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Wednesday July 11, 2012

1979 - Skylab (highlighted story below)
  • 193rd Day of 2012 / 173 Remaining
  • 73 Days Until Autumn Begins
  • Sunrise:5:57
  • Sunset:8:33
  • 14 Hours 36 Minutes of Daylight
  • Moon Rise:12:31am
  • Moon Set:2:16pm
  • Moon’s Phase: 43 %
  • 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 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:5:55am/5:47pm
  • Low:12:04am/11:14am
  • 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
  • National Blueberry Muffin Day
  • Reading Guilt Day (A day to actually start reading an entire book you only read the Cliff Notes version of in college.)
  • Bowdler's Day(To bowdlerize means to self-righteously remove or modify passages one considers vulgar or objectionable. A medical doctor by the name of Thomas Bowdler, whose birthday was this day in 1754, gave new meaning to expurgation. Dr. Bowdler gave up his medical practice to practice surgery on the works of William Shakespeare. He removed all those words “...which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family” or which are “...unfit to be read aloud by a gentleman to a company of ladies.” He removed all the words and expressions which he considered to be indecent or impious from his ten volumes of Shakespeare’s writings. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Bowdler. He moved on to Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and then he boldly bowdlerized the Old Testament. In doing so, he irritated a lot of people - so many that his name became synonymous with these acts. )
  • International Town Criers Day
  • UN World Population Day
  • Guldensporenslag/Flemish Community Holiday-Belgium
  • Revolution Day-Mongolia
  • On This Day In …
  • 1533 --- Henry VIII, who divorced his wife and became head of the church of England, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Clement VII.
  • 1792 --- The first issue of the 'Farmer's Almanac' was published by Robert Bailey Thomas. (Now called 'Old Farmer's Almanac'). [Some sources list October 13].
  • 1798 --- The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by "An Act for Establishing a Marine Corps" passed by the U.S. Congress. The act also created the U.S. Marine Band. The Marines were first commissioned by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775.
  • 1804 --- Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton to death in their famous duel. Samuel Broadhurst, a relative of Burr’s, had tried to negotiate a settlement between the two, but Burr offered the challenge and the duel ensued.\
  • 1914 --- George Herman "Babe" Ruth pitches seven strong innings to lead the Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 4-3. George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father worked as a saloon keeper on the waterfront. He was the first of eight children, but only he and a sister survived infancy. The young George, known as "Gig" (pronounced jij) to his family, was a magnet for trouble from an early age. At seven, his truancy from school led his parents to declare him incorrigible, and he was sent to an orphanage, St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. Ruth lived there until he was 19 in 1914, when he was signed as a pitcher by the Baltimore Orioles. That same summer, Ruth was sold to the Boston Red Sox. His teammates called him "Babe" for his naiveté, but his talent was already maturing. In his debut game against the Indians, the 19-year-old Ruth gave up just five hits over the first six innings. In the seventh, the Indians managed two runs on three singles and a sacrifice and Ruth was relieved. His hitting prowess, however, was not on display that first night--he went 0 for 2 at the plate. Ruth developed quickly as a pitcher and as a hitter. When the Red Sox made the World Series in 1916 and 1918, Ruth starred, setting a record with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play. His career record as a pitcher for the Red Sox was 89-46. To the great dismay of Boston fans, Ruth’s contract was sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, so that Frazee could finance the musical No, No, Nanette. Ruth switched to the outfield with the Yankees, and hit more home runs than the entire Red Sox team in 10 of the next 12 seasons. "The Sultan of Swat" or "The Bambino," as he was alternately known, was the greatest gate attraction in baseball until his retirement as a player in 1935. During his career with the New York Yankees, the team won four World Series and seven American League pennants. After getting rid of Ruth, the Red Sox did not win a World Series until 2004, an 85-year drought known to Red Sox fans as "the Curse of the Bambino."
  • 1918 --- Enrico Caruso bypassed opera for a short time to join the war (WWI) effort. Caruso recorded Over There, the patriotic song written by George M. Cohan.
  • 1922 --- The Hollywood Bowl, one of the world’s largest natural amphitheaters, opens with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since that time, a long, diverse list of performers, including The Beatles, Luciano Pavarotti and Judy Garland, have appeared on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. The venue has become a famous Los Angeles landmark and has been featured in numerous movies. As the official summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl has hosted such famous conductors as Arthur Rubinstein, Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Horowitz, along with opera singers Jessye Norman, Beverly Sills and Placido Domingo. Dancers from Fred Astaire to Mikhail Baryshnikov have graced the stage, as have entertainers including Abbott and Costello, Al Jolson, Billie Holiday, Garth Brooks and Elton John.
  • 1959 --- Joan Baez made her first recording. It was a duet with Bob Gibson which was recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival.
  • 1960 --- "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was published.
  • 1964 --- 18-year-old Millie Small was riding high on the pop music charts with My Boy Lollipop (#2, 7/04/64). Listen carefully to the tune and you’ll hear Rod Stewart playing harmonica. Millie Small was known as the ’Blue Beat Girl’ in Jamaica, her homeland.
  • 1979 --- Skylab, America's first space station, come crashing down on Australia and into the Indian Ocean five years after the last manned Skylab mission ended. No one was injured. Launched in 1973, Skylab was the world's first successful space station. The first manned Skylab mission came two years after the Soviet Union launched Salynut 1, the world's first space station, into orbit around the earth. However, unlike the ill-fated Salynut, which was plagued with problems, the American space station was a great success, safely housing three separate three-man crews for extended periods of time. Originally the spent third stage of a Saturn 5 moon rocket, the cylindrical space station was 118 feet tall, weighed 77 tons, and carried the most varied assortment of experimental equipment ever assembled in a single spacecraft to that date. The crews of Skylab spent more than 700 hours observing the sun and brought home more than 175,000 solar pictures. They also provided important information about the biological effects of living in space for prolonged periods of time. Five years after the last Skylab mission, the space station's orbit began to deteriorate--earlier than was anticipated--because of unexpectedly high sunspot activity. On July 11, 1979, Skylab made a spectacular return to earth, breaking up in the atmosphere and showering burning debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
  • 1985 --- Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros became the first major-league pitcher to earn 4,000 strikeouts in a career as he led the Astros to a 4-3 win over the New York Mets. Danny Heep, formerly of the Astros, gave Ryan his milestone by fanning on three straight pitches.
  • 1985 --- Zippers for stitches were announced by Dr. H. Harlan Stone. The surgeon had used zippers on 28 patients whom he thought might require additional operations because of internal bleeding following initial operations. The zippers, which lasted between five and 14 days, were then replaced with permanent stitches.
  • 1987 --- According to the U.N., world population hit 5 billion.
  • 1988 --- South Korean police arrested 15,617 demonstrators in one day. They were concerned about security at the Olympic Games in Seoul.
  • 1992 --- A Japanese rancher told Tokyo reporters he outfitted his cattle with pocket pagers. He said it took the cows about a week to learn that the beep means it’s time to eat. He just dials the beeper number and they come running.
  • Birthdays
  • John Quincy Adams (6th President)
  • Bonnie Pointer
  • Suzanne Vega
  • Sela Ward
  • Leon Spinks
  • E. B. White
  • Caroline Wozniacki
  • Tab Hunter
  • Lil' Kim
  • Robert I, the Bruce
  • Yul Brynner
  • Mark Lester
  • Thomas Bowdler
  • Giorgio Armani
  • Jeff Hanna