- 191st Day of 2012 / 175 Remaining
- 75 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:5:56
- Sunset:8:34
- 14 Hours 38 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:00am(tue)
- Moon Set:12:20pm
- Moon’s Phase: 63 %
- The Next Full Moon
- August 1 @ 8:27pm
- Full Sturgeon Moon
- Full Red Moon
- Full Green Corn Moon
- Full Grain Moon
The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
- Tides
- High:3:20am/4:22pm
- Low:9:34am/10:56pm
- 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
- Bald In-Bald Out
- National Hop-A-Park Day
- Flag Day-Alaska
- National Sugar Cookie Day
- Muffler Appreciation Day
- Martyrdom of the Bab-Baha'i
- Independence Day-Argentina
- Youth Day-Morocco
- Constitution Day-Palau
- HM Hassan Il's Birthday-Morocco
- Independence Day-Argentina
- São Paulo State Civil Holiday-Brazil
- Senior Race Day-Isle of Man
- On This Day In …
- 1776 --- The Declaration of Independence was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops in New York.
- 1789 --- In Versailles, the French National Assembly declared itself the Constituent Assembly and began to prepare a French constitution.
- 1815 --- The first natural gas well in the U.S. was discovered by accident, near Charleston, West Virginia. They had been digging a salt brine well.
- 1846 --- An American naval captain occupies the small settlement of Yerba Buena, a site that will later be renamed San Francisco. Surprisingly, Europeans did not discover the spectacular San Francisco Bay until 1769, although several explorers had sailed by it in earlier centuries. When Spanish explorers finally found the bay in that year, they immediately recognized its strategic value. In 1776, the Spanish built a military post on the tip of the San Francisco peninsula and founded the mission of San Francisco de Asis (the Spanish name for Saint Francis of Assisi) nearby. The most northern outpost of the Spanish, and later Mexican, empire in America, the tiny settlement remained relatively insignificant for several decades. However, the potential of the magnificent harbor did not escape the attention of other nations. In 1835, the British Captain William Richardson established a private settlement on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove, several miles to the east of the Mexican mission. That same year the U.S. government offered to purchase the bay, but the Mexicans declined to sell. In retrospect, the Mexicans should have sold while they still had the chance. A little more than a decade later, a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over western Texas led to war. Shortly after the Mexican War began, U.S. Captain John Montgomery sailed his warship into San Francisco Bay, anchoring just off the settlement of Yerba Buena. On this day in 1846, Montgomery led a party of marines and sailors ashore. They met no resistance and claimed the settlement for the United States, raising the American flag in the central plaza. The following year, the Americans renamed the village San Francisco. When the Mexicans formally ceded California to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe, San Francisco was still a small town with perhaps 900 occupants. That same year, however, gold was discovered at the nearby Sutter's Fort. San Francisco became the gateway for a massive gold rush, and by 1852, the town was home to more than 36,000
- 1868 --- The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- 1872 --- John Blondel of Thomaston, Maine, patented the Doughnut Cutter.
- 1877 --- The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London. Twenty-one amateurs showed up to compete in the Gentlemen's Singles tournament, the only event at the first Wimbledon. The winner was to take home a 25-guinea trophy. Tennis has its origins in a 13th-century French handball game called jeu de paume, or "game of the palm," from which developed an indoor racket-and-ball game called real, or "royal," tennis. Real tennis grew into lawn tennis, which was played outside on grass and enjoyed a surge of popularity in the late 19th century.
- 1878 --- The corncob pipe was patented by Henry Tibbe.
- 1922 --- Johnny Weissmuller became the first to swim the 100-meters freestyle in less than a minute. The future Tarzan set the pace at an event in Alameda, CA.
- 1948 --- 42-year-old Leroy "Satchel" Paige pitches two innings for the Cleveland Indians in his debut with the newly--and barely--integrated American League. The game came 21 years after the great pitcher’s first Negro League appearance. Leroy Page was born on July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Alabama. Page’s family changed the spelling of their name to Paige to differentiate themselves from John Page, Leroy’s absent and abusive father. "Satchel" got his nickname as a boy while working as a luggage carrier at the Mobile train station. When he was 12, his constant truancy coupled with a shoplifting incident got him sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama. It turned out to be a lucky break, as it was there that Paige learned to pitch. After leaving the school, he turned pro. From 1927 to 1948 Satchel Paige was the baseball equivalent of a hired gun: He pitched for any team in the United States or abroad that could afford him. He was the highest paid pitcher of his time, and he wowed crowds with the speed of his fastball, his trick pitches and his considerable bravado. Just for fun, Paige would sometimes call in his outfield and then strike out the side. From 1939 to 1942, the Kansas City Monarchs paid up for his services and were justly rewarded: Paige led the team to four consecutive Negro American League pennants from 1939 to 1942. In the 1942 Negro League World Series, Satchel won three games in a four-game sweep of the Homestead Grays, led by famed slugger Josh Gibson. Paige’s contract was bought by Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians on July 7, 1948, his 42nd birthday. He made his major league debut two days later, entering in the fifth inning against the St. Louis Browns with the Indians trailing 4-1. He gave up two singles in two innings, striking one man out and inducing one batter to hit into a double play. The Indians lost the game 5-3 in spite of Paige’s contribution. That year Satchel Paige went 6-1 with a solid 2.48 ERA for the World Champion Cleveland Indians. Paige was named to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Team for the American League in 1952 and 1953, when he was 46 and 47 years old respectively. In 1965, Paige pitched for the Kansas City Athletics, which made him, at 59 years, 2 months and 18 days, the oldest pitcher ever to play a game in the major leagues. Arguably the greatest pitcher of his era, Paige was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.
- 1955 --- Bill Haley and His Comets hit #1 with "Rock Around the Clock," the first #1 rock 'n' roll song.
- 1962 --- "This here ain't no protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write no protest songs." That was how Bob Dylan introduced one of the most eloquent protest songs ever written when he first performed it publicly. It was the spring of his first full year in New York City, and he was onstage at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, talking about a song he claims to have written in just 10 minutes: "Blowin' In The Wind." A few weeks later, on this day in 1962, Dylan walked into a studio and recorded the song that would make him a star. Dylan's recording of "Blowin' In The Wind" would first be released nearly a full year later, on his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
- 1968 --- The first All-Star baseball game to be played indoors took place at the Astrodome in Houston, TX. The game produced only eight hits over nine innings and no runs were batted in. Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants scored the only run on a single in the first inning. He moved to second on an errant pick-off play, went to third base on a wild pitch and scored on a double play. The National League beat the American League 1-0
- 1995 --- The Grateful Dead played their last concert, at Soldier Field in Chicago, after a 30-year run, much of it spent on the road. (Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died the following month.)
- 2002 --- To the boos of disappointed fans, the All-Star game in Milwaukee finished in a 7-7 tie after 11 innings when both teams ran out of pitchers.
- 2005 --- Danny Way, a daredevil skateboarder, rolled down a large ramp and jumped across the Great Wall of China. He was the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid.
- Birthdays
- Tom Hanks
- Kelly McGillis
- Jimmy Smits
- Courtney Love
- Richard Roundtree
- Brian Dennehy
- Fred Savage
- O J Simpson
- Chris Cooper
- Donald Rumsfeld
- Dean Koontz
- Jack White
- Elias Howe
- Ottorino Respighi
- Dorothy Thompson
- Edward Heath (British PM 1970-74)
- Nicola Tesla
- Clara Bow