Monday July 2, 2012

• 183rd Day of 2012 / 183 Remaining
• 82 Days Until Autumn Begins

• Sunrise:5:52
• Sunset:8:36
• 14 Hours 44 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:7:44pm
• Moon Set:4:45am
• Moon’s Phase: 99 %

• The Next Full Moon
• July 3 @ 11:51am
• Full Buck Moon
• Full Thunder Moon
• Full Hay Moon

July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.

• Tides
• High:11:26am/10:08pm
• Low:4:25am/4:04pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• This Year:0.00
• Last Year:0.00
• Normal To Date:0.00
• Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80

• Holidays
• Salvation Army Founders Day
• National Anisette Day
• Be Nice to People You Don't Like Day
• National Baked Bananas Day
• Remember to Feed the Hummingbirds Day.(Hang the feeder outside a window so the cat can watch.)
• I Forgot Day(A day to make up for all the birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations you forgot during the first half of the year.)

• UN International Day of Cooperatives
• Palio-Italy
• Flag Day-Curacao

• Lasagna Awareness Month
• National Baked Bean Month
• National Culinary Arts Month
• National Horseradish Month
• National Hot Dog Month
• National Ice Cream Month
• National July Belongs to Blueberries Month
• National Picnic Month
• National Pickle Month

• On This Day In …
• 1776 --- The Second Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia, formally adopts Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence from Great Britain. The vote is unanimous, with only New York abstaining. The resolution had originally been presented to Congress on June 7, but it soon became clear that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were as yet unwilling to declare independence, though they would likely be ready to vote in favor of a break with England in due course. Thus, Congress agreed to delay the vote on Lees Resolution until July 1. In the intervening period, Congress appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Its members were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, well-known to be the best writer of the group, was selected to be the primary author of the document, which was presented to Congress for review on June 28, 1776.

• 1839 --- Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rise up against their captors, killing two crewmembers and seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the United States was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s. On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the "black schooner" was first spotted by American vessels. On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.

• 1850 --- The gas mask was patented on this day. It was an invention of B.J. Lane of Cambridge, MA.

• 1933 --- Baseball great Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants hurled 18 innings of shutout ball to lead the Giants to a 1-0 win over St. Louis in the first half of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds in New York. The Giants took the nightcap, as well, by an identical 1-0 score.

• 1937 --- The Lockheed aircraft carrying American aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan is reported missing near Howland Island in the Pacific. The pair were attempting to fly around the world when they lost their bearings during the most challenging leg of the global journey: Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, a tiny island 2,227 nautical miles away, in the center of the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was in sporadic radio contact with Earhart as she approached Howland Island and received messages that she was lost and running low on fuel. Soon after, she probably tried to ditch the Lockheed in the ocean. No trace of Earhart or Noonan was ever found. On March 17, 1937, she took off from Oakland and flew west on an around-the-world attempt. It would not be the first global flight, but it would be the longest--29,000 miles, following an equatorial route. Aboard her Lockheed were Frederick Noonan, her navigator and a former Pan American pilot, and co-pilot Harry Manning. After resting and refueling in Honolulu, the trio prepared to resume the flight. However, while taking off for Howland Island, Earhart ground-looped the plane on the runway, perhaps because of a blown tire, and the Lockheed was seriously damaged. The flight was called off, and the aircraft was shipped back to California for repairs. In May, Earhart flew the newly rebuilt plane to Miami, from where Noonan and she would make a new around-the-world attempt, this time from west to east. They left Miami on June 1, and after stops in South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. About 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed, and the last 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific Ocean. The next destination was Howland Island, a tiny U.S.-owned island that was just a few miles long. The U.S. Department of Commerce had a weather observation station and a landing strip on the island, and the staff was ready with fuel and supplies. Several U.S. ships, including the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, were deployed to aid Earhart and Noonan in this difficult leg of their journey. As the Lockheed approached Howland Island, Earhart radioed the Itasca and explained that she was low on fuel. However, after several hours of frustrating attempts, two-way communication was only briefly established, and the Itasca was unable to pinpoint the Lockheed's location or offer navigational information. Earhart circled the Itasca's position but was unable to sight the ship, which was sending out miles of black smoke. She radioed "one-half hour fuel and no landfall" and later tried to give information on her position. Soon after, contact was lost, and Earhart presumably tried to land the Lockheed on the water. If her landing on the water was perfect, Earhart and Noonan might have had time to escape the aircraft with a life raft and survival equipment before it sank. An intensive search of the vicinity by the Coast Guard and U.S. Navy found no physical evidence of the fliers or their plane. Additional searches through the years have likewise failed to find any trace of the Lockheed or of Earhart and Noonan, who almost certainly perished at sea.

• 1947 --- An object crashed near Roswell, NM. The U.S. Army Air Force insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts led to speculation that it might have been an alien spacecraft.

• 1955 --- ABC Television premiered "The Lawrence Welk Show," featuring a 24-piece band and "Champagne Lady" Alice Lon. The show lasted 27 years.

• 1964 --- President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the historic Civil Rights Act in a nationally televised ceremony at the White House. In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the African-American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won thousands of supporters to the cause. Memorable landmarks in the struggle included the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955--sparked by the refusal of Alabama resident Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a city bus to a white woman--and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech at a rally of hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., in 1963. As the strength of the civil rights movement grew, John F. Kennedy made passage of a new civil rights bill one of the platforms of his successful 1960 presidential campaign. As Kennedy's vice president, Johnson served as chairman of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities. After Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Johnson vowed to carry out his proposals for civil rights reform. The Civil Rights Act fought tough opposition in the House and a lengthy, heated debate in the Senate before being approved in July 1964. For the signing of the historic legislation, Johnson invited hundreds of guests to a televised ceremony in the White House's East Room. After using more than 75 pens to sign the bill, he gave them away as mementoes of the historic occasion, according to tradition. One of the first pens went to King, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who called it one of his most cherished possessions.

• 1969 --- Consumer crusader Ralph Nader warned that loud rock music threatened to create a generation of hearing-impaired people.

• 1982 --- Larry Walters used 45 helium filled weather ballons tied to an aluminum lawn chair to ascend to 16,000 feet above Long Beach. Several very perplexed commercial airline pilots reported seeing Larry sitting in his lawn chair in the sky, to the Long Beach airport. The FAA fined him $4,000, but later settled for $1,500.

• 1985 --- General Motors announced it was installing electronic road maps as an option on some of its higher priced cars. The system used a dashboard computer and maps stored on cassette tapes. Almost nobody was interested.

• 1992 --- The one-millionth Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line.

• Birthdays
• Thurgood Marshall
• Medgar Evers
• Dave Thomas
• Ken Curtis
• Lindsay Lohan
• Jerry Hall
• Polly Holliday
• Cheryl Ladd
• Imelda Marcos
• Jose’ Canseco
• Richard Petty
• Hermann Hesse
• Jean Rene Lacoste
• Dan Rowan
• Brock Peters