of Brooklyn, NY saw their one and only hit record, the instrumental Sleepwalk released. Sleepwalk was number one for two weeks.
- 1965 --- President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation requiring cigarette packages and ads to display a health warning from the U.S. Surgeon General.
- 1974 --- The House of Representatives charges President Richard M. Nixon with the first of three articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice after he refused to release White House tape recordings that contained crucial information regarding the Watergate scandal. In June 1972, five men connected with Nixon's reelection committee, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), had been caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. A subsequent investigation exposed illegal activities perpetrated by CREEP and authorized by senior members of Nixon's administration. It also raised questions about what the president knew about those activities. In May 1973, the Senate convened an investigation into the Watergate scandal amid public cries for Nixon's impeachment. Nixon vigorously denied involvement in the burglary cover-up, most famously in November 1973 when he declared, "I am not a crook." Although Nixon released some of the tapes requested by the Senate in April 1974, he withheld the most damning of them, claiming executive privilege. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon's claim of executive privilege and ordered him to turn over the remaining tapes. When he refused to do so, the House of Representatives passed the first article of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice. On August 5, with the impeachment process already underway, Nixon reluctantly released the remaining tapes. On August 8, 1974, Nixon avoided a Senate trial and likely conviction by becoming the first president to resign.
- 1976 --- John Lennon finally had his request for permanent residency in the United States approved. Lennon’s immigration card number was A-17-597-321. The decision to allow Lennon to stay in the country ended a long struggle between the former Beatle and the U.S. Government.
- 1984 --- Pete Rose passed Ty Cobb’s record for most singles in a career. Rose connected for his 3,503rd base hit. The baseball great was playing for the Montreal Expos at the time and led them to a win over one of his former teams, the Philadelphia Phillies.
- 1996 --- In Atlanta, Georgia, the XXVI Summer Olympiad is disrupted by the explosion of a nail-laden pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park. The bombing, which occurred during a free concert, killed a mother who had brought her daughter to hear the rock music and injured more than 100 others, including a Turkish cameraman who suffered a fatal heart attack after the blast. Police were warned of the bombing in advance, but the bomb exploded before the anonymous caller said it would, leading authorities to suspect that the law enforcement officers who descended on the park were indirectly targeted. Within a few days, Richard Jewell, a security guard at the concert, was charged with the crime. However, evidence against him was dubious at best, and in October he was fully cleared of all responsibility in the bombing.
- 2003 --- It was reported by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) that there was no monster in Loch Ness. The investigation used 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to trawl the loch. Reports of sightings of the "Loch Ness Monster" began in the 6th century.
- Birthdays
- Peggy Fleming
- Maureen McGovern
- Bobbie Gentry
- Jerry Van Dyke
- Jonathan Ryhs Meyers
- Leo Durocher
- Maya Rudolph
- Alex Rodriguez
- Norman Lear
- Carol Leifer
- Bill Engvall
- Keenan Wynn
- George Foster Peabody
- Irv Cross
- Nina Croner