- 279th Day of 2012 / 87 Remaining
- 77 Days Until The First Day of Winter
- Sunrise:7:09
- Sunset:6:46
- 11 Hours 37 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise: 10:19pm
- Moon Set:12:17pm
- Moon’s Phase: 73 %
- The Next Full Moon
- October 29 @ 12:50 pm
- Full Hunter’s Moon
- Full Harvest Moon
This full Moon is often referred to as the Full Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon. Many moons ago, Native Americans named this bright moon for obvious reasons. The leaves are falling from trees, the deer are fattened, and it’s time to begin storing up meat for the long winter ahead. Because the fields were traditionally reaped in late September or early October, hunters could easily see fox and other animals that come out to glean from the fallen grains. Probably because of the threat of winter looming close, the Hunter’s Moon is generally accorded with special honor, historically serving as an important feast day in both Western Europe and among many Native American tribes.
- Tides
- High: 3:33am/2:10pm
- Low: 8:25am/9:17pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.03
- Last Year:0.11
- Normal To Date:0.20
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Apple Betty Day
- Balloons Around the World Day
- UN World Teacher's Day
- Double Nine Festival/Chung Yeung Festival-China
- Republic Day-Portugal
- National Sports Day-Lesotho
- World Teachers Day
- On This Day In …
- 1877 --- Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (1840?-1904) was known to his people as "Thunder Traveling to the Loftier Mountain Heights." He led his people in an attempt to resist the takeover of their lands in the Oregon Territory by white settlers. In 1877, the Nez Perce were ordered to move to a reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph agreed at first. But after members of his tribe killed a group of settlers, he tried to flee to Canada with his followers, traveling over 1500 miles through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Along the way they fought several battles with the pursuing U.S. Army. Chief Joseph spoke these words when they finally surrendered. “Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”
- 1919 --- Enzo Ferrari debuted in his first race. He later founded the Auto Avio Construzioni Ferrari, an independent manufacturing company.
- 1921 --- The World Series was broadcast on the radio for the first time. The game was between the New York Giants and the New York Yankees.
- 1930 --- The New York Philharmonic Orchestra was heard on the air over CBS radio from Carnegie Hall for the first time.
- 1942 --- Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, fires off a telegram to the German and Soviet front at Stalingrad, exhorting his forces to victory. "That part of Stalingrad which has been captured must be liberated." Stalingrad was a key to capturing the Soviet Union, in many ways as important as capturing Moscow itself. It stood between the old Russia and the new, a center of both rail and river communications, industry and old-world Russian trade. To preserve Stalingrad's integrity was to preserve Russian civilization past and present. As the Germans reached the Volga, thrust and counterthrust brought the battle to a standstill. Everyone from Russian factory workers to reinforcements of more than 160,000 Soviet soldiers poured into Stalingrad to beat back the German invaders
- 1947 --- A small Northern California company got a major boost from Bing Crosby. The first show recorded on tape was broadcast on ABC radio. ‘Der Bingle’ was so popular, that his taped show promoted wide distribution of the new magnetic tape recorders that would become broadcast classics -- the venerable Ampex 200.
- 1947 --- President Harry Truman (1884-1972) makes the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans. At the time of Truman's food-conservation speech, Europe was still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine. Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S. didn't provide food aid, his administration's Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart. He asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and requested that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays, eggs and poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each day. The food program was short-lived, as ultimately the Marshall Plan succeeded in helping to spur economic revitalization and growth in Europe. In 1947, television was still in its infancy and the number of TV sets in U.S. homes only numbered in the thousands (by the early 1950s, millions of Americans owned TVs); most people listened to the radio for news and entertainment. However, although the majority of Americans missed Truman's TV debut, his speech signaled the start of a powerful and complex relationship between the White House and a medium that would have an enormous impact on the American presidency, from how candidates campaigned for the office to how presidents communicated with their constituents. Each of Truman's subsequent White House speeches, including his 1949 inauguration address, was televised. In 1948, Truman was the first presidential candidate to broadcast a paid political ad. Truman pioneered the White House telecast, but it was President Franklin Roosevelt who was the first president to appear on TV--from the World's Fair in New York City on April 30, 1939. FDR's speech had an extremely limited TV audience, though, airing only on receivers at the fairgrounds and at Radio City in Manhattan.
- 1958 --- This was the day that saw the record charts dominated by a folk song for the first time. The Kingston Trio scored with Tom Dooley. The story, told in song, is of an embittered Civil War veteran, Tom Dula. It seems that he had been forced to make a confession just before having to face the gallows, saying that he had killed his girlfriend out of jealousy. Some said he was innocent. The story became a folk song in the 1860s, and The Kingston Trio, a group of clean-cut, shorthaired, button-down shirted, young men, rode the folk revival to fame and fortune with their rendition of Tom Dooley.
- 1962 --- The Beatles' first hit, "Love Me Do," was released in the United Kingdom.
- 1969 --- "Monty Python's Flying Circus" debuted on BBC Television.
- 1970 --- Anwar Sadat took office as President of Egypt replacing Gamal Abdel Nassar. Sadat was assassinated in 1981.
- 1983 --- Solidarity founder Lech Walesa was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, founder of Solidarity, campaigner for human rights, for his efforts on behalf of Polish workers.
- 1986 --- Eugene Hasenfus is captured by troops of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua after the plane in which he is flying is shot down; two others on the plane die in the crash. Under questioning, Hasenfus confessed that he was shipping military supplies into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, an anti-Sandinista force that had been created and funded by the United States. Most dramatically, he claimed that operation was really run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The news of Hasenfus's revelations caused quite a stir in the United States. Congress, reacting to complaints about corruption and brutality against the Contras, had passed the Boland Amendment in 1984, specifically forbidding the CIA or any other U.S. agency from supporting the Contras. President Ronald Reagan, who saw the Sandinista government in Nicaragua as a puppet of the Soviet Union, had secured U.S. funding for the Contras in 1981 and signed off on the Boland Amendment reluctantly. If Hasenfus's story was true, then the CIA and Reagan administration had broken the law.
- 1988 --- Democrat Lloyd Bentsen lambasted Republican Dan Quayle during their vice-presidential debate, telling Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
- 1989 --- Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for nonviolent efforts to free his homeland from China. The Committee’s citation read, “The Committee wants to emphasize the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.”
- 1989 --- Former evengelist, Jim Bakker, was convicted by a jury in Norfolk, VA of bilking 116,000 P.T.L. (Praise the Lord) TV show followers out of $158 million. Bakker was released from prison in 1994 after serving five years of his 45-year sentence. During his jail stay, Bakker’s wife and former co-host Tammy Faye divorced him.
- 1990 --- A jury in Cincinnati acquitted an art gallery and its director of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of sexually graphic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
- 2000 --- Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, who had refused to accept defeat in the country's presidential election, was ousted when huge mobs rampaged through Belgrade.
- Birthdays
- Vaclav Havel
- Karen Allen
- Ray Kroc
- Chester A. Arthur (21st president)
- Kate Winslet
- Steve Miller
- Bob Geldof
- Larry Fine
- Bil Keane
- Bernie Mac