- 226th Day of 2013 /139 Remaining
- 39 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:25
- Sunset:8:02
- 13 Hours 37 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:2:19pm
- Moon Set:12:41am(Thursday)
- Moon’s Phase:First Quarter
- The Next Full Moon
- August 20 @ 6:45 pm
- 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:5:34am/5:05pm
- Low:10:31am
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.00
- This Year:0.04
- Last Year:0.02
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Navajo Code Talkers Day
- VJ Day
- National Creamsicle Day
- World Lizard Day
- Festival Of Hungry Ghosts-China
- Independence Day-Pakistan
- Honey Spas-Russia
- Flag Day-Paraguay
- Oued Ed-Dahab-Morocco
- On This Day In …
- 1784 --- On Kodiak Island, Grigory Shelikhov, a Russian fur trader, founds Three Saints bay, the first permanent settlement in Alaska. Shelikhov Lived there for two years with his wife and 200 men. From three Saints Bay, the Alaskan mainland was explored and other fur-trade centers were established
- 1848 --- The U.S. Congress created the Oregon Territory, made up of
today’s Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana & Wyoming.
- 1873 – The first issue of “Field & Stream” was published.
- 1888 --- Oliver B Shallenberger of Rochester, Pa received a patent (#388,003) for the electric meter.
- 1896 --- Gold was discovered in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Within the next year more than 30,000 people rushed to the area to look for gold.
- 1900 --- An international force, consisting of eioght nations, lifeted the siege of Peking. It was an end to the Boxer rebellion.
- 1935 --- President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. Social security was a campaign promise in the 1932 presidential election. Democrats pledged: “We advocate unemployment and old-age insurance under state laws.” FDR
proposed the bill in June of 1934. Conservatives fought it, some believing it would “threaten the integrity of our institutions.” Most supported it, hoping that it would address the long-range problem of economic security for the aged through a system in which workers contributed to their own future retirement. The original Act, signed by FDR, benefited only retiring workers. In 1939, amendments were added to the Social Security Act providing for dependents benefits and survivors benefits, plus the start of monthly benefits.
- 1945 --- This is the day that U.S. President Harry S Truman announced that Japan had surrendered to the Allies [WWII].
Thousands thronged into the streets throughout the United States to celebrate V-J Day. The official ratification of the surrender didn’t take place until September 2, in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri.
- 1947 --- Pakistan became independent from British rule.
- 1953 --- David N. Mullany and his 13-year-old son, David A. Mullany, while trying to come up with a ball that would curve every time it was thrown, wound up inventing the Wiffle Ball. The ball had oblong holes
on the top half, and a solid bottom. The original Wiffle bat was wood, but for many years it has been a skinny yellow fungo-shaped plastic bat.
- 1965 --- The McCoys' "Hang On Sloopy" was released.
- 1969 --- British troops arrived in Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
- 1969 --- The New York Mets were 9-1/2 games behind the league-leading Chicago Cubs. The Amazing Mets began a comeback that launched the phrase, “You Gotta Believe,” as they began a drive that took them to the National League pennant and the World Series Championship (over the Baltimore Orioles). It was the first championship for the Mets franchise which began in 1962.
- 1971 --- Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals pitched a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh
Pirates. It was the first no-hitter against the Pirates since 1955.
- 1980 --- Workers in Gdansk, Poland, seize the Lenin Shipyard and demand pay raises and the right to form a union free from communist control. The massive strike also saw the rise to prominence of labor leader Lech Walesa, who would be a key figure in bringing an end to communist rule in Poland. Gdansk had been a center of labor agitation in Poland since the 1960s. When the Polish
government announced new economic austerity policies and higher food prices in 1980, workers at the Lenin Shipyard exploded in anger. Lech Walesa, a veteran of Poland's labor disputes, joined the workers and on August 14, 1980, they took over the shipyard.
- 1985 --- Michael Jackson purchased the publishing rights to the vast majority of the Beatles' catalog for $47 million, outbidding Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. Every time a copyrighted recording is exploited for commercial purposes—played on the radio, for instance, or used in a movie or television commercial—the party that uses that recording is required to pay a licensing fee. A portion of that fee will be paid out to the record label that issued the recording, and the record label, in turn, will pay a portion of its share to the performer. Separately, a portion of the licensing fee is due to the writer of the song in question. Songwriters—even those who are also performers—tend to enter into agreements with professional music-publishing companies to manage the collection of their songwriting royalties. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the Beatles' primary songwriters, did something slightly more complicated. The publishing agreement they signed was with a company of which they were also part owners. That company, called Northern Songs, Ltd., was formed in 1964 expressly to generate revenues from the growing catalog of Lennon-McCartney compositions. In this way, every sale or other commercial use of the song "Yesterday" earned Lennon and McCartney a songwriting royalty that they split with Northern Songs. And part of Northern Songs' share would then come back to Lennon and McCartney as part owners of the company. In 1969, the British company Associated TeleVision completed a messy and contentious takeover of Northern Songs, which in turn led Lennon and McCartney to pull out of their contract for future compositions and to sell off their own shares in the company. More than 15 years later, in 1985, as ATV prepared to sell its entire publishing catalog, Paul McCartney anticipated purchasing it himself, only to be thwarted by Michael Jackson, who was then at the peak of his financial power. In 2008, however, Jackson gave up his remaining interest in the catalog to Sony, one of his primary creditors.
- 1987 --- Mark McGwire set the record for home runs by a rookie, as he connected for his 49th round-tripper of the season. He got the homer off of 317-game winner Don Sutton of the California Angels. McGwire led the the Oakland Athletics to a 7-6 win -- in 12 innings.
- 1998 --- A U.S. federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had no authority to regulate tobacco. The FDA had established rules to make it harder for minors to buy cigarettes.
- 2003 --- A major outage knocked out power across the eastern United States and parts of Canada. Beginning at 4:10 p.m. ET, 21 power plants shut down in just three minutes. Fifty million people were affected, including residents of New York, Cleveland and Detroit, as well as Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. Although power
companies were able to resume some service in as little as two hours, power remained off in other places for more than a day. The outage stopped trains and elevators, and disrupted everything from cellular telephone service to operations at hospitals to traffic at airports.
- Birthdays
- John Brodie
- David Crosby
- Steve Martin
- Susan St James
- Danielle Steele
- Ervin “Magic” Johnson
- Gary Larson
- Marcia Gay Harden
- Sarah Brightman
- Susan Olsen
- Letitia Landon
- Ernest Thayer
- Halle Berry
- Dash Crofts
- Buddy Greco
- Larry Graham