© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Thursday July 26, 2012

  • 208th Day of 2012 / 158 Remaining
  • 58 Days Until Autumn Begins
  • Sunrise:6:09
  • Sunset:8:24
  • 14 Hours 15 Minutes of Daylight
  • Moon Rise:2:17pm
  • Moon Set:12:03am
  • Moon’s Phase: First Quarter
  • 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:5:21am/5:15pm
  • Low:10:33am
  • Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
  • This Year:0.02
  • Last Year:0.08
  • Normal To Date:0.00
  • Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
  • Holidays
  • National Coffee Milkshake Day
  • National Chili Dog Day
  • Ratification Day-New York

  • Curacao Day-Curacao
  • Independence Day-Liberia
  • Independence Day-Maldives
  • National Day-Cuba
  • Day of Iansa-Brazil
  • On This Day In …
  • 1775 --- The postal system was established by the 2nd Continental Congress of the United States. The first Postmaster General was the same gentleman who graces the U.S. $100 bill and who flew a kite with a key attached in a thunderstorm -- Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Franklin was paid $1,000 a year for his job as Postmaster General. 1788 --- New York, the 11th state, entered the United States of America this day. New York City, one of the most famous cities in the world, was once the capital of the Empire State, but that ended in 1796. Albany, once called Fort Orange, has been the capital of the State of New York ever since. The beautiful rose is the official state flower with the colorful bluebird taking the honorable title of New York’s state bird.
  • 1847 --- The Republic of Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society, declares its independence. Under pressure from Britain, the United States hesitantly accepted Liberian sovereignty, making the West African nation the first democratic republic in African history. A constitution modeled after the U.S. Constitution was approved, and in 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected Liberia's first president.
  • 1908 --- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is born when U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte orders a group of newly hired federal investigators to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch of the Department of Justice. One year later, the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau of Investigation, and in 1935 it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  • 1926 --- Roquefort cheese is the first cheese designated with an appellation d'origine controlee. Only cheese that is processed in Roquefort, France and aged in the caves there may be called 'Roquefort Cheese.'
  • 1931 --- A swarm of grasshoppers descends on crops throughout the American heartland, devastating millions of acres. Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, already in the midst of a bad drought, suffered tremendously from this disaster. The swarm was said to be so thick that it blocked out the sun and one could shovel the grasshoppers with a scoop. Cornstalks were eaten to the ground and fields left completely bare. Since the early 1930s, swarms have not been seen in the United States. However, North Africa and parts of the Middle East continue to experience problems with insect swarms, which sometimes includes as many as 1 billion bugs.
  • 1944 --- The U.S. Army desegregated training camp facilities. After World War II, on this date in 1948, President Harry Truman signed an order integrating the armed forces.
  • 1947 --- President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  • 1952 --- Bob Mathias wins his second straight gold medal in the Olympic decathlon. Bob Mathias was born on November 17, 1930, in Tulare, California. After a series of boyhood growth spurts left him underweight and anemic, his physician father prescribed for him liver and iron supplements. The regimen worked, and by the time Mathias was 17, he was 6 feet 2 inches tall and 190 pounds. He competed on the track team in high school before trying the decathlon at the request of his coach, who was so green he trained Mathias for the event out of a manual. Just three months before his high school graduation, Mathias competed in his first meet, in Los Angeles, and won, which qualified him for the national championship. To his great surprise, he won that as well, which gave him for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
  • 1956 --- The Suez Crisis begins when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the British and French-owned Suez Canal. The Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas across Egypt, was completed by French engineers in 1869. For the next 87 years, it remained largely under British and French control, and Europe depended on it as an inexpensive shipping route for oil from the Middle East. After World War II, Egypt pressed for evacuation of British troops from the Suez Canal Zone, and in July 1956 President Nasser nationalized the canal, hoping to charge tolls that would pay for construction of a massive dam on the Nile River. In response, Israel invaded in late October, and British and French troops landed in early November, occupying the canal zone. Under Soviet, U.S., and U.N. pressure, Britain and France withdrew in December, and Israeli forces departed in March 1957. That month, Egypt took control of the canal and reopened it to commercial shipping. Ten years later, Egypt shut down the canal again following the Six Day War and Israel's occupation of the Sinai peninsula. For the next eight years, the Suez Canal, which separates the Sinai from the rest of Egypt, existed as the front line between the Egyptian and Israeli armies. In 1975, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat reopened the Suez Canal as a gesture of peace after talks with Israel. Today, an average of 50 ships navigate the canal daily, carrying more than 300 million tons of goods a year.
  • 1968 --- Singer Jeannie C. Riley recorded "Harper Valley P.T.A." The Tom. T. Hall song skyrocketed to #1 and became the country music Single of the Year.
  • 1975 --- For as popular as it was during much of the first half of the 20th century, couples dancing seemed poised to go by the wayside of American popular culture by the early 1970s. That is, until the arrival of a dance called the Hustle along with a #1 song by the same name. On this day in 1975, Van McCoy's "The Hustle" topped the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Soul Singles charts simultaneously, signaling the beginning of the disco era. It was the dance called the Hustle that inspired the era-defining hit song rather than the other way around. Singer/songwriter/producer Van McCoy was visiting New York City when a disk-jockey friend tipped him off to a new dance being done by patrons of the Adam's Apple nightclub on Manhattan's East Side. McCoy sent a business partner to check out the Hustle, and the report he returned with changed the course of McCoy's career. Van McCoy had previously written for the Shirelles and Gladys Knight, among other soul/R&B acts, and he'd put together the original Peaches and Herb, but his visit to New York would inspire him to embrace dance music fully and completely, naming his upcoming album Disco Baby and, of course, writing and recording "The Hustle."
  • 1984 --- "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" became the first network television program to be telecast in stereo.
  • 1984 --- Prince's movie "Purple Rain" premiered in Hollywood, CA.
  • Birthdays
  • Aldous Huxley
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Beatrix Potter
  • Blake Edwards
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • Kevin Spacey
  • Sandra Bullock
  • Mick Jagger
  • Dorothy Hamill
  • Helen Mirren
  • Darlene Love
  • Carl (Gustav) Jung
  • Jason Robards
  • Vivian Vance
  • Gracie Allen
  • Hoyt Wilhelm