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Friday September 20, 2013

  • 263rd Day of 2013 / 102 Remaining
  • 2 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

  • Sunrise:6:56
  • Sunset:7:08
  • 12 Hours 12 Minutes of Daylight

  • Moon Rise:7:49pm
  • Moon Set:8:16am
  • Moon’s Phase: 98 %

  • Full Moon
  • September 19 @ 4:12am
  • Full Corn Moon
  • Full Barley Moon

This full Moon corresponds with the time of harvesting corn. It is also called the Barley Moon, because it is the time to harvest and thresh the ripened barley. The Harvest Moon is the full Moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which can occur in September or October and is bright enough to allow finishing all the harvest chores.

  • Tides
  • High:12:00pm
  • Low:5:41am/6:15pm

  • Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
  • Normal To Date:0.11
  • This Year:0.05
  • Last Year:0.02
  • Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

  • Holidays
  • National Rum Punch Day

  • Liberation Day-East Timor
  • End Of Trout Season-Iceland

  • On This Day In …
  • 1519 --- Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan left Spain to find a route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan was killed during the trip, but one of his ships eventually made the journey.

  • 1884 --- The Equal Rights Party was formed in San Francisco,

    California. The party nominated Mrs. Belva Lockwood as their U.S. presidential candidate and Marietta Snow as Lockwood’s running mate.

  • 1946 --- The first annual Cannes Film Festival opens at the resort city of Cannes on the French Riviera. The festival had intended to make its debut in September 1939, but the outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of the inaugural Cannes. The world's first annual international film festival was inaugurated at Venice in 1932. By 1938, the Venice Film Festival had become a vehicle for Fascist and Nazi propaganda, with Benito Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Germany dictating the choices of films and sharing the prizes among themselves. Outraged, France decided to organize an alternative film festival. In June 1939, the establishment of a film festival at Cannes, to be held from September 1 to 20, was announced in Paris. Cannes, an elegant beach city, lies southeast

    of Nice on the Mediterranean coast. One of the resort town's casinos agreed to host the event. Films were selected and the filmmakers and stars began arriving in mid-August. Among the American selections was The Wizard of Oz. France offered The Nigerian, and Poland The Black Diamond. The USSR brought the aptly titled Tomorrow, It's War. On the morning of September 1, the day the festival was to begin, Hitler invaded Poland. In Paris, the French government ordered a general mobilization, and the Cannes festival was called off after the screening of just one film: German American director William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. World War II lasted six long years. In 1946, France's provincial government approved a revival of the Festival de Cannes as a means of luring tourists back to the French Riviera. The festival began on September 20, 1946, and 18 nations were represented.

  • 1962 --- James Meredith, a black student, was blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by Governor Ross R. Barnett.

  • 1963 --- President Kennedy suggests that the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate on a mission to mount an expedition to the moon. The proposal caught both the Soviets and many Americans off guard. In 1961, shortly after his election as president, John F. Kennedy announced that he was determined to win the "space race" with the Soviets. Since 1957, when the Soviet Union sent a small satellite--Sputnik--into orbit around the earth, Russian and American scientists had been competing to see who could make the next breakthrough in space travel. Outer space became another frontier in the Cold War. Kennedy upped the ante in 1961 when he announced that the United States would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Much had changed by 1963, however. Relations with the Soviet Union had improved measurably. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 had been settled peacefully. A "hot line" had been established between Washington and Moscow to help avert conflict and misunderstandings. A treaty banning the open air testing of nuclear weapons had been signed in 1963. On the other hand, U.S. fascination with the space program was waning. Opponents of the program cited the high cost of the proposed trip to the moon, estimated at more than $20 billion. In the midst of all of this, Kennedy, in a speech at the United Nations, proposed that the Soviet Union and United States cooperate in mounting a mission to the moon. "Why," he asked the audience, "therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?" Kennedy noted, "the clouds have lifted a little" in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations, and declared "The Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements--agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction."  Soviet Foreign Minister

    Andrei Gromyko applauded Kennedy's speech and called it a "good sign," but refused to comment on the proposal for a joint trip to the moon. In Washington, there was a good bit of surprise--and some skepticism--about Kennedy's proposal. The "space race" had been one of the focal points of the Kennedy administration when it came to office, and the idea that America would cooperate with the Soviets in sending a man to the moon seemed unbelievable. Other commentators saw economics, not politics, behind the proposal. With the soaring price tag for the lunar mission, perhaps a joint effort with the Soviets was the only way to save the costly program. What might have come of Kennedy's idea is unknown--just two months later, he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, abandoned the idea of cooperating with the Soviets but pushed ahead with the lunar program. In 1969, the United States landed a man on the moon, thus winning a significant victory the "space race."

