- 230th Day of 2015 135 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 36 Days
- Sunrise:6:28
- Sunset:7:58
- 13 Hours 30 Minutes
- Moon Rise:10:12am
- Moon Set:1);06pm
- Phase:15%
- 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:1:18am/2:10pm
- Low:7:38am/8:12pm
- Holidays
- National Ice Cream Pie Day
- Birth Control Pills Day
- Helium Discovery Day
- Mail Order Catalog Day
- National Bad Poetry Day
- National Soft Ice Cream Day
- Serendipity Day
- Annual Pilgrimage-Montserrat
- On This Day
- 1587 --- Virginia Dare became the first child to be born on American soil of English parents. The colony that is now Roanoke Island, NC, mysteriously vanished.
- 1590 --- John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returns from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men found no trace of the 100 or so colonists he left behind, and there was no sign of violence. Among the missing were Ellinor Dare, White’s daughter; and Virginia Dare, White’s granddaughter and the first English child born in America. August 18 was to have been Virginia’s third birthday. The only clue to their mysterious disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into the palisade that had been built around the settlement. White took the letters to mean that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, some 50 miles away, but a later search of the island found none of the settlers.
- 1795 --- President George Washington signs the Jay (or “Jay’s”) Treaty with Great Britain. This treaty, known officially as the “Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty; and The United States of America” attempted to diffuse the tensions between England and the United States that had risen to renewed heights since the end of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. government objected to English military posts along America’s northern and western borders and Britain’s violation of American neutrality in 1794 when the Royal Navy seized American ships in the West Indies during England’s war with France. The treaty, written and negotiated by Supreme Court Chief Justice (and Washington appointee) John Jay, was signed by Britain’s King George III on November 19, 1794 in London.
- 1872 --- Montgomery Ward published the first mail order catalog. It consisted of one page and listed more than 150 items for sale.
- 1920 --- The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is ratified by Tennessee, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
- 1931 --- The Yangtze River in China peaks during a horrible flood that kills 3.7 million people directly and indirectly over the next several months. This was perhaps the worst natural disaster of the 20th century. The Yangtze River runs through southern China, one of the most populated areas on Earth. The region’s people, most of whom lived at subsistence level, depended on the river for water for their personal and farming needs. In April, the river-basin area received far-above-average rainfall. When torrential rains came again in July, the stage was set for disaster. The Yangtze flooded over a 500-square-mile area. The rising waters drove 500,000 people from their homes by the beginning of August
- 1958 -- Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita is published in the U.S. The novel, about a man’s obsession with a 12-year-old girl, had been rejected by four publishers before G.P. Putnam’s Sons accepted it. The novel became a bestseller that allowed Nabokov to retire from his career as college professor.
- 1962 --- Ringo Starr made his first appearance as a Beatle.
- 1963 --- James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, graduates with a degree in political science. His enrollment in the university a year earlier was met with deadly riots, and he subsequently attended class under heavily armed guard.
- 1971 --- Australia and New Zealand announce the end of the year as the deadline for withdrawal of their respective contingents from Vietnam. The Australians had 6,000 men in South Vietnam and the New Zealanders numbered 264. Both nations agreed to leave behind small training contingents. Australian Prime Minister William McMahon proclaimed that the South Vietnamese forces were now able to assume Australia’s role in Phuoc Tuy province, southeast of Saigon
- 1977 --- Funeral services for Elvis Presley were held at Graceland.
- 1983 --- Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Texas coast, leaving 22 dead and causing more than a billion dollars in damage.
- 1991 --- Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest during a coup by high-ranking members of his own government, military and police forces. The August 1991 coup was carried out by the hard-line elements within Gorbachev’s own administration, as well as the heads of the Soviet army and the KGB, or secret police. Detained at his vacation villa in the Crimea, he was placed under house arrest and pressured to give his resignation, which he refused to do. Claiming Gorbachev was ill, the coup leaders, headed by former vice president Gennady Yanayev, declared a state of emergency and attempted to take control of the government. Then Boris Yeltsin and his backers from the Russian parliament then stepped in, calling on the Russian people to strike and protest the coup. When soldiers tried to arrest Yeltsin, they found the way to the parliamentary building blocked by armed and unarmed civilians. Yeltsin himself climbed aboard a tank and spoke through a megaphone, urging the troops not to turn against the people and condemning the coup as a “new reign of terror.” The soldiers backed off, some of them choosing to join the resistance. After thousands took the streets to demonstrate, the coup collapsed after only three days.
- 2010 --- The USDA expanded a recall of eggs from two Iowa producers to 380 million eggs nationwide after they were linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. (A much smaller initial recall was issued on August 13). The massive recall was expanded to more than half-billion eggs by August 20. More than 1,000 people had been sickened.
- Birthdays
- Roberto Clemente
- Meriwether Lewis
- Max Factor
- Rosalynn Carter
- Roman Polanski
- Rafer Johnson
- Robert Redford
- Gail Fisher
- Martin Mull
- Madeline Stowe
- Edward Norton
- Malcolm-Jamal Warner
- Virginia Dare
National Soft Ice Cream Day-KALW Almanac-8/18/2015
