- 192nd Day of 2012 /174 Remaining
- 74 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:5:56
- Sunset:8:33
- 14 Hours 37 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:20am
- Moon Set:1:19pm
- Moon’s Phase: Last 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 largefish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught duringthis month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, itappears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
- Tides
- High:4:30am/5:04pm
- Low:10:22am
- 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
- Clerihew Day
- Don't Step on a Bee Day
- Admission Day-Wyoming
- Disney Animation Appreciation Day
- Independence Day-Bahamas
- Junkanoo Parade, West End-Bahamas
- On This Day In …
- 1720 --- Mrs. Clements invented a method of preparing mustard flour or powder, which was known for a long time as Durham Mustard. Until then, mustard was made into balls with honey and or vinegar, and then mixed with more vinegar when needed. (Some sources give the date as June 10).
- 1880 --- U.S. patent #254,828 was issued for the tuxedo life jacket, an inflatable formal jacket for dining out at sea.
- 1890 --- Wyoming, the state with the smallest population entered the Union this day. The 44th state was named after an Algonquin Indian word meaning ‘large prairie place’. Appropriately, the Indian paintbrush that covers much of the large prairie is the state flower and the meadowlark, frequently seen circling the prairie land, is the state bird. Another Indian term, Cheyenne, is also the name of the state capital. Wyoming is called the Equality State because it is the first state to have granted women the right to vote (1869).
- 1900 --- ‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Recording Company, and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.
- 1913 --- It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and while you are baking at the beach or lake, keep this factoid in mind: The highest temperature ever recorded in the continental United States was 134 degrees which melted thermometers this day in Death Valley, California.
- 1925 --- In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest the pair enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set for one of the most famous trials in U.S. history. On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city's main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional and then refused to end his practice of opening each day's proceeding with prayer. Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed "missing link" opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade. The missing link was in fact Jo Viens of Burlington, Vermont, a 51-year-old man who was of short stature and possessed a receding forehead and a protruding jaw. One of the chimpanzees--named Joe Mendi--wore a plaid suit, a brown fedora, and white spats, and entertained Dayton's citizens by monkeying around on the courthouse lawn. In the courtroom, Judge Raulston destroyed the defense's strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible--on the grounds that it was Scopes who was on trial, not the law he had violated. The next day, Raulston ordered the trial moved to the courthouse lawn, fearing that the weight of the crowd inside was in danger of collapsing the floor. In front of several thousand spectators in the open air, Darrow changed his tactics and as his sole witness called Bryan in an attempt to discredit his literal interpretation of the Bible. In a searching examination, Bryan was subjected to severe ridicule and forced to make ignorant and contradictory statements to the amusement of the crowd. On July 21, in his closing speech, Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After eight minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed. Although Bryan had won the case, he had been publicly humiliated and his fundamentalist beliefs had been disgraced. Five days later, on July 26, he lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up. In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment
- 1928 --- George Eastman first demonstrated color motion pictures.
- 1934 --- Carl Hubbell threw three strikeouts in the first inning of the All-Star baseball game held at New York’s Polo Grounds. Hubbell faced the American League’s best power hitters: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Fox. In the second inning, Hubbell remained strong, fanning Al Simmons, Joe Cronin and Lefty Gomez. From then on, however, it was all up hill for the National League which lost by a score of 9-7. Hubbell’s nicknames, incidentally, were Meal Ticket and King Carl.
- 1940 --- During World War II, the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking southern England by air. By late October, Britain managed to repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses.
- 1960 --- 16-year-old Brian Hyland’s "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" entered the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. Composer Paul Vance wrote the song afterwatching his 2-year-old daughter Paula at the beach in her new bikini.
- 1962 --- The Telstar communications satellite was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. Telstar would usher in a new age of communication via telephone and TV, with voice and picture transmission from Europe to America and back. Signals were picked up by a 38-ton antenna in Andover, Maine. To commemorate the event, an instrumental hit by the Tornadoes, an English surf-rock group, made it to number one for three weeks in November, 1962. It was titled, Telstar, of course.
- 1965 --- The Rolling Stones, who took their name from a Muddy Waters song, hit the top
- spot on the Billboard chart. It was their first time at the top. The hit, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, stayed at number one for 4 weeks. The Stones recorded a total of 41 hits over the next 13 years, with seven more making the number one spot: Ruby Tuesday, Honky Tonk Women, Angie, Miss You, Paint it, Black, Get Off of My Cloud, and Brown Sugar. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Mick Taylor and Ron Wood were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1986. The group, founded in 1964, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
- 2002 --- Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" sold for $76.2
- million at Sotheby's.
- Birthdays
- Arthur Ashe
- Jake LaMotta
- Mavis Staples
- Arlo Guthrie
- Andre Dawson
- Jessica Simpson
- Ron Glass
- Bela Fleck
- Elijah Blue Allman
- Adolphus Busch
- Marcel Proust
- Kurt Alder
- John Calvin
- James Whistler
- Nikola Tesla
- David Brinkley
- Fred Gwynne