- 156th Day of 2012 / 210 Remaining
- 16 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:5:48
- Sunset:8:29
- 14 Hours 31 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:9:03pm
- Moon Set:6:01am
- Moon’s Phase: 100 %
- The Next Full Moon
- June 4 @ 4:11am
- Full Strawberry Moon
- Full Rose Moon
- Full Milk Moon
This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June, so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!
- Tides
- High:12:25pm/11:11pm
- Low:5:25am/5:10pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:15.67
- Last Year:28.51
- Normal To Date:23.66
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Audacity To Hope Day
- Do-Dah Parade
- National Trails Day
- Cheese Day
- National Frozen Yogurt Day
- National Hug Your Cat Day
- UN International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression
- Flag Day-Finland
- Emancipation Day-Tonga
- Revolution Day-Ghana
- On This Day In …
- 1784 --- Although the first flight of any significant length, in any object, was achieved by a man on November 21, 1783; a woman did it higher, and longer. Elisabeth Thible of Lyon, France was the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon. Her flight lasted 45 minutes, that’s 20 minutes longer than the flying trip her male counterparts (Dr. Pilâtre de Rozier and his faithful courtier, the Marquis d’Arlandes) took some 6 months earlier. Mme Thible's balloon, named Le Gustave (after Sweden’s King Gustav III, who viewed the ascent), rose 8,500 feet (2,591 meters). The guys only made it to 2,953 feet (900 meters). Elisabeth (in France) -- or Elizabeth (in England and the U.S.) or Marie (in those places where she has been confused with a man named Marie) -- was guided in her quest by pilot (and artist) Monsieur Fleurant, who told reporters that the opera singer “sang like a bird” while she drifted across Lyon.
- 1892 --- The Sierra Club was incorporated in San Francisco.
- 1896 --- Henry Ford took his first car called a "quadricycle," for a night-time drive in Detroit. The test was delayed briefly because the car was wider than the door of the shed in which it was built.
- 1912 --- Massachusetts became the first state to adopt a minimum wage law.
- 1917 --- Laura E. Richards and Maude H. Elliott, along with their assistant, Florence Hall, received the first Pulitzer Prize for a biography. The title of their work was Julia Ward Howe. With Americans of Past and Present Days, by Jean Jules Jusserand, received the first prize for history; while Herbert B. Swope picked up the first reporter’s Pulitzer. He wrote for the New York World. Altogether, these were the very first Pulitzer Prizes ever awarded.
- 1919 --- The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The women's suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion. During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.
- 1936 --- Sylvan Goldman ran a successful chain of grocery stores, where customers could carry hand baskets while they shopped. In 1936, when he was a major owner of the Piggly-Wiggly supermarket chain, he invented the shopping cart. He got the idea from a wooden folding chair. He designed the cart by putting a basket on the seat, another below and wheels on the legs. He and a mechanic, Fred Young put one together with a metal frame, and wire baskets. The frames could be folded up and the baskets stacked, which took up less storage room. Customers were reluctant to use this new contraption, so Goldman hired fake shoppers to wheel the carts around pretending to shop so people could see how useful the cart could be! They became a hit, and he formed a new company to manufacture the carts. It is hard to imagine a supermarket or discount store without shopping carts today.
- 1946 --- Juan Peron became Argentina's president.
- 1967 --- Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, and Mike Nesmith won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for their TV show, "The Monkees."
- 1972 --- Angela Davis, a former philosophy professor at the University of California, and self-proclaimed communist, is acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California. In October 1970, Davis was arrested in New York City in connection with a shootout that occurred on August 7 in a San Rafael, California, courtroom. She was accused of supplying weapons to Jonathan Jackson, who burst into the courtroom in a bid to free inmates on trial there and take hostages whom he hoped to exchange for his brother George, a black radical imprisoned at San Quentin Prison. In the subsequent shoot-out with police, Jonathan Jackson was killed along with Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and two inmates. Davis, who had championed the cause of black prisoners and was friends with George Jackson, was indicted in the crime but went into hiding. One of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted criminals, she was apprehended only two months later. Her trial began in March 1972 and drew international attention because of the weakness of the prosecution's case and obvious political nature of the proceedings. In June 1972, she was acquitted of all charges. After leaving the criminal justice system, she returned to teaching and writing and in 1980 was the vice-presidential candidate of the U.S. Communist Party. In 1991, she became a professor in the field of the history of consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Four years later, she was appointed a presidential chair at the university amid controversy that stemmed from her communist and black militant background. Her writings include Angela Davis: An Autobiography and Women, Race, and Class. Though no longer a member of the Communist Party, Davis continues to be active in politics, most notably speaking out against the death penalty.
- 1974 --- Cleveland Indians public relations experts thought that ‘Ten Cent Beer Night’ would bring out the fans and otherwise help the slumping Indians -- a team no one cared to watch. The promotion was a disaster. Oh, sure, there was plenty of dime brew sold at Municipal Stadium that night. But there were soon plenty of drunken, surly, unruly fans, too, which made it possible for the Indians to forfeit the ball game to the Texas Rangers. Municipal Stadium could seat some 60,000 fans and only 22,000 showed up for the frolic and merriment. Dozens of fans were arrested after a naked fan ran onto the field and picked a fight with Ranger Jeff Boroughs. The Indians forfeited the game and most teams discontinued beer night promotions after that.
- 1989 --- Chinese troops storm through Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, killing and arresting thousands of pro-democracy protesters. The brutal Chinese government assault on the protesters shocked the West and brought denunciations and sanctions from the United States. In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy and call for the resignations of Chinese Communist Party leaders deemed too repressive. For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily vigils, and marched and chanted. Western reporters captured much of the drama for television and newspaper audiences in the United States and Europe. On June 4, 1989, however, Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. Turmoil ensued, as tens of thousands of the young students tried to escape the rampaging Chinese forces. Other protesters fought back, stoning the attacking troops and overturning and setting fire to military vehicles. Reporters and Western diplomats on the scene estimated that at least 300, and perhaps thousands, of the protesters had been killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested. The savagery of the Chinese government's attack shocked both its allies and Cold War enemies. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that he was saddened by the events in China. He said he hoped that the government would adopt his own domestic reform program and begin to democratize the Chinese political system. In the United States, editorialists and members of Congress denounced the Tiananmen Square massacre and pressed for President George Bush to punish the Chinese government. A little more than three weeks later, the U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against the People's Republic of China in response to the brutal violation of human rights.
- 2003 --- Martha Stewart was indicted on federal charges of using illegal insider stock information and obstructing an investigation. She immediately resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of her company.
- 2011 --- Li Na won the French Open's women's championship, becoming the first Chinese tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title.
- Birthdays
- Michelle Phillips
- Rosalind Russell
- Robert Merrill
- Dennis Weaver
- Dr. Ruth Westheimer
- Freddy Fender
- Russell Brand
- Bruce Dern
- Angelina Jolie
- King George III