- 204th Day of 2015 161 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 62 Days
- Sunrise:6:06
- Sunset:8:25
- 14 Hours 19 Minutes
- Moon Rise:1:15pm
- Moon Set:12:04am
- Phase:First Quarter
- Full Moon July 1 @ 7:22pm and July 31 @ 3:45pm
- 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:4:18am/5:02pm
- Low:10:18am/11:58pm
- Holidays
- National Hot Dog Day
- Gorgeous Grandma Day
- National Vanilla Ice Cream Day
- National Refreshment Day
- International Yada Yada Yada Day
- Martyr’s Day-Armenia
- National Children’s Day-Indonesia
- Revolution Day-Egypt
- On This Day
- 1715 --- The first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction at Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts.
- 1829 --- William Burt patented the typographer, which was the first typewriter.
- 1878 --- Black Bart robs a Wells Fargo stagecoach in California. Wearing a flour sack over his head, the armed robber stole the small safe box with less than $400 and a passenger’s diamond ring and watch. When the empty box was recovered, a taunting poem signed “Black Bart” was found inside:
Here I lay me down to sleep to wait the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat And everlasting sorrow,
Yet come what will, I’ll try it once, My conditions can’t be worse,
And if there’s money in that box, ’Tis money in my purse.
This wasn’t the first time that Black Bart had robbed a stagecoach and left a poem for the police; however, it was the last time he got away with it. His next stagecoach robbery secured a lot more cash, $4,800. At yet another robbery, on November 3, 1888, though, he left behind a handkerchief at the scene.Through a laundry mark, Pinkerton detectives traced the handkerchief back to Charles Bolton, an elderly man in San Francisco.Bolton later confessed to being Black Bart but bitterly disputed his reputation as an outlaw. “I am a gentleman,” he told detectives with great dignity.
- 1904 --- The ice cream cone was invented by Charles E. Menches during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.
- 1914 --- Nearly one month after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a young Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, ambassador of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Serbia, delivers an ultimatum to the Serbian foreign ministry. Acting with the full support of its allies in Berlin, Austria-Hungary had determined in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination to pursue a hard-line policy towards Serbia. Their plan, developed in coordination with the German foreign office, was to force a military conflict that would, Vienna hoped, end quickly and decisively with a crushing Austrian victory before the rest of Europe—namely, Serbia’s powerful ally, Russia—had time to react.
- 1952 --- In Egypt, the Society of Free Officers seizes control of the government in a military coup d’etat staged by Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser’s Free Officers. King Farouk, whose rule had been criticized for its corruption and failures in the first Arab-Israeli war, was forced to abdicate and relinquish power to General Muhammad Naguib, the figurehead leader of the coup.
- 1954 --- A law was passed that stated "The Secretary of the Navy is authorized to repair, equip, and restore the United States Ship Constitution, as far as may be practicable, to her original appearance, but not for active service, and thereafter to maintain the United States Ship Constitution at Boston, Massachusetts."
- 1962 --- Avoiding a Cold War showdown, the United States and the Soviet Union sign an agreement guaranteeing a free and neutral Laos. While the agreement ended the “official” roles of both nations in the Laotian civil war, covert assistance from both Russia and the United States continued to exacerbate the conflict in Laos for the next decade.
- 1964 --- Leroy and Forrest Raffel open the first Arby's Roast Beef Restaurant in Boardman, Ohio, serving only roast beef sandwiches, potato chips and a beverage. The name stands for R.B. the initials of Raffel Brothers.
- 1967 --- One of the worst riots in U.S. history breaks out on 12th Street in the heart of Detroit’s predominantly African-American inner city. By the time it was quelled four days later by 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned. A report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, appointed by President Johnson, identified more than 150 riots or major disorders between 1965 and 1968. In 1967 alone, 83 people were killed and 1,800 were injured–the majority of them African Americans–and property valued at more than $100 million was damaged, looted, or destroyed.
- 1980 --- Grateful Dead pianist, Keith Godchaux died of injuries that he sustained in a car accident in Marin County, CA.
- 1982 --- The International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted to ban commercial whaling beginning with the 1985/86 season.
- 1982 --- Vic Morrow and two child actors, Renee Shinn Chen and Myca Dinh Le, are killed in an accident involving a helicopter during filming on the California set ofTwilight Zone: The Movie. Morrow, age 53, and the children, ages six and seven, were shooting a Vietnam War battle scene in which they were supposed to be running from a pursuing helicopter. Special-effects explosions on the set caused the pilot of the low-flying craft to lose control and crash into the three victims. The accident took place on the film’s last scheduled day of shooting.
- 1984 --- 21-year-old Vanessa Williams gives up her Miss America title, the first resignation in the pageant’s history, after Penthouse magazine announces plans to publish nude photos of the beauty queen in its September issue. Williams originally made history on September 17, 1983, when she became the first black woman to win the Miss America crown. Miss New Jersey, Suzette Charles, the first runner-up and also an African American, assumed Williams’ tiara for the two months that remained of her reign.
- 1987 --- Ray Dandridge, Catfish Hunter and Billy Williams were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
- 1996 --- At the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team wins its first-ever team gold. The 1996 U.S. women’s team, nicknamed the “Mag 7″ or “magnificent seven,” was made up of seven immensely talented teenaged girls: Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Jaycie Phelps and Kerri Strug. The team entered the Summer Olympics with the expectations of an entire country heaped on their young shoulders. They were considered America’s best shot ever at an Olympic team gold, something no American women’s gymnastics team had ever won.
- 2000 --- Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to complete a career Grand Slam when he won the British Open at age 24.
- 2010 --- The largest recorded hailstone ever recovered in the U.S. fell during a severe thunderstorm in Vivian, South Dakota. Verified by the National Climatic Extremes Committee, it weighed 1 pound, 15 ounces, and measured 8 inches in diameter with a circumference of 18.62 inches.
- Birthdays
- Haile Selassie
- Phillip Seymour Hoffman
- Arthur Treacher
- Edie McClurgh
- Raymond Chandler
- Alison Krauss
- Marlon Wayans
- Omar Epps
- Vincent Sardi
- Gloria De Haven
- Don Drysdale
- Don Imus
- Nicholas Cage
- Slash (Saul Hudson)
