- 258th Day of 2012 /108 Remaining
- 8 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:51
- Sunset:7:19
- 12 Hours 28 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:5:23am
- Moon Set:6:18pm
- Moon’s Phase: 2 %
- The Next Full Moon
- September 29 @ 8:18pm
- Full Corn Moon
- Full Harvest Moon
This full moon’s name is attributed to Native Americans because it marked when corn was supposed to be harvested. Most often, the September full moon is actually the Harvest Moon, which is the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. In two years out of three, the Harvest Moon comes in September, but in some years it occurs in October. At the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of this Moon. Usually the full Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the Moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice the chief Indian staples are now ready for gathering.
- Tides
- High:10:37am/10:22pm
- Low:4:06am/4:20pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.03
- Last Year:0.11
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Cream-filled Donut Day
- Eat a Hoagie Day
- Battle of San Jacinto Day-Nicaragua
- On This Day In …
- 1741 --- George Handel completed "Messiah" in time for an orphan's charity concert. It took the composer just 23 days to complete the timeless musical treasure which is still very popular during the Christmas holiday season.
- 1812 --- One week after winning a bloody victory over the Russian army at the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée enters the city of Moscow, only to find the population evacuated and the Russian army retreated again. Moscow was the goal of the invasion, but the deserted city held no czarist officials to sue for peace and no great stores of food or supplies to reward the French soldiers for their long march. Then, just after midnight, fires broke out across the city, apparently set by Russian patriots, leaving Napoleon's massive army with no means to survive the coming Russian winter.
- 1814 --- Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star-Spangled Banner," a poem originally known as "Defense of Fort McHenry," after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, MD, during the War of 1812. The song became the official U.S. national anthem on March 3, 1931.
- 1901 --- President William B. McKinley died in Buffalo, N.Y., of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin eight days earlier. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, 42, was sworn in, becoming the youngest president in U.S. history.
- 1959 --- The Soviet space probe Luna 2 became the first man-made object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface. The event gave the Soviets a short-lived advantage in the "space race" and prompted even greater effort by the United States to develop its own space program.
- 1960 --- The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded. The core members were Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
- 1964 --- John Steinbeck was presented the U.S. Medal of Freedom. Steinbeck had already received numerous other honors and awards for his writing, including the 1962 Nobel Prize and a 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck, a native Californian, studied writing intermittently at Stanford between 1920 and 1925 but never graduated. He moved to New York and worked as a manual laborer and journalist while writing his first two novels, which were not successful. He married in 1930 and moved back to California with his wife. His father, a government official in Salinas County, gave the couple a house to live in while Steinbeck continued writing. His first novel, Tortilla Flat, about the comic antics of several rootless drifters who share a house in California, was published in 1935. The novel became a financial success. Steinbeck's next works, In Dubious Battle and Of Mice and Men, were both successful, and in 1938 his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath was published. The novel, about the struggles of an Oklahoma family who lose their farm and become fruit pickers in California, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939. After World War II, Steinbeck's work became more sentimental in such novels as Cannery Row and The Pearl. He also wrote several successful films, including Forgotten Village (1941) and Viva Zapata (1952). He became interested in marine biology and published a nonfiction book, The Sea of Cortez, in 1941. His travel memoir, Travels with Charlie, describes his trek across the United States in a camper. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962 and died in New York in 1968.
- 1968 --- Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain wins his 30th game of the season, becoming the first 30-game winner in the major leagues since 1938. The Tigers scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to come from behind in a 5-4 decision over the Oakland A’s. McLain, a hard-throwing right-hander with a personality that reflected the freewheeling late 1960s, was 24 years old in 1968. On September 14, fans eager to witness the possible pitching milestone packed Tigers Stadium, and NBC broadcast the game nationally with former St. Louis Cardinal Dizzy Dean, the last pitcher to win 30 games in the major leagues, providing color commentary. Anticipation built as McLain held the young and powerful A’s scoreless until the fourth inning, when their budding superstar Reggie Jackson connected for a home run with one man on, giving Oakland a 2-0 lead. The Tigers’ Norm Cash answered in the bottom of the fourth with a three-run home run to put the Tigers up 3-2, but Oakland tied it up in the fifth when shortstop Bert Campaneris singled in a run, and took the lead 4-3 in the sixth when Jackson again sent one into the stands. McLain remained determined to go home with the win, however, and he hung in the game until the bottom of the ninth, when he was pulled for pinch-hitter Al Kaline with his team still trailing by one. The move turned out to be a good one for McLain: Kaline was walked, and with one out, Mickey Stanley singled up the middle, sending Kaline to third. Next up was Jim Northrup, who hit a bouncing ball up the first base line to A’s first baseman Danny Carter, as Kaline raced toward home. Carter’s throw sailed high over home plate, and Kaline was safe, tying the game at 4-4. With the home crowd at Tigers Stadium cheering him on, Willie Horton came to the plate and, with the count at 2-2, sent the ball to deep left out of A’s left fielder Jim Gosger’s reach for the winning run to give McLain his historic 30th win. McClain won the American League Cy Young Award in 1968 and again in 1969.
- 1978 --- The first show of the TV series Mork & Mindy, starring the irrepressible Robin Williams as Mork and actress Pam Dawber as Mindy, aired on ABC-TV. Mork had made an earlier (February, 1978) appearance, landing on earth during an episode of Happy Days. Na nu, na nu.
- 1995 --- The London auction house, Sotheby’s, autioned Paul McCartney’s hand-written lyrics for the Beatles’ Getting Better (from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) for £161,000 ($257,600). It was a record for a Beatles song.
- Birthdays
- Margaret Sanger
- Clayton Moore
- Johann Michael Haydn
- Tyler Perry
- Ivan Pavlov
- Walter Koenig
- Jon "Bowzer" Bauman
- Joey Heatherton