- 192nd Day of 2013 / 173 Remaining
- 73 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:5:57
- Sunset:8:32
- 14 Hours 35 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:9:16am
- Moon Set:10:22pm
- Moon’s Phase:11 %
- The Next Full Moon
- July 22 @ 11:16am
- Full Buck Moon
- 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:12:38am/2:24pm
- Low:7:26am/7:45pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.0
- This Year:0.0
- Last Year:0.0
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Blueberry Muffin Day
- Bowdler's Day
- International Town Criers Day
- World Population Day
- La Fete de Magdalene-France
- Revolution Day-Mongolia
- On This Day In …
- 1533 --- Henry VIII, who divorced his wife and became head of the church of England, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Clement VII.
- 1793 --- The first issue of the 'Farmer's Almanac' was published by Robert Bailey Thomas. (Now called 'Old Farmer's Almanac'). [Some sources list October 13].
- 1798 --- The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by "An Act for Establishing a Marine Corps" passed by the U.S. Congress. The act also created the U.S. Marine Band. The Marines were first commissioned by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775.
- 1804 --- Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton to death in their famous duel. Samuel Broadhurst, a relative of Burr’s, had tried to negotiate a settlement between the two, but Burr offered the challenge and the duel ensued. Affairs of honor were commonplace
in America at the time, and the complex rules governing them usually led to an honorable resolution before any actual firing of weapons. In fact, the outspoken Hamilton had been involved in several affairs of honor in his life, and he had resolved most of them peaceably. No such recourse was found with Burr, however, and on July 11, 1804, the enemies met at 7 a.m. at the dueling grounds near Weehawken, New Jersey. It was the same spot where Hamilton's son had died defending his father's honor two years before. There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to Hamilton's "second"--his assistant and witness in the duel--Hamilton decided the duel was morally wrong and deliberately fired into the air. Burr's second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed. What happened next is agreed upon: Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach, and the bullet lodged next to his spine. Hamilton was taken back to New York, and he died the next afternoon.
- 1914 --- In his major league debut, Babe Ruth pitches seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 4-3. George Herman Ruth was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father worked as a saloon keeper on the waterfront. He was the first of eight children, but only he and a sister survived infancy. The young George, known as "Gig" (pronounced jij) to his family, was a magnet for trouble from an early age. At seven, his truancy from school led his parents to declare him incorrigible, and he was sent to an orphanage, St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. Ruth lived there until he was 19 in 1914, when he was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles.That same summer, Ruth was sold to the
Boston Red Sox. His teammates called him "Babe" for his naiveté, but his talent was already maturing. In his debut game against the Indians, the 19-year-old Ruth gave up just five hits over the first six innings. In the seventh, the Indians managed two runs on three singles and a sacrifice and Ruth was relieved. His hitting prowess, however, was not on display that first night--he went 0 for 2 at the plate.
- 1916 --- On this day in 1916, in a ceremony at the White House, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act. The law established a national policy of federal aid for highways. From the mid-19th century, the building and maintenance of roads had been seen as a state and local responsibility. As a result, America's roads were generally in poor condition, especially in rural areas. As the so-called Progressive Era dawned near the turn of the 20th century, attitudes began to change, and people began to look towards government to provide better roads, among other infrastructure improvements. The first federal aid bill was submitted to Congress in 1902, proposing the creation of a Bureau of Public Roads. With the rise of the automobile--especially after Henry Ford introduced the affordable Model T in 1908, putting more Americans on the road than ever before--Congress was pushed to go even further.
- 1922 --- The Hollywood Bowl, one of the world’s largest natural amphitheaters, opens with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since that time, a long, diverse list of performers, including The Beatles, Luciano Pavarotti and Judy Garland, have appeared on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. The venue has become a famous Los Angeles landmark and has been featured in numerous movies. When it opened, its stage was a wooden platform with a canvas top and audiences sat on moveable benches set on the hillsides of the surrounding canyon. In 1926, a group of Los Angeles architects built the Hollywood Bowl’s first shell. Since that time, various architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, and Frank Gehry, have made improvements to the venue’s structure and acoustics. Today, the Hollywood Bowl seats nearly 18,000. Its paid attendance record of 26,410 was set in August 1936 for a performance by French opera star Lily Pons.
- 1955 --- The first class of 306 cadets was sworn in at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado, the temporary home of the U.S. Air Force Academy. A bill establishing the Academy had been signed by President Eisenhower on April 1, 1954. The Cadet Wing moved to the academy’s permanent home north of Colorado Springs, CO in 1958.
- 1959 --- Joan Baez made her first recording. It was a duet with Bob Gibson which was recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival.
- 1979 --- Parts of Skylab, America's first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world's first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salynut 1, the world's first space station, into orbit around the earth. However, unlike the ill-fated Salynut, which was plagued with problems, the American space station was a great success, safely housing three separate three-man crews for extended periods of time. Originally the spent third stage of a Saturn 5 moon rocket, the cylindrical space station was 118 feet tall, weighed 77 tons, and carried the most varied assortment of experimental equipment ever assembled in a single spacecraft to that date. The crews of Skylab spent more than 700 hours observing the sun and brought home more than 175,000 solar pictures. They also provided important information about the biological effects of living in space for prolonged periods of time. Five years after the last Skylab mission, the space station's orbit began to deteriorate--earlier than was anticipated--because of unexpectedly high sunspot activity. On July 11, 1979, Skylab made a spectacular return to earth, breaking up in the atmosphere and showering burning debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
- 1985 --- Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros became the first major-league pitcher to earn 4,000 strikeouts in a career as he led the Astros to a 4-3 win over the New York Mets(Ryan’s first major league team). Danny Heep, formerly of the Astros, gave Ryan his milestone by fanning on three straight pitches.
- 1985 --- Zippers for stitches were announced by Dr. H. Harlan Stone. The surgeon had used zippers on 28 patients whom he thought might require additional operations because of internal bleeding following initial operations. The zippers, which lasted between five and 14 days, were then replaced with permanent stitches.
- 2000 --- Metallica’s Lars Ulrich was the first witness to testify at a U.S. Senate hearing over copyright law issues concerning free sharing of music files on Web sites such as Napster and MP3.com.
- Birthdays
- Caroline Wozniacki
- Tab Hunter
- Suzanne Vega
- John Quincy Adams (6th President)
- E. B. White
- Lil’ Kim
- Robert the Bruce
- Yul Brenner
- Thomas Bowdler
- Giorgio Armani
- Bonnie Pointer
- Stephen Lang
- Leon Spinks
- Sela Ward
- Mark Lester