- 194th Day of 2012 / 172 Remaining
- 72 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:5:58
- Sunset:8:33
- 14 Hours 35 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:1:03am
- Moon Set:3:13pm
- Moon’s Phase: 34 %
- The Next Full Moon
- August 1 @ 8:27pm
- Full Sturgeon Moon
- Full Red Moon
- Full Green Corn Moon
- Full Grain 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:7:28am/6:32pm
- Low:1:07am/12:12pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.00
- Last Year:0.00
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Relieve Stress by Walking Outside and Calling the Hogs Day
- National Pecan Pie Day
- Independence Day-Kiribati
- Battle of Boyne/Orangemen`s Day-United Kingdom
- Micronesian Day-Micronesia
- Petrovdan (Orthodox)-Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia
- Independence Day-Sao Tome and Principe
- On This Day In …
- 1389 --- King Richard II appoints Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief clerk of the king's works in Westminster on this day in 1389. Chaucer, the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with the aristocracy for the rest of his life. In 1359, he fought in France with Edward III, and was captured in a siege. Edward III ransomed him, and he later worked for Edward III and John of Gaunt. One of his earliest known works was an elegy for the deceased wife of John of Gaunt, Book of the Duchesse. In 1372, Chaucer traveled to Italy on diplomatic missions, where he may have been exposed to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He also visited Flanders and France, and was appointed comptroller of customs. He wrote several poems in the 1380s, including The Parlement of Foules and Troilus and Criseyde. In the late 1380s or early 1390s, he began work on the Canterbury Tales, in which a mixed group of nobles, peasants, and clergy make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The work, a compilation of tales told by each character, is remarkable for its presentation of the spectrum of social classes. Although Chaucer intended the book to include 120 stories, he died in 1399, with only 22 tales finished.
- 1690 --- Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland
- 1933 --- A minimum wage of 40 cents an hour was established in the U.S.
- 1946 --- The Adventures of Sam Spade was heard on ABC radio for the first time. Howard Duff starred as the San Francisco detective in the summer replacement series. Sam Spade first appeared in the 1930 Dashiel Hammett novel The Maltese Falcon and in the 1931 original film version of The Maltese Falcon, starring Ricardo Cortez. Humprey Bogart played Sam in the 1941 movie.
- 1949 --- The first racially integrated major-league baseball All-Star Game featured second baseman Jackie Robinson, first baseman Larry Doby, catcher Roy Campanella, and pitcher Don Newcombe.
- 1954 --- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a highway modernization program, with costs to be shared by federal and state governments.
- 1960 --- The first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale. Over 50 million units were sold during the next 25 years. It was the favorite toy of many moms and dads because it was self-contained and so-o-o quiet.
- 1974 --- John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist.
- 1979 --- As the 1970s came to an end, the age of disco was also nearing its finale. But for all of its decadence and overexposure, disco didn't quite die a natural death by collapsing under its own weight. Instead, it was killed by a public backlash that reached its peak on this day in 1979 with the infamous "Disco Demolition" night at Chicago's Comiskey Park. That incident, which led to at least nine injuries, 39 arrests and the cancellation and forfeit of a Major League Baseball game, is widely credited—or, depending on your perspective, blamed—with dealing disco its death blow. The event was the brainchild of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, popular disk jockeys on Chicago's WLUP "The Loop" FM. Dahl had only recently moved to WLUP from rival station WDAI when that station switched to an all-disco format—a relatively common reformatting trend in American radio in 1979. But however many other rock DJs were displaced by disco, only Dahl was inspired to launch a semi-comic vendetta aimed at "the eradication and elimination of the dreaded musical disease." On May 2, the rainout of a game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers led to the scheduling of a doubleheader on July 12. Dahl and Meier approached the White Sox with a rather unorthodox idea for an attendance-boosting promotion: Declare July 12 "Disco Demolition" night and allow Dahl to blow up a dumpster full of disco records between games of the doubleheader. White Sox executive Mike Veeck embraced the idea in the same spirit with which his father, legendary team-owner Bill Veeck, had once sent a little person to the plate in a major league ballgame in order to amuse the fans and draw a walk. The first mistake organizers made on Disco Demolition night was grossly underestimating the appeal of the 98-cent discount tickets offered to anyone who brought a disco record to the park to add to the explosive-rigged dumpster. WLUP and the White Sox expected perhaps 5,000 more fans than the average draw of 15,000 or so at Comiskey Park. What they got instead was a raucous sellout crowd of 40,000-plus and an even more raucous overflow crowd of as many as 40,000 more outside on Shields Avenue. The second mistake was failing to actually collect those disco records, which would become dangerous projectiles in the hands of a crowd that was already out of control by the time Dahl detonated his dumpster in center field during warm-ups for the evening's second game. What followed was utter chaos, as fans by the thousands stormed the field and began to wreak havoc, shimmying up the foul poles, tearing up the grass and lighting vinyl bonfires on the diamond while the stadium scoreboard implored them to return to their seats. Conditions were judged too dangerous for the scheduled game to begin, and the Detroit Tigers were awarded a win by forfeit.
- 1984 --- Walter Mondale, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, announces that he has chosen Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. Ferraro, a daughter of Italian immigrants, had previously gained notoriety as a vocal advocate of women's rights in Congress. Four days after Ferraro was named vice presidential candidate, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York opened the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco with an impassioned retort to Republican President Ronald Reagan's contention that the United States was a "shining city on a hill." Citing widespread poverty and racial strife, Cuomo derided President Reagan as oblivious to the needs and problems of many of America's citizens. His enthusiastic keynote address inaugurated a convention that saw Ferraro become the first woman nominated by a major party for the vice presidency. However, Mondale, the former U.S. vice president under Jimmy Carter, proved a lackluster choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.
- 2010 --- Roman Polanski was declared a free man, no longer confined to house arrest in his Alpine villa, after Swiss authorities rejected a U.S. request for the Oscar-winning director's extradition because of a 32-year-old sex conviction.
- 2010 --- In Los Angeles, CA, Jewel performed her songs "Who Will Save Your Soul" and "Foolish Games" undercover at a karaoke bar.
- Birthdays
- Bill Cosby
- Milton Berle
- Joe (Curly Joe) De Rita
- Henry David Thoreau
- George Washington Carver
- Richard Simmons
- Julius Caesar
- Cheryl Ladd
- Van Cliburn
- Kristi Yamaguchi
- Oscar Hammerstein II
- Christine McVie
- George Eastman
- Buckminster Fuller
- Pablo Neruda
- Andrew Wyeth