  • 1972 --- Police found cannabis growing on the farm of Paul and Linda McCartney.

  • 1973 --- Singer Jim Croce, his lead guitarist, Maury Muehleisen, and four others died when their plane crashed into a tree at Natchitoches, LA while taking off for a concert in Sherman, Texas.

  • 1973 --- Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a widely publicized exhibition tennis match dubbed the "Battle of the Sexes." The 55-year-old Riggs, a tennis champion from the late 1930s and 40s who was notoriously skeptical of women’s talents on the tennis court, branded the contest the "Battle of the Sexes." Bobby Riggs first proposed a male-female match-up to Billie Jean King, then 28, whom he dubbed the "leading women’s libber of tennis," in 1972. King ignored the offer, but Australian Margaret Court, 30, who had won 89 of her last 92 matches and was the leading money-winner on the women’s professional tour at the time, accepted. Leading up to this first "Battle of the Sexes" match, Riggs loudly and consistently belittled women’s tennis and its players to the media while Court, occupied with raising her one-year-old son, said little.

    On May 13, 1973, Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court faced off in the $10,000 winner-take-all challenge. The match, held on Riggs’ home turf, was televised internationally. To the surprise of many, Riggs defeated Court easily, 6-2, 6-1. The moment the match ended, Riggs again challenged Billie Jean King. This time, she accepted, and their $100,000 winner-take-all match--dubbed by some "the libber vs. the lobber"--was set for September 20, 1973. A sell-out crowd of 30,492 people, the largest ever for a tennis match, filled the Houston Astrodome while millions more in 36 countries tuned in on television to watch King, a five-time Wimbledon champion, all but chew Riggs up and spit him out. The older man lacked the energy and stamina to keep up with her aggressive serve-and-volley game, and she prevailed easily, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. At a news conference after the match, Riggs explained the loss: "She was too good, too fast. She returned all my passing shots and made great plays off them. . . . I was trying to play my game, but I couldn't."

  • 1984 --- NBC-TV debuted The Cosby Show. Bill Cosby played Dr. Heathcliff (Cliff) Huxtable. His lovely wife, Clair, was played by Phylicia Rashad. The premiere was the most watched show of the

    week and the show went on to become an Emmy Award-winner and one of the most popular on television for eight years.

  • 1995 --- The U.S. House of Representatives voted to drop the national speed limit. This allowed the states to decide their own speed limits.

  • 2012 --- 16 members of a dissident Amish group in Ohio are convicted of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish with whom they had religious differences. The government classified the ruthless attacks as hate crimes because beards and long hair have important religious symbolism to the Amish, who are known for their pacifism, plain style of dress and refusal to use many forms of modern technology. The men and women convicted in the attacks belonged to a group of about 18 families who lived on an 800-acre farm owned by their leader, Samuel Mullet Sr., near Bergholz, Ohio, 100 miles southeast of Cleveland. Mullet, an Amish bishop and father of 18,

    masterminded the 2011 attacks against fellow Amish whom he viewed as enemies of his ultraconservative splinter sect. The five separate assaults involved nine people and spread fear through Amish communities in Ohio, home to an Amish population of roughly 60,000. The perpetrators—sometimes wielding shears meant for horse manes—restrained victims and in some cases hurt those who came to their aid. Afterwards, the attackers took photographs in order to further humiliate the injured parties. On September 20, 2012, the 66-year-old Mullet was convicted along with three of his sons, one of his daughters and 11 other followers. On February 8, 2013, a federal judge in Cleveland sentenced Mullet to 15 years in prison. His co-defendants received sentences ranging from one to seven years behind bars.

  • Birthdays
  • Upton Sinclair
  • Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton
  • Dr Joyce Brothers
  • Anne Meara
  • Sophia Loren
  • Crispin Glover
  • Red Auerbach
  • Guy LaFleur