- 215th Day of 2015 150 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 51 Days
- Sunrise:6:15
- Sunset:8:16
- 14 Hours 1 Minute
- Moon Rise:10:30pm
- Moon Set:10:03am
- Phase:85%
- 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:1:08am/2:16pm
- Low:7:34am/8:05pm
- Holidays
- Airplane Crop Duster Day
- Assistance Dog Day
- Grab Some Nuts Day
- National Watermelon Day
- Fiesta de la Colmena-Spain
- Independence Day-Niger
- Martyr’s Day-Guinea
- Motupe-Peru
- National Flag Day-Venezuela
- On This Day
- 1492 --- From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets sail in command of three ships—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina—on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and “Indian” captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
- 1778 --- The opera house La Scala opened in Milan, Italy, with a performance of Antonio Salieri's "Europa Riconosciuta."
- 1861 --- The last entry of the serialized novel “Great Expectations” is published. The book had been serialized in Dickens’ literary circular, All the Year Round. The novel tells the story of young Pip, a poor orphan who comes to believe he will inherit a fortune.
- 1914 --- Two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declares war on France, moving ahead with a long-held strategy, conceived by the former chief of staff of the German army, Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. Hours later, France makes its own declaration of war against Germany, readying its troops to move into the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which it had forfeited to Germany in the settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.
- 1916 --- Sir Roger David Casement, an Irish-born diplomat who in 1911 was knighted by King George V, is executed for his role in Ireland’s Easter Rising. Casement was an Irish Protestant who served as a British diplomat during the early part of the 20th century. He won international acclaim after exposing the illegal practice of slavery in the Congo and parts of South America. Despite his Ulster Protestant roots, he became an ardent supporter of the Irish independence movement and after the outbreak of World War I traveled to the United States and then to Germany to secure aid for an Irish uprising against the British.
- 1923 --- Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, hours after the death of President Warren G. Harding.
- 1948 --- In hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Whittaker Chambers accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. The accusation set into motion a series of events that eventually resulted in the trial and conviction of Hiss for perjury.
- 1949 --- The National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed. The league was formed by the merger between the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
- 1958 --- The U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplishes the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The world’s first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world. It then steamed on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe.
- 1963 --- The Beatles made their final appearance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. They had performed nearly 300 shows at the club since 1961.
- 1965 --- CBS-TV news shows pictures of men from the First Battalion, Ninth Marines setting fire to huts in the village of Cam Na, six miles west of Da Nang, despite reports that the Viet Cong had already fled the area. The film report sparked indignation and condemnation of the U.S. policy in Vietnam both at home and overseas. At the same time, the Department of Defense announced that it was increasing the monthly draft call from 17,000 in August to 27,400 in September and 36,000 in October. It also announced that the Navy would require 4,600 draftees, the first such action since 1956.
- 1977 --- “The Spy Who Loved Me,” starring Roger Moore as the suave superspy James Bond, known for his love of fast cars and dangerous women, is released in theaters across America. The film features one of the most memorable Bond cars of all time–a sleek, powerful Lotus Esprit sports car that does double duty as a submarine.
- 1988 --- Soviet authorities free Mathias Rust, the daring young West German pilot who landed a rented Cessna on Moscow’s Red Square in 1987. Rust was serving a four-year sentence at a labor camp when the Soviets approved his extradition as a goodwill gesture to the West. On May 28, 1987, Rust, a 19-year-old with less than 40 hours of flying time, flew the light plane from Helsinki, Finland, to Red Square, the site of the Kremlin, Lenin’s Tomb, and frequent Soviet patriotic demonstrations. He had not been detected once during the 500-mile flight. Rust said his flight was in the interest of world peace, and he signed autographs in Red Square until he was arrested. His seemingly effortless penetration of Soviet air space raised serious questions about the USSR’s ability to defend itself from air attack.
- 2004 --- NASA launched the spacecraft Messenger. The 6 1/2 year journey was planned to arrive at the planet Mercury in March 2011. On April 30, 2015, Messenger crashed into the surface of Mercury after sending back more than 270,000 pictures.
- Birthdays
- Elisha Otis
- Martha Stewart
- John T Scopes
- Dolores Del Rio
- PD James
- Tony Bennett
- Martin Sheen
- John Landis
- Tom Brady
National Watermelon Day-KALW Almanac-August 3, 2015
