- 200th Day of 2012 / 166 Remaining
- 66 Days Until Autumn Begins
- Sunrise:6:02
- Sunset:8:30
- 14 Hours 28 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:5:42am
- Moon Set:8:05pm
- Moon’s Phase: New Moon
- 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:12:16pm/10:49pm
- Low:5:19am/5:03pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:0.01
- Last Year:0.08
- Normal To Date:0.00
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- National Caviar Day
- National Get Out of the Doghouse Day
- Perfect 10 Day
- Make A List of the People You Love Day
- Global Hug For Your Kids Day
- Nelson Mandela’s Birthday-South Africa
- Constitution Day-Uruguay
- On This Day In …
- 0064 --- The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda. The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill. The area's homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds. During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting. The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days. Three of Rome's 14 districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless. Although popular legend holds that Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned, this account is wrong on several accounts. First, the fiddle did not even exist at the time. Instead, Nero was well known for his talent on the lyre; he often composed his own music. More importantly, Nero was actually 35 miles away in Antium when the fire broke out. In fact, he let his palace be used as a shelter. Legend has long blamed Nero for a couple of reasons. Nero did not like the aesthetics of the city and used the devastation of the fire in order to change much of it and institute new building codes throughout the city. Nero also used the fire to clamp down on the growing influence of Christians in Rome. He arrested, tortured and executed hundreds of Christians on the pretext that they had something to do with the fire.
- 1536 --- The authority of the pope was declared void in England.
- 1914 --- Convicted of murder on meager evidence, the singing Wobbly Joe Hill is sentenced to be executed in Utah. A native of Sweden who immigrated to the U.S. in 1879, Joe Hill joined the International Workers of the World (IWW) in 1910. The IWW was an industrial union that rejected the capitalist system and dreamed one day of leading a national workers' revolution. Members of the IWW--known as Wobblies--were especially active in the western United States, where they enjoyed considerable success in organizing mistreated and exploited workers in the mining, logging, and shipping industries. Beginning in 1908, the IWW began encouraging its membership to express their beliefs through song. The IWW published its Little Red Song Book, otherwise known as the I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. A few years later, the witty and handsome Joe Hill became one of the Wobblies' leading singers and songwriters. Hill composed many of the IWW's best-loved anthems, including "The Preacher of the Slave" which introduced the phrase "pie in the sky." By 1915, Hill was one of the most famous Wobblies in the nation. Public notoriety, however, could prove dangerous for a radical union man. In 1915, Hill was arrested and charged with murdering two Salt Lake City policemen during a grocery store robbery. Although the evidence against Hill was tenuous, a jury of conservative Utahans convicted him on this day in 1914 and he was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad the following year. Ever since, scholars have debated whether Hill was actually guilty or was railroaded because of his radical politics. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, Hill became a powerful martyr for the IWW cause by telegramming his comrades with a famous last-minute message: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."
- 1927 --- Baseball's Ty Cobb hit safely for the 4,000th time in his career.
- 1936 --- The first Wienermobile rolled out of General Body Company’s factory in Chicago. The Wienermobile tours around the U.S. fascinating children of all ages as it promotes the famous Oscar Mayer wiener. If you’ve had the pleasure of seeing the Wienermobile in person, don’t think only the folks in your part of the U.S.A. are the lucky ones, because today there are six of the silly-looking cars. Every now and then a commercial jingle becomes something other than a commercial. It becomes a part of Americana. And so it goes with the Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle (“I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener...”). But long before the jingle/song entered our lives, Carl Mayer, nephew of Oscar Mayer, invented the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
- 1936 --- The Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in North Africa.
- 1947 --- U.S. President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
- 1968 --- The Grateful Dead released their 2nd album, "Anthem of the Sun."
- 1968 --- Hugh Masekela struck gold with the breezy, latin-soul instrumental Grazing in the Grass, while Gary Puckett and The Union Gap received a similar honor for the hit, Lady Willpower. Masekela, a trumpeter since age 14, saw Grazing in the Grass go to number one for two weeks (July 20/27). Grazing was his only entry on the pop music charts. The Union Gap scored three more million-sellers in the late 1960s: Woman, Woman, Young Girl and Over You. The Union Gap was formed in 1967 and named after the town of Union Gap, Washington. As always, I’m Casey Kasem. Keep your feet off the sofa and, um, you know the rest.
- 1974 --- Though doctors at Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ontario, had ordered that 54-year-old patient Max Matetich was to undergo "no stress whatsoever," they decided to tell him anyway when he won the $1-million Olympic Canada lottery. He handled the stress just fine.
- 1974 --- The U.S. Justice Department ordered John Lennon out of the country by September 10. The Immigration and Naturalization Service denied him an extension of his non-immigrant visa because of his guilty plea in England to a 1968 marijuana possession charge. Lennon appealed the decision and was granted a “Green Card” a few years later.
- 1976 --- Nadia Comaneci, the 14-year-old star gymnast from Romania, stunned those watching the Olympic Games by executing perfect form to collect a perfect score of ‘10’ from the judges. This was the first perfect score ever recorded on the uneven parallel bars. Nadia went on to collect seven perfect scores, three gold medals, a silver and a bronze. She also won two gold and two silver medals in the 1980 Olympics. Pretty heavy stuff for the tiny lady.
- 1995 --- The oldest known musical instrument in the world was found in the Indrijca River Valley in Slovenia. The 45,000 year-old relic was a bear bone with four artificial holes along its length.
- Birthdays
- Hunter S Thompson
- Nelson Mandela
- Martha Reeves
- Dion DiMucci
- John Glenn
- Sen. Mark Udall
- Joe Torre
- Dick Button
- James Brolin
- Ricky Skaggs
- Andrey Gromyko
- S. I. Hayakawa
- Clifford Odets
- Hume Cronyn
- Harriet Nelson
- Red Skelton
- Screamin' Jay Hawkins