- 189th Day of 2013 / 176 Remaining
- 76 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:5:55
- Sunset:8:33
- 14 Hours 38 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:6:28am
- Moon Set:8:43pm
- New Moon @ 12:16am
- The Next Full Moon
- July 22 @ 11:16am
- 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:12:53pm/11:22pm
- Low:5:53am/5:43pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.0
- This Year:0.0
- Last Year:0.0
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day
- Savor the Comic, Unplug the Drama Day
- Gay Pride Day-Nederlands
- On This Day In …
- 1497 --- Vasco de Gama left Lisbon with four ships, to search for a sea route to India. He was the first European to sail there (notwithstanding Columbus’ valiant try), and he opened the area to Portuguese trade and colonization.
- 1663 --- King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.
- 1693 --- Uniforms for police in New York City were authorized.
- 1776 --- In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon. On July 4, the historic document was adopted by delegates to the Continental Congress meeting in the State House. However, the Liberty Bell, which bore the apt biblical quotation, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof," was not rung until the Declaration of Independence returned from the printer on July 8.
- 1795 --- Kent County Free School changed its name to Washington College. It was the first college to be named after U.S. President George Washington. The school was established by an act of the Maryland Assembly in 1723.
- 1853 --- An expedition led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Yedo Bay, Japan, on a mission to seek diplomatic and trade relations with the Japanese.
- 1881 --- A patron came into Edward Berner’s drug store and sat down at the soda-fountain counter. Since it was the Sabbath, the customer couldn’t have the desirable, but scandalous, flavored, soda water. Mr. Berner compromised and put ice cream in a dish and poured the syrup on top (chocolate syrup was only used for making flavored and ice-cream sodas, at the time). Voila! An ice cream Sunday (the spelling was later changed to ‘sundae’).
- 1889 --- John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain in the last championship bare-knuckle fight. Good thing it was the last one, too, as the bout went on for 75 rounds! It took 2 hours, 16 minutes and 23 seconds to complete.
- 1907 --- Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first "Follies" on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.
- 1918 --- Ernest Hemingway, an 18-year-old ambulance driver for the American Red Cross, is struck by a mortar shell while serving on the Italian front, along the Piave delta, in World War I. A native of Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway was working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star when war broke out in Europe in 1914. He volunteered for the Red Cross in France before the American entrance into the war in April 1917 and was later transferred to the Italian front, where he was on hand for a string of Italian successes along the Piave delta in the first days of July 1918, during which 3,000 Austrians were taken prisoner.
- 1958 --- The first gold record album presented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was awarded. It went to the soundtrack LP, Oklahoma!. The honor signified that the album had reached one million dollars in sales. The first gold single issued by the RIAA was Catch a Falling Star, by Perry Como, in March of 1958. A gold single also represents sales of one million records.
- 1960 --- Shot down just two months before while flying a secret mission over Moscow, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage by the Soviet Union on July 8, 1960. Although he would not be found guilty until August 17 of the same year, Powers' indictment signaled a massive setback in the peace process between the United States and the Soviet Union.
- 1970 --- The San Francisco Giants’ Jim Ray Hart hit for the cycle (a single, double, triple and home run in one game). Hart became the first National League player in 59 seasons to collect six runs batted in (RBI) during a single inning. The Giants walloped the Atlanta Braves 13-0.
- 1984 --- John McEnroe made short work of Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon. Connors managed to win only four games and tied for the second lowest number of games won by a Wimbledon men’s singles finalist since 1922. McEnroe won the event in just 1 hour 20 minutes.
- 1986 --- Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes.
- 1997 --- The Mayo Clinic and the U.S. government warned that the diet-drug combination known as "fen-phen" could cause serious heart and lung damage.
- 1997 --- Torrential rains in the Carpathian Mountains cause serious flooding in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany on this day in 1997. In all, 104 people died as a result of the deluge. In the aftermath, authorities from each country blamed the others for the extent of the disaster. The Rhine and Oder rivers run through central Europe, crossing many national borders. On July 5, heavy rains began falling throughout the region, particularly in the Carpathians. After the storm system had persisted in the area for nearly six days, the rivers could no longer contain the immense volume of
water. Poland and the Czech Republic experienced the worst of the flooding. Nearly 40 percent of their populations were affected by the flood conditions, forcing many to evacuate their homes. Insome towns, the levees held, but in others they failed, with tragic consequences. More than 200 villages in Poland experienced severe flooding. Fifty-six people died in Poland and 46 were killed in the Czech Republic. Approximately $6 billion dollars in damages were caused by the widespread flooding. Private flood insurance is a rarity in Europe, making the events an even greater hardship for many people. In Germany, thousands of people fought the floods by reinforcing dikes and levees. While they were largely successful in early July, continued rain later in the month caused many of the reinforced structures to eventually give way. In the aftermath of the disaster, the countries involved took turns blaming each other for the flood, hurling accusations of poor maintenance of dams, levees and dikes as well as irresponsible implementation of flood-control procedures back and forth. In reality, however, the widespread nature of the disaster made it impossible to single out any one particular cause.
- 2004 --- Enron founder and former chairman Kenneth Lay pleaded innocent to charges related to the energy company's collapse. (He was convicted, but died while the case was on appeal.)
- Birthdays
- Wolfgang Puck
- John D Rockefeller
- Sen John Dingell
- Jerry Vale
- Steve Lawrence
- Sen Phil Gramm
- Kim Darby
- Anjelica Huston
- Anna Quindlen
- Kevin Bacon
- Toby Keith
- Joan Osborne
- Beck
- Samuel Gross
- Ernst Bloch
- Alec Waugh
- Louis Jordan
- Billy Eckstine
- Jean La Fontaine
- Ferdinand Von Zeppelin
- Marty Feldman
- Jai Johnny Johnson
- Margaret Stowe