- 218th Day of 2015 147 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 48 Days
- Sunrise:6:18
- Sunset:8:12
- 13 Hours 54 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:28am (Friday)
- Moon Set:1:26pm
- Phase:
- Full Moon August 29 @ 11:37am
- Full Sturgeon Moon / Full Green Corn Moon
- Full Grain Moon/Full Red 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:4;25am/4:41pm
- Low:10:06am/11:32pm
- Holidays
- National Fresh Breath Day
- National Gossip Day
- National IPA Day
- National root Beer Float Day
- Wiggle Your Toes Day
- Independence Day-Bolivia
- Independence Day-Jamaica
- On This Day
- 1787 --- In Philadelphia, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States. The Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, provided for a loose confederation of U.S. states, which were sovereign in most of their affairs. On paper, Congress–the central authority–had the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war, and regulate currency, but in practice these powers were sharply limited because Congress was given no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops. By 1786, it was apparent that the Union would soon break up if the Articles of Confederation were not amended or replaced. Five states met in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss the issue, and all the states were invited to send delegates to a new constitutional convention to be held in Philadelphia.
- 1879 --- The first Australian rules football game to be played at night took place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The game was to promote the introduction of electricity to the city of Melbourne.
- 1890 --- Hall of fame pitcher Cy Young made his major league debut with the Cleveland Spiders of the National League.
- 1890 --- At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. Electrocution as a humane means of execution was first suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had witnessed an elderly drunkard “painlessly” killed after touching the terminals of an electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. In the prevalent form of execution at the time–death by hanging–the condemned were known to hang by their broken necks for up to 30 minutes before succumbing to asphyxiation.
- 1926 --- Gertrude Ederle became the first American woman to swim the English Channel. She was 19 years old at the time. The swim took her 14 1/2 hours.
- 1930 --- New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater vanished on the streets of Manhattan near Times Square. The dapper 41-year-old’s disappearance launched a massive investigation that captivated the nation, earning Crater the title of “the missingest man in New York.”
- 1945 --- At 8:16 a.m. local time an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
- 1962 --- Jamaica became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth
- 1965 --- President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to blacks.
- 1969 --- The U.S. Army announces that Colonel Robert B. Rheault, Commander of the Fifth Special Forces Group in Vietnam, and seven other Green Berets have been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the summary execution of a Vietnamese national, Thai Khac Chuyen, who had served as an agent for Detachment B-57. Chuyen was reportedly summarily executed for being a double agent who had compromised a secret mission. The case against the Green Berets was ultimately dismissed for reasons of national security when the Central Intelligence Agency refused to release highly classified information about the operations in which Detachment B-57 had been involved. Colonel Rheault subsequently retired from the Army.
- 1996 --- Eddie Vedder videotaped the Ramones placing their hands in cement on the Hollywood Rock Walk prior to a Ramones show at The Palace. The Ramones claimed that it was their last show ever.
- 1996 --- “A Game of Thrones,” an epic fantasy novel by George R.R. Martin, is released. The book was the first in Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, about feuding medieval noble families on an imaginary continent called Westeros.
- 2007 --- The Crandall Canyon Mine in central Utah collapsed, trapping six coal miners. All six miners died, along with three rescuers.
- 2009 --- Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice by a Senate vote of 68-31.
- 2011 --- Violence erupted in London amid anger over the fatal police shooting of a 29-year-old father of four; rioting and looting spread to other parts of the city and other English cities over the next several days, leaving five dead.
- 2012 --- The Mars rover Curiosity landed on the floor of Gale Crater. The Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, on November 26, 2011.
- Birthdays
- Lucille Ball
- Andy Warhol
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Louella Parsons
- Robert Mitchum
- Dutch Schultz
- Isaac Hayes
National Root Beer Float Day-KALW Almanac-August 6, 2015
