- 184th Day of 2013 / 181 Remaining
- 81 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:5:53
- Sunset:8:35
- 14 Hours 43 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:2:32am
- Moon Set:4:P53pm
- Moon’s Phase:17 %
- The Next Full Moon
- July 22 @ 11:16am
- Full Buck Moon
- Full Thunder Moon
- Full Hay Moon
July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.
- Tides
- High:9:25am/8:12pm
- Low:2:48am/2:02pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.0
- This Year:0.0
- Last Year:0.0
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Stay Out of the Sun Day
- Compliment Your Mirror Day
- National Chocolate Wafer Day
- National Eat Beans Day
- Dog Days (07/03-08/11)
- Admission Day-Idaho
- Independence Day-Belarus
- Day of the Child-Argentina
- Festival of Cerridwen-Celtic
- On This Day In …
- 1608 --- The city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.
- 1775 --- On Cambridge common in Massachusetts, George Washington rides out in front of the American troops gathered there, draws his sword, and formally takes command of the Continental Army. Washington, a prominent Virginia planter and veteran of the French and Indian War, was appointed commander in chief by the Continental Congress two weeks before. In serving the American colonies in their war for independence, he declined to accept payment for his services beyond reimbursement of future expenses.
- 1790 --- In Paris, the marquis of Condorcet proposed granting civil rights to women
1863 --- On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.
On July 1, a Confederate division under General Henry Heth marched into Gettysburg hoping to seize supplies but finding instead three brigades of Union cavalry. Thus began the Battle of Gettysburg, and Lee and Meade ordered their massive armies to converge on the impromptu battle site. The Union cavalrymen defiantly held the field against overwhelming numbers until the arrival of Federal reinforcements. Later, the Confederates were reinforced, and by mid-afternoon some 19,000 Federals faced 24,000 Confederates. Lee arrived to the battlefield soon afterward and ordered a general advance that forced the Union line back to Cemetery Hill, just south of the town. During the night, the rest of Meade's force arrived, and by the morning Union General Winfield Hancock had formed a strong Union line. On July 2, against the Union left, General James Longstreet led the main Confederate attack, but it was not carried out until about 4 p.m., and the Federals had time to consolidate their positions.
Thus began some of the heaviest fighting of the battle, and Union forces retained control of their strategic positions at heavy cost. After three hours, the battle ended, and the total number of dead at Gettysburg stood at 35,000. On July 3, Lee, having failed on the right and the left, planned an assault on Meade's center. A 15,000-man strong column under General George Pickett was organized, and Lee ordered a massive bombardment of the Union positions. The 10,000 Federals answered the Confederate artillery onslaught, and for more than an hour the guns raged in the heaviest cannonade of the Civil War. At 3 p.m., Pickett led his force into no-man's-land and found that Lee's bombardment had failed. As Pickett's force attempted to cross the mile distance to Cemetery Ridge, Union artillery blew great holes in their lines. Meanwhile, Yankee infantry flanked the main body of "Pickett's charge" and began cutting down the Confederates.
Only a few hundred Virginians reached the Union line, and within minutes they all were dead, dying, or captured. In less than an hour, more than 7,000 Confederate troops had been killed or wounded. Both armies, exhausted, held their positions until the night of July 4, when Lee withdrew. The Army of the Potomac was too weak to pursue the Confederates, and Lee led his army out of the North, never to invade it again.
- 1890 --- The Spud State, the Potato State, the Gem State are all synonymous with Idaho, which entered the United States of America on this day. The capital of the 43rd state is Boise. The official state bird is the mountain bluebird; the state flower is the syringa ... or lilac, to the non-botanists among us.
- 1903 --- The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.
- 1924 --- Clarence Birdseye, with the financial backing of W. Hodges, W. Gamage, B. Jones, I.L. Rice and J.J. Barry, founded the General Seafood Corporation. The birth of the frozen food industry.
- 1929 --- Unusual uses for kitchen appliances: Foam rubber was developed at Dunlop Laboratories. British scientist E.A. Murphy used a kitchen mixer to whip natural latex rubber.
- 1930 --- Congress created the Veterans Administration.
- 1940 --- The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello debuted with their network radio show on NBC. The duo replaced Fred Allen for the summer months. Twelve years later, Abbott and Costello went on to produce 52 episodes of one of the most successful and repeated programs in TV history, The Abbott and Costello Show. A cartoon version of the human cartoons followed in 1966. The most famous of all Abbott and Costello routines was Who’s on First. The names of the players and their positions in the hilarious skit were: First base: "Who"; Second base: "What"; Third base: "I Don’t Know"; Shortstop: "I Don’t Care" (or, "I Don’t Give a Darn"); Pitcher: "Tomorrow"; Catcher: "Today"; Left field: "Why" and Center field: "Because".
- 1941 --- Cab Calloway and his orchestra recorded the standard, St. James Infirmary, for Okeh Records.
- 1945 --- The first civilian passenger car built since February 1942 was driven off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit, MI. Automotive production had been diverted to military production for the war (WWII) effort.
- 1957 --- Nikita Khrushchev takes control in the Soviet Union by orchestrating the ouster of his most serious opponents from positions of authority in the Soviet government. Khrushchev's action delighted the United States, which viewed him as a more moderate figure in the communist government of Russia.
- 1962 --- Jackie Robinson became the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
- 1969 --- Brian Jones (formerly of the Rolling Stones) was found dead in his swimming pool at his Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, England, home.
- 1971 --- Rock singer Jim Morrison of The Doors died in Paris at age 27.
- 1976 --- 103 hostages were rescued by an Israeli commando unit in a raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda. 106 hostages had been taken from a hijacked Air France airliner on its way to Paris from Tel Aviv. Seven pro-Palestinian guerrilla hijackers, 20 Ugandan soldiers and 3 hostages were killed in the raid.
- 1986 --- President Ronald Reagan presided over a ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.
- 1988 --- In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship--the aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf defending Kuwaiti oil tankers. Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at its helicopter. Iran called the downing of the aircraft a "barbaric massacre," but U.S. officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a descent toward the Vincennes. However, one month later, U.S. authorities acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men who were in combat for the first time. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.
- 2009 --- Sarah Palin announced she would resign as Alaska governor with 16 months left in her term.
- Birthdays
- MFK Fisher
- George M Cohan
- Pete Fountain
- Sen Lamar Alexander
- Dave Barry
- Michael Cole
- Betty Buckley
- Montel Williams
- Yeardley Smith
- Audra McDonald
- Dorothy Kilgallen
- Ken Russell
- Fontella Bass