- 236th Day of 2015 129 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 30 Days
- Sunrise:6:33
- Sunset:7:50
- 13 Hours 17 Minutes
- Moon Rise:3:44pm
- Moon Set:1:16am
- Phase:70%
- 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:8:02am/6:48pm
- Low:1:03am/12:44pm
- Holidays
- National Waffle Day
- Can Opener Day
- National Knife Day
- National Peach Pie Day
- Shooting Star Day
- Vesuvius Day
- Weather Complaint Day
- International Strange Music Day
- Constitution Day-Georgia
- Independence Day-Ukraine
- Flag Day-Kazakhstan
- Flag Day-Liberia
- On This Day
- 0079 --- After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death. Much of what we know about the eruption comes from an account by Pliny the Younger, who was staying west along the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded. In two letters to the historian Tacitus, he told of how “people covered their heads with pillows, the only defense against a shower of stones,” and of how “a dark and horrible cloud charged with combustible matter suddenly broke and set forth. Some bewailed their own fate. Others prayed to die.” Pliny, only 17 at the time, escaped the catastrophe and later became a noted Roman writer and administrator. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was less lucky. Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist, at the time of the eruption was the commander of the Roman fleet in the Bay of Naples. After Vesuvius exploded, he took his boats across the bay to Stabiae, to investigate the eruption and reassure terrified citizens. After going ashore, he was overcome by toxic gas and died.
- 0410 --- The Visigoths overran Rome. This event symbolized the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
- 1572 --- King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.
- 1814 --- During the War of 1812, British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and marched unopposed into Washington, D.C. Most congressmen and officials fled the nation’s capital as soon as word came of the American defeat, but President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, escaped just before the invaders arrived. Earlier in the day, President Madison had been present at the Battle of Bladensburg and had at one point actually taken command of one of the few remaining American batteries, thus becoming the first and only president to exercise in actual battle his authority as commander in chief.
- 1853 --- The month and day are uncertain, but the year is correct. Native American Chef George Crum invented potato chips at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York.
- 1869 --- Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York received the first U.S. patent for a stovetop Waffle Iron (U.S. patent No. 94,093).
- 1932 --- Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours.
- 1959 --- Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. senator while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. representative.
- 1992 --- Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida, causing record damage; 55 deaths in Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas were blamed on the storm.
- 1998 --- A donation of 24 beads was made, from three parties, to the Indian Museum of North America at the Crazy Horse Memorial. The beads are said to be those that were used in 1626 to buy Manhattan from the Indians.
- 2006 --- The planet Pluto was reclassified as a "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Pluto's status was changed due to the IAU's new rules for an object qualifying as a planet. Pluto met two of the three rules because it orbits the sun and is large enough to assume a nearly round shape. However, since Pluto has an oblong orbit and overlaps the orbit of Neptune it disqualified Pluto as a planet.
- Birthdays
- Durwood Kirby
- Yassar Arafat
- Mason Williams
- John Cipollina
- Anne Archer
- Cal Ripken Jr.
- Marlee Matlin
- Dave Chapelle
- Michelle Fratus
- Kenny Baker
- A.S. Byatt
National Waffle Day-KALW Almanac-8/24/2015
