Tuesday August 28, 2012

• 241^st Day of 2012 /125 Remaining
• 25 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

• Sunrise:6:37
• Sunset:7:44
• 13 Hours 7 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:5:49pm
• Moon Set:3:35am
• Moon’s Phase: 91%

• The Next Full Moon
• August 31^st @ 6:57am
• Blue Moon

But it’s Blue in name only. That’s because a Blue Moon is sometimes defined as the second full moon in a calendar month. The first full moon was August 1. The second full moon is August 31, 2012. There are two more definitions for Blue Moon. It can be the third of four full moons in a single season. Or, someday, you might see an actual blue-colored moon.

• Tides
• High:9:56am/9:03pm
• Low:3:05am/3:5pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• This Year:0.03
• Last Year:0.11
• Normal To Date:0.00
• Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80

• Holidays
• Dream Day Quest and Jubilee
• Race Your Mouse Around the Icons Day
• Family Day-Tennessee
• National Cherry Turnover Day

• On This Day In …
• 1619 --- Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. His policy of "One church, one king" was his way of trying to outlaw Protestantism.

• 1609 --- English sea explorer Henry Hudson reached present-day Delaware Bay.

• 1798 --- The first American vineyard was planted in Lexington, Kentucky.

• 1837 --- John Lea and William Perrins of Worcester, England started manufacturing Worcestershire Sauce.

• 1850 --- Wagner’s opera, Lohengrin, was performed for the first time.

• 1883 --- Slavery was banned by the British Parliament throughout the British Empire.

• 1907 --- Jim Casey borrowed $100 from his friend, Claude Ryan, and started a local delivery service. They called it the American Messenger Company. Jim’s slogan was, “Best service, and lowest rates.” The company did well because Jim and Claude stuck to their principles: round-the-clock customer service, courtesy, reliability and low rates. They took these concepts a few steps further, focusing on package delivery for local retail stores, merging in 1913 with Mac McCabe and forming Merchants Parcel Delivery. The company was the first to provide consolidated delivery, placing packages with similar street destinations on one delivery truck. The company’s growing fleet of trucks was then managed by Charlie Soderstrom. Charlie selected the dark brown color because of its professional appearance. By the 1920s, the company had grown large enough to expand to Oakland and Los Angeles, California. It wasn’t long before it became known as United Parcel Service; ‘united’ for the consolidated shipments and ‘service’ because that’s what they offered. Today, United Parcel Service “operates an international small package and document network in more than 200 countries and territories, spanning both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. With its international service, UPS can reach over four billion people.”

• 1917 --- Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House.

• 1922 --- The first commercial to be broadcast on radio was heard on WEAF in New York City. Announcer H.M. Blackwell spoke about Hawthorne Court, a group of apartment buildings in Queens, New York. The Queensboro Realty Company, of Jackson Heights, bought what was called Toll Broadcasting. WEAF, owned by AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph, in those days) sold their block programming, five one-minute programs, one a day for five days, for $50 plus long-distance toll fees. The Queensboro Realty Company paid $100 for 10 minutes of commercial airtime.

• 1954 --- That’s All Right (Mama) b/w Blue Moon of Kentucky became Elvis Presley’s first hit single on local charts in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips had debuted the single on his Red Hot and Blue show on WHBQ radio

• 1955 --- Emmett Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., by two white men after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was found murdered three days later.

• 1963 --- On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators--black and white, poor and rich--came together in the nation's capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination. The peaceful rally was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever seen, and King was the last speaker. With the statue of Abraham Lincoln--the Great Emancipator--towering behind him, King used the rhetorical talents he had developed as a Baptist preacher to show how, as he put it, the "Negro is still not free." He told of the struggle ahead, stressing the importance of continued action and nonviolent protest. Coming to the end of his prepared text (which, like other speakers that day, he had limited to seven minutes), he was overwhelmed by the moment and launched into an improvised sermon. He told the hushed crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair." Continuing, he began the refrain that made the speech one of the best known in U.S. history, second only to Lincoln's 1863 "Gettysburg Address": "I have a dream," he boomed over the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today." King had used the "I have a dream" theme before, in a handful of stump speeches, but never with the force and effectiveness of that hot August day in Washington. He equated the civil rights movement with the highest and noblest ideals of the American tradition, allowing many to see for the first time the importance and urgency of racial equality. He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of racial harmony: "When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

