- 235th Day of 2012 /131 Remaining
- 31 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:32
- Sunset:7:53
- 13 Hours 21 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:12:09pm
- Moon Set:10:46pm
- Moon’s Phase: 30 %
- The Next Full Moon
- August 31st @ 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:2:49am/2:57pm
- Low:8:25am/9:36pm
- 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
- Be An Angel Day
- National Pecan Torte Day
- Pocketphone Day
- National Eat a Peach Day
- Southern Hemisphere Hoodie-Hoo Day (A time for everyone in the southern hemisphere to go outdoors at noon at yell, "Hoodie-Hoo!" to chase away winter and make ready for spring.)
- National Flag Day-Russia
- Eid-al-Fitr Holiday-Saudi Arabia
- On This Day In …
- 1775 --- Britain's King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of open rebellion.
- 1776 --- The British arrive at Long Island, between Gravesend and New Utrecht, with "near twenty four thousand men ready to land in a moment," according to one observer. General William Howe's large army came to Long Island hoping to capture New York City and gain control of the Hudson River, a victory that would divide the rebellious colonies in half. Five days later, on August 27, the Redcoats marched against the Patriot position at Brooklyn Heights, overcoming the Americans at Gowanus Pass and then outflanking the entire Continental Army. The Americans suffered 1,000 casualties to the British loss of only 400 men during the fighting. Howe chose not to follow the advice of his subordinates, however, and did not storm the Patriot redoubts at Brooklyn Heights, where he could have taken the Patriots' military leadership prisoner and ended the rebellion. General Washington ordered a retreat to Manhattan by boat. The British could easily have prevented this retreat and captured most of the Patriot officer corps, including Washington. However, General William and Admiral Richard Howe still hoped to convince the Americans to rejoin the British empire in the wake of the humiliating defeat, instead of forcing the former colonies into submission after executing Washington and his officers as traitors. On September 11, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and other congressional representatives reopened negotiations with the Howe brothers on Staten Island. The negotiations fell through when the British refused to accept American independence.
- 1851 --- The schooner America outraced the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that became known as the America's Cup.
- 1864 --- The Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field is adopted by 12 nations meeting in Geneva. The agreement, advocated by Swiss humanitarian Jean-Henri Dunant, called for nonpartisan care to the sick and wounded in times of war and provided for the neutrality of medical personnel. It also proposed the use of an international emblem to mark medical personnel and supplies. In honor of Dunant's nationality, a red cross on a white background--the Swiss flag in reverse--was chosen. In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize.
- 1902 --- President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile, in Hartford, Connecticut.
- 1922 --- Irish revolutionary and Sinn Fein politician Michael Collins is killed in an ambush in west County Cork, Ireland. In the early part of the century, Collins joined Sinn Fein, an Irish political party dedicated to achieving independence for all Ireland. From its inception, the party became the unofficial political wing of militant Irish groups in their struggle to throw off British rule. In 1911, the British Liberal government approved negotiations for Irish Home Rule, but the Conservative Party opposition in Parliament, combined with Ireland's anti-Home Rule factions, defeated the plans. With the outbreak of World War I, the British government delayed further discussion of Irish self-determination, and Collins and other Irish nationalists responded by staging the Easter Rising of 1916. In 1918, with the threat of conscription being imposed on the island, the Irish people gave Sinn Fein a majority in national elections, and the party established an independent Irish parliament, Dail Eireann, which declared Ireland a sovereign republic. In 1919, Collins led the Irish Volunteers, a prototype of the Irish Republican Army, in a widespread and effective guerrilla campaign against British forces. Two years later, a cease-fire was declared, and Collins was one of the architects of the historic 1921 peace treaty with Great Britain, which granted autonomy to southern Ireland. In January 1922, Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith was elected president of the newly established Irish Free State, and Collins was appointed as his finance minister. He held the post until he was assassinated by Republican extremists in August 1922.
