- 147th Day of 2014 / 218 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 25 Days
- Sunrise:5:51
- Sunset:8:22
- 14 Hours 31 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:5:16am
- Moon Set:7:32pm
- Moon’s Phase: 1%
- The Next Full Moon
- June 12 @ 4:26 am
- Full Rose Moon
- Full Strawberry Moon
- Strawberry Moon was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!
- Tides
- High:11:33am/10:31pm
- Low:4:49am/4:28pm
- Holidays
- Bloomer Day
- National Grape Popsicle Day
- National Wig Out Day
- Mother’s Day-Bolivia
- Reconciliation Week-Australia
- On This Day In …
- 1647 --- Achsah Young, a resident of Windsor, CT, was executed for being a "witch." It was the first recorded American execution of a "witch."
- 1668 --- Three colonists were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.
- 1703 --- After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founds the city of St. Petersburg as the new Russian capital. The reign of Peter, who became sole czar in 1696, was characterized by a series of sweeping military, political, economic, and cultural reforms based on Western European models. Peter the Great, as he became known, led his country into major conflicts with Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Sweden. Russian victories in these wars greatly expanded Peter's empire, and the defeat of Sweden won Russia direct access to the Baltic Sea, a lifelong obsession of the Russian leader. With the founding of St. Petersburg, Russia was now a major European power--politically, culturally, and geographically. In 1721, Peter abandoned the traditional Russian title of czar in favor of the European-influenced title of emperor. Four years later, he died and was succeeded by his wife, Catherine.
- 1873 --- Survivor won the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico race track in Baltimore, MD. It was the first ‘Run for the Black-Eyed Susans’. The race continues as the second jewel in horse racing’s Triple Crown. It comes two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and prior to the Belmont Stakes in New York.
- 1896 --- A tornado struck St. Louis and East St. Louis, Ill., killing 255 people.
- 1907 --- The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.
- 1919 --- U.S. patent No. 1,304,623 was issued for 'Pyrex' glass (sodium borosilicate glass).
- 1930 --- Richard G. Drew of St. Paul, Minnesota patented transparent cellophane adhesive tape. He worked out a deal with 3M to market this 'Scotch' tape.
- 1933 --- Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs" was first released.
- 1935 --- The Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.
- 1937 --- The Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day--"Pedestrian Day"--some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge, which spans the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and connects San Francisco and Marin County. On May 28, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic. The concept of bridging the nearly mile-wide Golden Gate Strait was proposed as early as 1872, but it was not until the early 1920’s that public opinion in San Francisco began to favor such an undertaking. In 1921, Cincinnati-born bridge engineer Joseph Strauss submitted a preliminary proposal: a combination suspension-cantilever that could be built for $27 million. Although unsightly compared with the final result, his design was affordable, and Strauss became the recognized leader of the effort to bridge the Golden Gate Strait. During the next few years, Strauss' design evolved rapidly, thanks to the contributions of consulting engineer Leon S. Moisseiff, architect Irving F. Morrow, and others. Moisseiff's concept of a simple suspension bridge was accepted by Strauss, and Morrow, along with his wife, Gertrude, developed the Golden Gate Bridge's elegant Art Deco design. Morrow would later help choose the bridge's trademark color: "international orange," a brilliant vermilion color that resists rust and fading and suits the natural beauty of San Francisco and its picturesque sunsets. In 1929, Strauss was selected as chief engineer. Construction began on January 5, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Strauss and his workers overcame many difficulties: strong tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock 65 feet below the water to plant earthquake-proof foundations. Eleven men died during construction. On May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to great acclaim, a symbol of progress in the Bay Area during a time of economic crisis. At 4,200 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge remains one of the world's most recognizable architectural structures.1937
- 1957 --- That’ll be the Day, by The Crickets and featuring Buddy Holly, was released by Brunswick Records.
- 1963 --- Bob Dylan releases his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which goes on to transform him from a popular local act to a global phenomenon.
- 1971 --- Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson reveals that Sweden has been providing assistance to the Viet Cong, including some $550,000 worth of medical supplies. Similar Swedish aid was to go to Cambodian and Laotian civilians affected by the Indochinese fighting. This support was primarily humanitarian in nature and included no military aid.
- 1972 --- Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever.
- 1977 --- George H. Willig was fined for scaling the World Trade Center in New York on May 26. He was fined $1.10 for each floor he scaled.
- 1994 --- Two decades after being expelled from the USSR, Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia in an emotional homecoming. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. His prison experiences formed the basis for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his famous first novel. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and began work on The Gulag Archipelago, his vast history of the Soviet totalitarian system, from Lenin's ascension to the official Soviet denunciation of Stalin. Foreign publication of this work led to his expulsion from the USSR in 1974, and he settled in the United States. Soviet officials dropped charges of treason against Solzhenitsyn in 1990. One year later, the Soviet Union collapsed and in 1994 Solzhenitsyn returned home. There, he continued writing and often publicly criticized the post-Soviet Russian government.
- 1997 --- A tornado in Jarrell, Texas, destroys the town and kills nearly 30 people. This F5 tornado—a rating indicating it had winds of more than 260 miles per hour--was unusual in that it traveled south along the ground; nearly all tornadoes in North America move northeast.
- 1998 --- Michael Fortier, the government's star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing case, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after apologizing for not warning anyone about the deadly plot.
- 1999 --- In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged with such a crime.
- Birthdays
- Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
- Vincent Price
- Amelia Bloomer
- Wild Bill Hickok
- Jamie Oliver
- Isadora Duncan
- Hubert H Humphrey
- Sam Snead
- Lee Meriwether
- Louis Gossett Jr
- Sen Christopher Dodd
- Bruce Cockburn
- Siouxsie Sioux
- Neil Finn
- Peri Gilpin
- Adam Carolla
- Andre 3000
- Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Dashiell Hammett
- Herman Wouk
- Todd Bridges