• 1965 --- Fred DeLuca opened Petes Super Submarines in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He called it Petes because Dr. Peter Buck, his friendly nuclear physicist, loaned him $1,000 to start the restaurant. A year later they changed the name to Subway. Today there are 12,000 Subways worldwide.

• 1968 --- At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of protesters against the Vietnam War battle police in the streets while the Democratic Party tears itself to shreds concerning a platform statement on Vietnam. In one day and night, the Cold War consensus that had dominated American thinking since the late 1940s was shattered. Since World War II ended and tensions with the Soviet Union began to intensify, a Cold War consensus about foreign policy had grown to dominate American thinking. In this mindset, communism was the ultimate enemy that had to be fought everywhere in the world. Uprisings in any nation, particularly in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America, were perceived through a Cold War lens and were usually deemed to be communist-inspired. In Chicago in August 1968, that Cold War consensus began to crack and crumble. The Democratic Party held its national convention in Chicago that year. Problems immediately arose both inside and outside the convention. Inside, the delegates were split on the party's stance concerning the ongoing Vietnam War. Many wanted a plank in the party's platform demanding a U.S. withdrawal from the bloody and frustrating conflict. Most of these delegates supported Eugene McCarthy, a committed antiwar candidate, for president. A majority, however, believed that America must not give up the fight against communism. They largely supported Vice President Hubert Humphrey. As the debate intensified, fights broke out on the convention floor, and delegates and reporters were kicked, punched, and knocked to the ground. Eventually, the Humphrey forces were victorious, but the events of the convention left the Democratic Party demoralized and drained. On the streets of Chicago, antiwar protesters massed in the downtown area, determined to force the Democrats to nominate McCarthy. Mayor Richard Daley responded by unleashing the Chicago police force. Thousands of policemen stormed into the crowd, swinging their clubs and firing tear gas. Stunned Americans watched on TV as the police battered and beat protesters, reporters, and anyone else in the way. The protesters began to chant, "The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching." The world--and the American nation--was indeed watching that night. What they were witnessing was a serious fracture beginning to develop in America's previously solid Cold War consensus. For the first time, many Americans were demanding that their nation withdraw from part of its war against communism. North Vietnam, instead of being portrayed as the villain and pawn of its Soviet masters, was seen by some as a beleaguered nation fighting for independence and freedom against the vast war machine of the United States. The convention events marked an important turning point: no longer would the government have unrestrained power to pursue its Cold War policies. When future international crises arose--in Central America, the Middle East, or Africa--the cry of "No more Vietnams" was a reminder that the government's Cold War rhetoric would be closely scrutinized and often criticized.

• 1972 --- Mark Spitz captured the first of his seven gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Spitz completed the 200-meter butterfly in 2 minutes, 7/10ths of a second. His performance set a new world record.

• 1978 --- Devo released their "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo" LP.

• 1981 --- For the third time in 10 days, a world record in the mile run was set. Sebastian Coe, who broke Steve Ovett’s record on August 19 and lost it to Ovett on August 26, broke it again -- by a full second -- in Brussels, Belgium. Coe’s new record time was 3:47.33.

• 2004 --- George Brunstad, at age 70, became the oldest person to swim the English Channel. The swim from Dover, England, to Sangatte, France, took 15 hours and 59 minutes.

• Birthdays
• Jack Black
• LeAnn Rimes
• Shania Twain
• David Soul
• Lou Piniella
• Scott Hamilton
• Leo Tolstoy
• James Wong Howe
• St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
• Nancy Kulp
• Donald O'Connor
• Ben Gazzara