- 199th Day of 2013 / 166 Remaining
- 66 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:02
- Sunset:8:29
- 14 Hours 27 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:4:32pm
- Moon Set:1:55am
- Moon’s Phase:78 %
- 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:8:33am/7:28pm
- Low:1:45am/1:05pm
- 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 Get Out of the Doghouse Day
- National Caviar Day
- Constitution Day-Uruguay
- Global Hug For Your Kids Day
- Mandela Day-South Africa
- On This Day In …
- 0064 --- The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda. The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill. The area's homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds. During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting. The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days. Three of Rome's 14
districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless. Although popular legend holds that Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned, this account is wrong on several accounts. First, the fiddle did not even exist at the time. Instead, Nero was well known for his talent on the lyre; he often composed his own music. More importantly, Nero was actually 35 miles away in Antium when the fire broke out. In fact, he let his palace be used as a shelter. Legend has long blamed Nero for a couple of reasons. Nero did not like the aesthetics of the city and used the devastation of the fire in order to change much of it and institute new building codes throughout the city. Nero also used the fire to clamp down on the growing influence of Christians in Rome. He arrested, tortured and executed hundreds of Christians on the pretext that they had something to do with the fire.
- 1536 --- Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England.
- 1743 --- "The New York Weekly Journal" published the first half-page newspaper ad.
- 1830 --- Uruguay adopted a liberal constitution.
- 1914 --- Convicted of murder on meager evidence, the singing Wobbly Joe Hill is sentenced to be executed in Utah. A native of Sweden who immigrated to the U.S. in 1879, Joe Hill joined the International Workers of the World (IWW) in 1910. The IWW was an industrial union that rejected the capitalist system and dreamed one day of leading a national workers' revolution. Members of the IWW--known as Wobblies--were especially active in the western United States, where they enjoyed considerable success in organizing mistreated and exploited workers in the mining, logging, and shipping industries. Beginning in 1908, the IWW began encouraging its membership to express their beliefs through song. The IWW published its Little Red Song Book, otherwise known as the I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. A few years later, the witty and handsome Joe Hill became one of the Wobblies' leading singers and songwriters. Hill composed many of the IWW's best-loved anthems, including "The Preacher of the Slave" which introduced the phrase "pie in the sky." By 1915, Hill was one of the most famous Wobblies in the nation. Public notoriety, however, could prove dangerous for a radical union man. In 1915, Hill was arrested and charged with murdering two Salt Lake City policemen during a grocery store robbery. Although the evidence against Hill was tenuous, a jury of conservative Utahans convicted him on this day in 1914 and he was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad the following year. Ever since, scholars have debated whether Hill was actually guilty or was railroaded because of his radical politics. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, Hill became a powerful martyr for the IWW cause by telegramming his comrades with a famous last-minute message: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."
- 1927 --- Ty Cobb set a major league baseball record by getting his 4,000th career hit. He hit 4,191 before he retired in 1928.
- 1935 --- Ethiopian King Haile Selassie urged his countrymen to fight to the last man against the invading Italian army.
- 1936 --- Every now and then a commercial jingle becomes something other than a commercial. It becomes a part of Americana. And so it goes with the Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle (“I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener...”). But long before the jingle/song entered our lives, Carl Mayer, nephew of Oscar Mayer, invented another quaint entry into Americana: the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The first Wienermobile rolled out of General
Body Company’s factory in Chicago 73 years ago today. The Wienermobile tours around the U.S. fascinating children of all ages as it promotes the famous Oscar Mayer wiener. If you’ve had the pleasure of seeing the Wienermobile in person, don’t think only the folks in your part of the U.S.A. are the lucky ones, because today there are six of the silly-looking cars. For those of you who have never seen it - it’s a giant hot dog on wheels - there’s just no other way to describe the Wienermobile.
- 1936 --- Spanish Civil War begins as a revolt by right-wing Spanish military officers in Spanish Morocco and spreads to mainland Spain. From the Canary Islands, General Francisco Franco broadcasts a message calling for all army officers to join the uprising and overthrow Spain's leftist Republican government. Within three days, the rebels captured Morocco, much of northern Spain, and several key cities in the south. The Republicans succeeded in putting down the uprising in other areas, including Madrid, Spain's capital. The Republicans and the Nationalists, as the rebels were called, then proceeded to secure their respective territories by executing thousands of suspected political opponents. Meanwhile, Franco flew to Morocco and prepared to bring the Army of Africa over to the mainland.
- 1947 --- U.S. President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
- 1968 --- Hugh Masekela struck gold with the breezy, latin-soul instrumental Grazing in the Grass. Masekela, a trumpeter since age 14, saw Grazing in the Grass go to number one for two weeks (July 20/27). Grazing was his only entry on the pop music charts.
- 1969 --- Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, received a two-month suspended sentence, and had his license suspended for a year. That evening, in a televised statement, he called the delayed reporting of the accident "indefensible" but vehemently denied that he been involved in any improprieties with Kopechne. He also asked his constituents to help him decide whether to continue his political career. Receiving a positive response, he resumed his senatorial duties at the end of a month.
- 1974 --- The U.S. Justice Department ordered John Lennon out of the country by September 10. The Immigration and Naturalization Service denied him an extension of his non-immigrant visa because of his guilty plea in England to a 1968 marijuana possession charge.
- 1976 -- Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old star gymnast from Romania, stunned those watching the Olympic Games by executing perfect form to collect a perfect score of ‘10’ from the judges. This was the first perfect score ever recorded on the uneven parallel bars. Nadia went on to collect seven perfect scores, three gold medals, a silver and a bronze. She also won two gold and two silver medals in the 1980 Olympics.
- 1986 --- New close-up videotapes of the sunken ocean liner Titanic are released to the public. Taken on the first manned expedition to
the wreck, the videotapes are stunning in their clarity and detail, showing one of the ship's majestic grand staircases and a coral-covered chandelier swinging slowly in the ocean current.
- 1994 --- Crayola introduced scented crayons.
- 1998 --- A 23-foot tsunami along the coast of Papua New Guinea killed nearly 3,000 people.
- 2005 --- An unrepentant Eric Rudolph was sentenced in Birmingham, Ala., to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse.
- Birthdays
- Nelson Mandela
- Martha Reeves
- Hunter Thompson
- Andrei Gromyko
- Sen Mark Udall
- Joe Torre
- John Glenn
- Dion DiMucci
- Torii Hunter
- S. I. Hayakawa
- Hume Cronin
- Harriet Nelson
- Red Skelton
- Dick Button
- “Screamin” Jay Hawkins