- 143rd Day of 2013 / 222 Remaining
- 29 Days Until The First Day of Summer
- Sunrise:5:53
- Sunset:8:20
- 14 Hours 27 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:6:59pm
- Moon Set:4:41am
- Moon’s Phase:97 %
- The Next Full Moon
- May 24 @ 9:27pm
- Full Flower Moon
- Full Corn Planting Moon
- Full Milk Moon
In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:10:50am/9:59pm
- Low:4:08am/3:48pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:16.32
- Last Year:15.64
- Normal To Date:23.48
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Taffy Day
- International World Turtle Day
- Linnaeus Day-Sweden
- National Day-Morocco
- Victoria Day-Canada
- Labour Day-Jamaica
- On This Day In …
- 1430 --- Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.
- 1533 --- Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
- 1774 --- Residents of Chestertown, Maryland react to news of the Boston Tea Party by staging a similar protest, dumping a shipment of tea into the Chester River.
- 1785 --- Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals.
- 1788 --- South Carolina, the colony originally named in honor of Charles I of England, became one of the United States on this day. The eighth state also has the dubious honor of being the first state to secede at the start of the Civil War in 1861. Its capital city is Columbia. The state bird is, appropriately, the Carolina wren. When a state has so many palmetto palms and beautiful jasmine flowers, what do you do? You choose the yellow jessamine (jasmine) as the state flower and call South Carolina the Palmetto State. Equal opportunity for the plants.
- 1827 --- The first nursery school in the United States was established in New York City. The school was developed “to relieve parents of the laboring classes from the care of their children ... offering the children protection from weather, from idleness and contamination of evil example.” Yes, it actually meant that mommies and daddies who worked could drop the kiddies off for a truly fun, educational experience with little to fear. Plus, the youngsters got milk and cookies too!
- 1876 --- Boston’s Joe Borden pitched the very first no-hitter in the history of the National League.
- 1900 --- Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 18, 1863, while fighting for the Union cause as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. He was the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, which is the nation's highest military honor.
- 1911 --- In a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft, the New York Public Library, the largest marble structure ever constructed in the United States, is dedicated in New York City. Occupying a two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, the monumental beaux-arts structure took 14 years to complete at a cost of $9 million. The day after its dedication, the library opened its doors to the public, and some 40,000 citizens passed through to make use of a collection that already consisted of more than a million books.
- 1934 --- Famed fugitives Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are killed in a police ambush near Sailes, Louisiana. A contingent of officers from Texas and Louisiana set up along the highway, waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to appear, and then unloaded a two-minute fusillade of 167 bullets at their car, killing the criminal couple. Bonnie Parker was 19 years old when she met Clyde Barrow while visiting her husband in a Texas jail. Barrow, serving time for burglary, obviously made quite an impression on Parker, because she smuggled a gun, taped to her thigh, into prison to help him escape. He was eventually caught in Ohio and brought back to prison. When a personal appeal from his mother to the Texas governor earned his release in 1932, he vowed never to return. Bonnie and Clyde teamed up shortly thereafter. After Bonnie was caught stealing a car, she had to spend three months in prison, while Clyde went on a robbery spree. He then killed a sheriff and deputy at a barn dance in Oklahoma. In the fall of 1932, the pair spent their time carrying out small-time robberies throughout Texas and Oklahoma. At one such robbery, they picked up W. D. Jones, a gas station attendant, who joined their team for the next 18 months. Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother who was recently pardoned by the new Texas governor, Ma Ferguson, also joined the gang. For some reason, the media latched onto Bonnie and Clyde. The pair loved the attention, posing for snapshots with their arsenal of weapons. In early 1934, they barely escaped a trap in Missouri, killing two lawmen in the ensuing shootout. Buck and his wife, Blanche, were shot and captured, but Buck died from his wounds. Texas Ranger Frank Hamer finally caught up with Bonnie and Clyde in May, after tracking them for more than three months.
- 1941 --- Joe Louis beats Buddy Baer to retain his heavyweight title. The fight was widely considered the most exciting heavyweight match-up since Dempsey vs. Firpo in 1923. Baer proved to be more than Louis bargained for, and he shocked fans by sending the champ to the canvas for four seconds in the first round. Louis clawed his way back, however, and eventually gutted out a victory in front of 35,000 people at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C.
- 1949 --- Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin lifted the Berlin Blockade. It had taken 10 months and 18 days of a continuous airlift of goods by the United States to foil Stalin’s attempt at isolating Berlin from the outside world. The U.S. kept more than 2.5 million Berliners in the Western sector of the German city from starvation and freezing ... supplying food, medicine, machinery, clothing and other necessities -- up to 13,000 tons per day. The airlift transormed West Berlin into a symbol of resistance to communism. During the blockade, the U.S. and its allies delivered 2,325,809 tons of supplies, including 23 tons of oranges. Two thirds of the tonage was coal to provide heat during the brutally-cold 1948-49 winter. The round-the-clock airlift, registered 277,804 flights, and a loss of 78 airmen, killed in crashes and other accidents.
- 1962 --- The National Basketball Association (NBA) agreed to transfer the Philadelphia Warriors to San Francisco, CA. The team became the San Francisco Warriors (and later the Golden State Warriors).
- 1969 --- The Who's rock-opera album "Tommy" was released.
- 1979 --- The music industry is notorious for its creative accounting practices and for onerous contracts that can keep even some top-selling artists perpetually in debt to their record labels. In a typical recording contract, a record label advances an artist a certain sum of money against future earnings from royalties. But because the cost of things like studio time, marketing support and tour expenses must be "recouped" by the label before an artist earns any royalties, many artists who sign recording contracts never sell enough records to "earn out" their advance. Where this system truly breaks down is when a top-selling artist or group like TLC or Run-DMC finds itself deeply in debt to its record label despite having sold millions of records. Those are but two groups that have pursued a strategy made famous by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Tom Petty when he declared bankruptcy on this day in 1979 in an effort to free himself from his contract with Shelter Records.
- 1999 --- Gerry Bloch, at age 81, became the oldest climber to scale El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He broke his own record that he set in 1986 when he was 68 years old.
- Birthdays
- Alfred Sloan
- Joan Collins
- Marvin Hagler
- Drew Carey
- Maxwell
- Jewel
- Margaret Wise Brown
- Artie Shaw
- Scatman Cruthers
- Rosemary Clooney
- Anatoly Karpov