- 172nd Day of 2012 / 194 Remaining
- First Day of Summer (begins @ 4:09pm)
- Sunrise:5:48
- Sunset:8:36
- 14 Hours 48 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:6:52am
- Moon Set:9:27pm
- Moon’s Phase: 1 %
- The Next Full Moon
- July 3 @ 11:51am
- 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:1:23pm/11:44pm
- Low:6:15am/6:03pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:15.80
- Last Year:28.51
- Normal To Date:23.80
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Admission Day-West Virginia
- National Vanilla Milkshake Day
- Ice Cream Soda Day
- UN World Refugee Day
- World Juggling Day
- Flag Day-Argentina
- Martyr's Day-Eritrea
- On This Day In …
- 1782 --- The Great Seal of the United States was adopted by Congress. William Barton designed the seal which consists of an eagle, an olive branch and 13 arrows -- one for each of the original 13 colonies.
- 1863 --- Virginia’s cessation from the Union gave reason for the birth of West Virginia. 40 western counties of Virginia did not secede, and instead, formed their own government, officially entering the United States of America this day as the 35th state. Charleston is the capital of the Mountain State which boasts of having the most rugged terrain of any state east of the Mississippi. Throughout the forested hills of West Virginia, you’ll also find many cardinals (the state bird) and multitudes of the state flower, the big rhododendron.
- 1877 --- Canadian inventor Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario.
- 1887 --- On Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Buffalo Bill Cody staged a Royal Command Performance of his famous Wild West Show and four European kings boarded the original Deadwood stagecoach driven by Cody.
- 1893 --- A jury in New Bedford, Mass., found Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father and stepmother.
- 1921 --- Alice Robertson of Oklahoma became the first woman to preside over the U.S. House of Representatives.
- 1941 --- After a long and bitter struggle on the part of Henry Ford against cooperation with organized labor unions, Ford Motor Company signs its first contract with the United Automobile Workers of America and Congress of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO). In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's allies in Congress passed the landmark National Labor Relations Act--also known as the Wagner Act, after one of its authors, Senator Robert Wagner of New York--which established workers' rights to collective bargaining and attempted to regulate unfair practices by employers, employees and unions. By 1937, after successful sit-down strikes (during which the workers remained inside the factory so that strikebreakers were unable to enter) both General Motors and Chrysler had made deals with the fledgling UAW, and Ford was the lone holdout against the unionization of the auto industry. Edsel Ford, president of Ford Motor, recognized that the Wagner Act had made unionization inevitable, and tried to reason with his father. The elder Ford, who despised labor unions, instead put his trust in Harry Bennett, head of Ford's Service Department, who promised to keep the unions at bay. In the much-publicized "Battle of the Overpass" on May 26, 1937, Ford henchmen brutally beat several UAW organizers (including Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen) attempting to hand out leaflets at Ford's River Rouge plant. In the aftermath of this incident, Ford Motor Company was found guilty of violating the Wagner Act, and in early 1941 the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to stop interfering with the union's attempts to organize. On April 1, 1941, a walkout by Ford workers protesting the firing of several union members closed down the River Rouge plant. The strike inflamed racial tensions, as many African-American Ford employees returned to work before their white colleagues, breaking the strike. Though Henry Ford had initially threatened to shut down his plants rather than sign with the UAW-CIO, he changed his position and signed a contract with the union that June 20. Ford's change of heart was reportedly due to the urging of his wife, Clara, who feared that more riots and bloodshed would result from her husband's refusal to work with the unions and threatened to leave him if he did not sign the contract. Paradoxically, Ford gave its workers more generous terms than had either GM or Chrysler: In addition to paying back wages to more than 4,000 workers who had been wrongfully discharged, the company agreed to match the highest wage rates in the industry and to deduct union dues from workers' pay.
- 1947 --- Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills, CA, at the order of mob associates angered over the soaring costs of his project, the Flamingo resort in Las Vegas, NV.
- 1948 --- Toast of the Town premiered on CBS-TV. New York entertainment columnist and critic Ed Sullivan was the host. It started his TV career that would span 23 years on a weekly basis. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made their television debut on the show. Also on the guest list: Rodgers & Hammerstein and pianist Eugene List. The first show of Toast of the Town cost $1375 to produce, including just $375 for the talent.
- 1950 --- Willie Mays graduated from high school and immediately signed with the New York Giants for a $6,000 bonus. The ‘Say Hey Kid’ would play most of his career for the Giants -- in both New York and San Francisco -- becoming a baseball legend. As his career came to a close, Mays was traded to the New York Mets.
- 1966 --- The U.S. Open golf tournament was broadcast from San Francisco, with something extra for the nation’s golf fans. It was the first time TV had beamed a golf event in color.
- 1967 --- Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
- 1972 --- The old Tallahatchie Bridge, made famous in Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 blockbuster "Ode to Billy Joe," collapsed in Mississippi.
- 1975 --- Jaws, a film directed by Steven Spielberg that made countless viewers afraid to go into the water, opens in theaters. The story of a great white shark that terrorizes a New England resort town became an instant blockbuster and the highest-grossing film in movie history until it was bested by 1977's Star Wars. Jaws was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category and took home three Oscars, for Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound. The film, a breakthrough for director Spielberg, then 27 years old, spawned three sequels.
- 1977 --- With a flip of a switch in Prudhoe Bay, crude oil from the nation's largest oil field begins flowing south down the trans-Alaska pipeline to the ice-free port of Valdez, Alaska. The steel pipeline, 48 inches in diameter, winds through 800 miles of Alaskan wilderness, crossing three Arctic mountain ranges and hundreds of rivers and streams. Environmentalists fought to prevent its construction, saying it would destroy a pristine ecosystem, but they were ultimately overruled by Congress, who saw it as a way of lessening America's dependence on foreign oil. The trans-Alaska pipeline was the world's largest privately funded construction project to that date, costing $8 billion and taking three years to build. In 1968, a massive oil field was discovered on the north coast of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay. Located north of the Arctic Circle, the ice-packed waters of the Beaufort Sea are inaccessible to oil tankers. In 1972, the Department of the Interior authorized drilling there, and after the Arab oil embargo of 1973 plans moved quickly to begin construction of a pipeline. The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. was formed by a consortium of major oil companies, and in 1974 construction began. For its first decade of existence, the pipeline was quietly applauded as an environmental success. Caribou populations in the vicinity of the pipeline actually grew (due in part to the departure of grizzly bears and wolves scared off by the pipeline work), and the permafrost remained intact. The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground. On March 24, 1989, however, the worst fears of environmentalists were realized when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in the Prince William Sound after filling up at the port of Valdez. Ten million gallons of oil were dumped into the water, devastating hundreds of miles of coastline. In the 1990s, the Alaskan oil enterprise drew further controversy when the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. attempted to cover up electrical and mechanical problems in the aging pipeline.
- Birthdays
- Brian Wilson
- Nicole Kidman
- John Goodman
- Lionel Ritchie
- Cyndi Lauper
- Danny Aiello
- Bob Vila
- Lillian Hellman
- Olympia Dukakis
- Martin Landau
- Anne Murray
- Errol Flynn
- Howlin Wolf / Chester Burnett
- Pancho Segura
- Michael Landon Jr