- 158th Day of 2012 / 208 Remaining
- 14 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:5:48
- Sunset:8:30
- 14 Hours 42 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:10:46pm
- Moon Set:8:15am
- Moon’s Phase: 92 %
- The Next Full Moon
- June 4 @ 4:11am
- Full Strawberry Moon
- Full Rose Moon
- Full Milk Moon
This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June, so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!
- Tides
- High:12:01am/2:06pm
- Low:7:01am/7:03pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:15.80
- Last Year:28.51
- Normal To Date:23.68
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Child Health Day
- National Applesauce Cake Day
- Drive-In Theater Day
- National Yo-Yo Day
- National Running Day
- Helicopter Day
- Clean Air Day-Canada
- Dragon Boat Festival-China
- Flag Day-Sweden
- Memorial Day-Korea
- Pushkin's Birthday-Russia
- On This Day In …
- 1816 --- Ten inches of wonderful wet, white snow fell this day in New England. It was one of the latest snowfalls ever (or maybe one of the earliest!)
- 1844 --- The first YMCA was founded in London by George Williams, a young draper’s assistant who had come to London to learn the drapery trade. At that time, wholesale drapery houses employed large numbers of young men, who were given room and board at their work places. They worked long hours and had poor living conditions. Williams sought permission to hold prayer meetings in his bedroom with other young men who, like himself, shared the Christian faith. Soon, the group expanded, drawing to it young men who were alone and lonely in the City of London.
- 1872 --- Susan B. Anthony led a group of women to register and vote in a Rochester, New York, election. She was arrested, tried, and sentenced to pay a fine. She refused to pay and was released by a judge who was afraid she'd appeal to a higher court.
- 1882 --- Henry W. Seely of New York City patented the electric iron.
- 1925 --- Walter Percy Chrysler founded the Chrysler Corp.
- 1933 --- Eager motorists park their automobiles on the grounds of Park-In Theaters, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Crescent Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey. Park-In Theaters--the term "drive-in" came to be widely used only later--was the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, a movie fan and a sales manager at his father's company, Whiz Auto Products, in Camden. Reportedly inspired by his mother's struggle to sit comfortably in traditional movie theater seats, Hollingshead came up with the idea of an open-air theater where patrons watched movies in the comfort of their own automobiles. He then experimented in the driveway of his own house with different projection and sound techniques, mounting a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, pinning a screen to some trees, and placing a radio behind the screen for sound. He also tested ways to guard against rain and other inclement weather, and devised the ideal spacing arrangement for a number of cars so that all would have a view of the screen. The young entrepreneur received a patent for the concept in May of 1933 and opened Park-In Theaters, Inc. less than a month later, with an initial investment of $30,000. Advertising it as entertainment for the whole family, Hollingshead charged 25 cents per car and 25 cents per person, with no group paying more than one dollar. The idea caught on, and after Hollingshead's patent was overturned in 1949, drive-in theaters began popping up all over the country. One of the largest was the All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, New York, which featured parking space for 2,500 cars, a kid's playground and a full service restaurant, all on a 28-acre lot. Drive-in theaters showed mostly B-movies--that is, not Hollywood's finest fare--but some theaters featured the same movies that played in regular theaters. The initially poor sound quality--Hollingshead had mounted three speakers manufactured by RCA Victor near the screen--improved, and later technology made it possible for each car's to play the movie's soundtrack through its FM radio. The popularity of the drive-in spiked after World War II and reached its heyday in the late 1950s to mid-60s, with some 5,000 theaters across the country. Drive-ins became an icon of American culture, and a typical weekend destination not just for parents and children but also for teenage couples seeking some privacy. Since then, however, the rising price of real estate, with the growing numbers of walk-in theaters and the rise of video rentals to curb the growth of the drive-in industry. Today, fewer than 500 drive-in theaters survive in the United States.
- 1936 --- The first helicopter was tested in Berlin.
- 1944 --- Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, code named D-Day, the Allied invasion of northern France. By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on the ground. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches. Three factors were decisive in the success of the Allied invasion. First, German counterattacks were firm but sparse, enabling the Allies to create a broad bridgehead, or advanced position, from which they were able to build up enormous troop strength. Second, Allied air cover, which destroyed bridges over the Seine, forced the Germans to suffer long detours, and naval gunfire proved decisive in protecting the invasion troops. And third, division and confusion within the German ranks as to where the invasion would start and how best to defend their position helped the Allies. (Hitler, convinced another invasion was coming the next day east of the Seine River, refused to allow reserves to be pulled from that area.) Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of Britain's Twenty-first Army Group (but under the overall command of General Eisenhower, for whom Montgomery, and his ego, proved a perennial thorn in the side), often claimed later that the invasion had come off exactly as planned. That was a boast, as evidenced by the failure to take Caen on the first day, as scheduled. While the operation was a decided success, considering the number of troops put ashore and light casualties, improvisation by courageous and quick-witted commanders also played an enormous role. The D-Day invasion has been the basis for several movies, from The Longest Day (1962), which boasted an all-star cast that included Richard Burton, Sean Connery, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, to Saving Private Ryan (1998), which includes some of the most grippingly realistic war scenes ever filmed, captured in the style of the famous Robert Capa still photos of the actual invasion.
- 1962 --- The Beatles auditioned for producer George Martin at EMI Records in London. They already had been turned down by Decca. EMI signed the group a month later. After listening to a playback of the audition tapes, Martin said, “They’re pretty awful.” He changed his mind after meeting the group, however. The rest, of course, is rock-music history.
- 1966 --- Black activist James Meredith was shot and wounded as he walked along a Mississippi highway to encourage black voter registration.
- 1968 --- Sen. Robert F. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, a day after he was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.
- 1971 --- For the last time, we saw Polish dancing bears, a little mouse named Topo Gigio, remembered The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, the comedy of Jackie Mason, John Byner, Rich Little, Richard Pryor and so many more, as The Ed Sullivan Show left CBS-TV. Gladys Knight and The Pips and singer Jerry Vale appeared on the final show. The Ed Sullivan Show had been a showcase for more than 20 years for artists who ranged from Ethel Merman to Ella Fitzgerald, from Steve and Eydie to the Beatles. The Ed Sullivan Show was the longest running variety show on TV -- a “rillly big sheeeew.”
- 1973 --- Barry White was awarded a gold record for I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby. It was his first hit and his first of five number one million-sellers. White began recording in 1960. He formed the group, Love Unlimited, in 1969 and married one of the group’s singers, Glodean James. He also formed the 40-piece Love Unlimited Orchestra which had the number-one hit, Love’s Theme in 1973.
- 1978 --- California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a ballot measure calling for major cuts in property taxes.
- 2004 --- Phylicia Rashad, starring in a revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," became the first black actress to win a Tony award for a leading dramatic role.
- 2005 --- The United States Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities could prosecute sick people who smoke marijuana on doctor's orders. The ruling concluded that state medical marijuana laws did not protect users from the federal ban on the drug.
- Birthdays
- Harvey Fierstein
- Paul Giamatti
- Thomas Mann
- Gary U.S. Bonds
- Sandra Bernhard
- Bjorn Borg
- Donald F. Duncan Sr.
- Colin Quinn
- Nathan Hale
- Diego Velazquez
- Jimmie Lunceford
- Alexander Pushkin
- Robert Englund