- 203rd Day of 2015 162 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 63 Days
- Sunrise:6:05
- Sunset:8:26
- 14 Hours 21 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:20pm
- Moon Set:12:04am (Thursday)
- Phase:37%
- 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:3:13am/4:21pm
- Low:9:34am/10:54pm
- Holidays
- National Hammock Day
- Lion’s Share Day
- National Penuche Fudge Day
- National Rat Catcher’s Day
- Pi Approximation Day
- Spoonerism Day
- Summer Leisure Day
- Liberation Day-Gambia
- Tree Planting Day-Central African Republic
- People’s Uprising Day-Slovenia
- On This Day
- 1376 --- According to legend, the Pied Piper got rid of all the rats in the German town of Hamelin. When the townspeople refused to pay, the Pied Piper led all the towns children away. This is the date given by Richard Rowland Verstegan in 1605 - the earliest version in English. In 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' (1621) Robert Burton gives the date as June 20, 1484. Other dates range back to 1284 AD.
- 1598 --- William Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice is entered on the Stationers’ Register. By decree of Queen Elizabeth, the Stationers’ Register licensed printed works, giving the Crown tight control over all published material. Although its entry on the register licensed the printing of The Merchant of Venice, its first version would not be published for another two years.
- 1796 --- The city of Cleveland, Ohio was founded by General Moses Cleveland of the Connecticut Land Company.
- 1864 --- Confederate General John Bell Hood continues to try to drive General William T. Sherman from the outskirts of Atlanta when he attacks the Yankees on Bald Hill. The attack failed, and Sherman tightened his hold on Atlanta. Confederate President Jefferson Davis had appointed Hood commander of the Army of Tennessee just four days before the engagement at Atlanta. Davis had been frustrated with the defensive campaign of the previous commander, Joseph Johnston, so he appointed Hood to drive Sherman back North. Hood attacked Peachtree Creek on July 20, but he could not break the Federals.
- 1916 --- In San Francisco, a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade on Market Street kills 10 people and wounds 40. The bomb was hidden in a suitcase. The parade was organized by the city’s Chamber of Commerce in support of America’s possible entrance into World War I. San Francisco was suffering through severe labor strife at the time, and many suspected that anti-war labor radicals were responsible for the terrorist attack. Labor leader Tom Mooney, his wife Rena, his assistant Warren K. Billings, and two others were soon charged by District Attorney Charles Fickert with the bombing. The case attracted international interest because all evidence, with the exception of a handful of questionable witness accounts, seemed to point unquestionably to their innocence. Even after confessions of perjured testimony were made in the courtroom, the trial continued, and in 1917 Mooney and Billings were convicted of first-degree murder, with Billings sentenced to life imprisonment and Mooney sentenced to hang. The other three defendants were acquitted. Responding to international outrage at the conviction, President Woodrow Wilson set up a “mediation commission” to investigate the case, and no clear evidence of their guilt was found. In 1918, Mooney’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
- 1933 --- American aviator Wiley Post returns to Floyd Bennett Field in New York, having flown solo around the world in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He was the first aviator to accomplish the feat. Post, instantly recognizable by the patch he wore over one eye, began the journey on July 15, flying nonstop to Berlin. After a brief rest, he flew on to the Soviet Union, where he made several stops before returning to North America, with stops in Alaska, Canada, and finally a triumphant landing at his starting point in New York.
- 1933 --- The levee holding back the flooding Mississippi River at Kaskaskia, Illinois, ruptures, forcing the town’s people to flee on barges. The Mississippi flood of 1933 caused $18 billion in damages and killed 52 people. From June through August 1933, the midwestern United States received far more rainfall than normal, particularly in the northern region, where water feeds into both the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The unusually heavy rainfall led to severe flooding, particularly along the Illinois and Missouri shores. In all, more than 1,000 levees burst in late July.
- 1934 --- Outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, notorious criminal John Dillinger–America’s “Public Enemy No. 1″–is killed in a hail of bullets fired by federal agents. In a fiery bank-robbing career that lasted just over a year, Dillinger and his associates robbed 11 banks for more than $300,000, broke jail and narrowly escaped capture multiple times, and killed seven police officers and three federal agents.
- 1952 --- Frank L. Zybach of Strasburg, Colorado received U.S. patent No. 2,604,359 for a "Self-Propelled Sprinkling Irrigating Apparatus." This is the now familiar center-pivoting system that waters large circles of crops.
- 1977 --- A suburban family man with an office job, Declan Patrick McManus was somewhat removed from the revolution being staged in late-night clubs in 1977 London by punk-rock pioneers like The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. “All these bands were playing in the middle of the night,” he later recounted “so I couldn’t go. I was married with a son.” Unlike most of the other wage-earners he rode the tube with, however, Declan McManus was about to become a star himself, though not under his given name. After three years living in London and trying to balance his day job with his musical ambitions, the man now known as Elvis Costello finally made his breakthrough with the release of his debut album, “My Aim Is True”.
- 2003 --- U.S. Army Private Jessica Lynch, a prisoner-of-war who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital, receives a hero’s welcome when she returns to her hometown of Palestine, West Virginia. The story of the 19-year-old supply clerk, who was captured by Iraqi forces in March 2003, gripped America; however, it was later revealed that some details of Lynch’s dramatic capture and rescue might have been exaggerated.
- 2003 --- Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s sons, Qusay and Uday Hussein, are killed after a three-hour firefight with U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. It is widely believed that the two men were even more cruel and ruthless than their notorious father, and their death was celebrated among many Iraqis. Uday and Qusay were 39 and 37 years old, respectively, when they died. Both are said to have amassed considerable fortunes through their participation in illegal oil smuggling.
- 2004 --- The September 11 commission's final report was released. The 575-page report concluded that hijackers exploited "deep institutional failings within our government." The report was released to White House officials the day before.
- 2005 --- March of the Penguins, a French-made documentary about emperor penguins in Antarctica, opens in theaters across the United States. March of the Penguinswent on to win numerous awards, including an Oscar, and became one of the highest-grossing documentaries in movie history.
- Birthdays
- Selena Gomez
- Emma Lazarus
- Edward Hopper
- Gustav hertz
- Amy Vanderbilt
- Rose Kennedy
- Bob Dole
- Oscar De La Renta
- Louise Fletcher
- Terence Stamp
- Alex Trebek
- George Clinton
- Danny Glover
- Albert Brooks
- Willem Dafoe
- Emily Saliers
- David Spade
Rat Catcher's Day-KALW Almanac-July 22, 2015
