- 232nd Day of the Year / 133 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 33 Days
- Sunrise:6:30
- Sunset:7:55
- 13 Hours 25 Minutes
- Moon Rise:2:16am
- Moon Set:4:43pm
- Moon’s Phase 20%
- Full Moon August 10 @ 11:10am
- Full Sturgeon 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 Tide:9:12am/7:59pm
- Low Tide:2:24am/2:06pm
- Holidays
- Homeless Animals Day
- Medical Dosimetrist Day
- National Radio Day
- Chocolate Pecan Pie Day
- Lemonade Day
- World Mosquito Day
- Constitution Day-Hungary
- Restoration Of Independence Day-Estonia
- On This Day
- 1741 --- Alaska was “discovered” by Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering.
- 1862 --- New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley publishes a passionate editorial calling on President Abraham Lincoln to declare emancipation for all slaves in Union-held territory. Greeley's blistering words voiced the impatience of many Northern abolitionists; but unbeknownst to Greeley and the public, Lincoln was already moving in the direction of emancipation.
- 1866 --- The National Labor Union advocated an eight-hour workday. Industry, however, did not heed the request. Workers commonly worked 10 or 12 hour days -- or more.
- 1882 --- Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" debuted in Moscow.
- 1885 --- "The Mikado", by Gilbert and Sullivan, opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City.
- 1910 --- The Great Fire of 1910 (also called the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) was the largest forest fire in U.S. history. Burning for 2 days, August 20 & 21, it destroyed about 3 million acres across northeast Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana (an area about the size of Connecticut). 87 people were killed, including 78 firefighters.
- 1920 --- Seven men, including legendary all-around athlete and football star Jim Thorpe, meet to organize a professional football league at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in Canton, Ohio. The meeting led to the creation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), the forerunner to the hugely successful National Football League. Professional football developed in the 1890s in Pennsylvania, as local athletic clubs engaged in increasingly intense competition. Former Yale football star William "Pudge" Heffelfinger became the first-ever professional football player when he was hired by the Allegheny Athletic Association to play in a game against their rival the Pittsburgh Athletic Club in November 1892. By 1896, the Allegheny Athletic Association was made up entirely of paid players, making it the sport’s first-ever professional team. As football became more and more popular, local semi-pro and pro teams were organized across the country.
- 1923 --- The first American dirigible, the "Shenandoah," was launched in Lakehurst, NJ. The ship began its maiden voyage from the same location on September 4.
- 1940 --- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
- 1940 --- Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by an ice-ax-wielding assassin at his compound outside Mexico City. The killer--Ramón Mercader--was a Spanish communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Trotsky died from his wounds the next day.
- 1945 --- Tommy Brown (Brooklyn Dodgers) became the youngest player to hit a home run in a major league ball game. Brown was 17 years, 8 months and 14 days old.
- 1949 --- Cleveland’s Indians and Chicago’s White Sox played at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland before the largest crowd, 78,382 people, to see a nighttime major-league baseball game.
- 1955 --- Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
- 1967 --- The New York Times reported about a noise reduction system for album and tape recording developed by technicians R. and D.W. Dolby. Elektra Record's subsidiary, Checkmate Records became the first label to use the new Dolby process in its recordings.
- 1968 --- In the face of rising anti-Soviet protests in Czechoslovakia, Soviet troops (backed by troops from other Warsaw Pact nations) intervene to crush the protest and restore order. The brutal Soviet action shocked the West and dealt a devastating blow to U.S.-Soviet relations. Not since 1956, when Soviet troops intervened in Hungary, had the Russian government resorted to such force to bring one of its communist allies into line with its own policies. The Czech invasion was particularly damaging to U.S.-Soviet relations. In June 1967, President Johnson met with Soviet Premier Kosygin to begin discussions related to a number of issues, including arms control. It was agreed that Johnson would visit the Soviet Union in October 1968 to continue the talks. The Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia caused Johnson to cancel his visit abruptly. Nearly
200,000 Soviet, East German, Polish, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops invaded Czechoslovakia in the largest deployment of military force in Europe since the end of World War II. Armed resistance to the invasion was negligible, but protesters immediately took to the streets, tearing down streets signs in an effort to confuse the invaders. In Prague, Warsaw Pact troops moved to seize control of television and radio stations. At Radio Prague, journalists refused to give up the station and some 20 people were killed before it was captured. Other stations went underground and succeeded in
broadcasting for several days before their locations were discovered. Dubcek and other government leaders were detained and taken to Moscow. Meanwhile, widespread demonstrations continued on the street, and more than 100 protesters were shot to death by Warsaw Pact troops. Many foreign nations, including China, Yugoslavia, and Romania, condemned the invasion, but no major international action was taken. Much of Czechoslovakia's intellectual and business elite fled en masse to the West.
- 1975 --- Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Mars.
- 1977 --- The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
- 1985 --- The machine that revolutionized the world’s offices, the original Xerox 914 copier, took its place among the honored machines of other eras at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The document copier had been formally introduced to the world in March of 1960. In just twenty-five years, the machine, invented by Chester Carlson, a patent lawyer, had become obsolete enough to make it into the museum.
- 1986 --- U.S. Census Bureau officials reported that the U.S. population stood at 240,468,000 and the median age reached an all-time high of 31-1/2 years.
- 1991 --- A rally of more than 100,000 people occurred outside the Russian parliament building to protest the coup that removed Gorbachev from power.
- 1995 --- A collision between two trains in northern India kills 358 people on this day in 1995. It was the worst train accident in the country's history, eclipsing a deadly 1981 accident. At approximately 2 a.m., the Kalindi Express, headed to New Delhi, hit a cow on the tracks near Firozabad, about 185 miles southeast of its destination. None of the 900 passengers were hurt, but the train's brakes were damaged by the collision and it could not continue the journey. Lai Sharman, the local signalman, failed to stop the next express train coming through on the tracks, which may have been only minutes behind the Kalindi Express—dangerously close.The Pureshotham Express from Puri, with 1,300 mostly sleeping passengers onboard, came down the tracks at full speed with no warning that the Kalindi was fully stopped in front of it. Six cars on each of the trains virtually exploded on impact.
- 1997 --- Alabama Governor Fob James joined the mayors of Montgomery and Georgina, AL, in the Alabama State Capitol to dedicate a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 65 to the memory of Hank Williams. The section of roadway was renamed the "Hank Williams Memorial Lost Highway."
- 1998 --- Canada's Supreme Court announced that Quebec could not secede without the federal government's consent. The Court“found there to be no basis, either under Canadian domestic law or under international law, on which the governmental institutions of Quebec could claim any legal right to secede from Canada unilaterally.”
- 2003 --- In Rhode Island, OSHA fined Derco LLC, which operated The Station club, $85,200 for one "willful" violation and six serious violations related to the February 20 fire that killed 100 and injured almost 200. Great White was fined $7,000 for failing to protect employees from fire hazards.
- Birthdays
- Benjamin Harrison (23rd President)
- Robert Plant
- Al Roker
- Sen George Mitchell
- Connie Chung
- John Hiatt
- KRS-One
- Jack Teagarden
- HP Lovecraft
- Jacqueline Susann
- Isaac Hayes
- Joan Allen
- Jim Reeves