- 1939 --- The first U.S. patent was issued for a disposable whipped cream aerosol container. Julius S. Kahn's patent was titled "An Apparatus for Mixing a Liquid with a Gas" and was specifically concerned with making whipped cream, using a ordinary soda bottle.
- 1950 --- The United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) accept Althea Gibson into their annual championship at Forest Hills, New York, making her the first African-American player to compete in a U.S. national tennis competition. Growing up in Harlem, the young Gibson was a natural athlete. She started playing tennis at the age of 14 and the very next year won her first tournament, the New York State girls' championship, sponsored by the American Tennis Association (ATA), which was organized in 1916 by black players as an alternative to the exclusively white USLTA. After prominent doctors and tennis enthusiasts Hubert Eaton and R. Walter Johnson took Gibson under their wing, she won her first of what would be 10 straight ATA championships in 1947. In 1949, Gibson attempted to gain entry into the USLTA's National Grass Court Championships at Forest Hills, the precursor of the U.S. Open. When the USLTA failed to invite her to any qualifying tournaments, Alice Marble--a four-time winner at Forest Hills--wrote a letter on Gibson's behalf to the editor of American Lawn Tennis magazine. Marble criticized the "bigotry" of her fellow USLTA members, suggesting that if Gibson posed a challenge to current tour players, "it's only fair that they meet this challenge on the courts." Gibson was subsequently invited to participate in a New Jersey qualifying event, where she earned a berth at Forest Hills. On August 28, 1950, Gibson beat Barbara Knapp 6-2, 6-2 in her first USLTA tournament match. She lost a tight match in the second round to Louise Brough, three-time defending Wimbledon champion. Gibson struggled over her first several years on tour but finally won her first major victory in 1956, at the French Open in Paris. She came into her own the following year, winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open at the relatively advanced age of 30.
- 1968 --- In the streets of Prague and in the United Nations headquarters in New York City, Czechs protest against the Soviet invasion of their nation. The protests served to highlight the brutality of the Soviet action and to rally worldwide condemnation of the Soviet Union. On August 21, 1968, more than 200,000 troops of the Warsaw Pact crossed into Czechoslovakia in response to democratic and free market reforms being instituted by Czech Communist Party General Secretary Alexander Dubcek. Negotiations between Dubcek and Soviet bloc leaders failed to convince the Czech leader to back away from his reformist platform. The military intervention on August 21 indicated that the Soviets believed that Dubcek was going too far and needed to be restrained. On August 22, thousands of Czechs gathered in central Prague to protest the Soviet action and demand the withdrawal of foreign troops. Although it was designed to be a peaceful protest, violence often flared and several protesters were killed on August 22 and in the days to come. At the United Nations, the Czech delegation passionately declared that the Soviet invasion was illegal and threatened the sovereignty of their nation. They called on the U.N.'s Security Council to take action. The Council voted 10 to 2 to condemn Russia's invasion; predictably, the Soviet Union vetoed the resolution.
- 1989 --- British Telecom introduced the first pocket phones
- 1989 --- Texas Ranger Nolan Ryan fired a 96-mile-an-hour fastball to strike out Oakland’s Rickey Henderson, Nolan’s 5,000th strike out.
- 1998 --- President Clinton announced he had signed an executive order putting Osama bin Laden's Islamic Army and two of his main lieutenants on a list of terrorist groups.
- 2005 --- Shocked spectators watched as armed thieves stole one of four versions of the Edvard Munch masterpiece ''The Scream'' and a second Munch painting, ''Madonna,'' from the Munch museum in Oslo, Norway.
- Birthdays
- Dorothy Parker
- John Lee Hooker
- Cindy Williams
- Valerie Harper
- Tori Amos
- Holly Dunn
- Carl Yastrzcmski
- Ray Bradbury”Fahrenheit 451” “The Martian Chronicles” “The Illustrated Man”)
- Morton Dean
- Vernon Reid
- Debbi Peterson
- Deng Xiaoping
- Claude Debussy
- Annie Proulx
- George Herriman
- Norman Schwarzkopf