- 291st Day of 2012 / 75 Remaining
- 65 Days Until The First Day of Winter
- Sunrise:7:21
- Sunset:6:29
- 11 Hours 8 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:9:59am
- Moon Set:8:15pm
- Moon’s Phase: 8 %
- The Next Full Moon
- October 29 @ 12:50 pm
- Full Hunter’s Moon
- Full Harvest Moon
This full Moon is often referred to as the Full Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon. Many moons ago, Native Americans named this bright moon for obvious reasons. The leaves are falling from trees, the deer are fattened, and it’s time to begin storing up meat for the long winter ahead. Because the fields were traditionally reaped in late September or early October, hunters could easily see fox and other animals that come out to glean from the fallen grains. Probably because of the threat of winter looming close, the Hunter’s Moon is generally accorded with special honor, historically serving as an important feast day in both Western Europe and among many Native American tribes.
- Tides
- High: 1:46am/1:04pm
- Low: 6:43am/7:38pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:
- Last Year:
- Normal To Date:
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Mulligan Day
- National Boss Day
- National Cake Decorating Day
- Black Poetry Day
- National Pasta Day
- UN International Day For The Eradication of Poverty
- World Food Day
- Family Day-South Africa
- National Bulk Foods Week
- National School Lunch Week
- On This Day In …
- 1777 --- During the American Revolution, British General John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 British and Hessian troops to Patriot General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York. In the summer of 1777, General Burgoyne led an army of 8,000 men south through New York State in an effort to join forces with British General Sir William Howe's troops along the Hudson River. After capturing several forts, Burgoyne's force camped near Saratoga while a larger Patriot army under General Gates gathered just four miles away. On September 19, a British advance column marched out and engaged the Patriot force at the Battle of Freeman's Farm, or the First Battle of Saratoga. Failing to break through the American lines, Burgoyne's force retreated. On October 7, another British reconnaissance force was repulsed by an American force under General Benedict Arnold in the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Saratoga. Gates retreated north to the village of Saratoga with his 5,000 surviving troops. By October 13, some 20,000 Americans had surrounded the British, and four days later Burgoyne was forced to agree to the first large-scale surrender of British forces in the Revolutionary War. When word of the Patriot victory reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to recognize the independence of the United States. Soon after, French Foreign Minister Comte de Vergennes made arrangements with U.S. Ambassador Benjamin Franklin to begin providing French aid to the Patriot cause.
- 1845 --- According to a Boston newspaper, the audience walked out of a reading that included The Raven. The audience walked out, not because of the material, but because of their objection to Edgar Allan Poe, the reader and author of the macabre poem.
- 1888 --- The first issue of “National Geographic Magazine” was on newsstands. The highly acclaimed magazine was published on a somewhat irregular basis at first. Material was hard to come by in the early years, so the publisher just waited to publish the next issue until enough material accumulated to fill it. The science and travel magazine, the official journal of the National Geographic Society (incorporated January 27, 1888), soon became a monthly and it wasn’t long before it became famous for its maps and photographic essays of exotic locales and peoples.
- 1919 --- The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed. The company became a giant in electronics, especially radios and TVs. It would later own its own TV network (NBC) and other broadcast interests.
- 1933 --- Dr. Albert Einstein moved to Princeton, NJ, after leaving Germany.
- 1957 --- French author Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
- 1967 --- “Gimme a head with hair. Long, beautiful hair...” The rock musical HAIR opened at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater for a limited run. After much trial and error, involving several openings and closings, HAIR eventually opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater on April 29, 1968. It closed on July 1, 1972 after 1,742 performances.
- 1973 --- The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) implements what it calls "oil diplomacy" on this day in 1973: It prohibits any nation that had supported Israel in its "Yom Kippur War" with Egypt, Syria and Jordan from buying any of the oil it sells. The ensuing energy crisis marked the end of the era of cheap gasoline and caused the share value of the New York Stock Exchange to drop by $97 billion. This, in turn, ushered in one of the worst recessions the United States had ever seen. In the middle of 1973, even before the OPEC embargo, an American oil crisis was on the horizon: Domestic reserves were low (about 52 billion barrels, a 10-year supply); the United States was importing about 27 percent of the crude petroleum it needed every year; and gasoline prices were rising. The 1973 war with Israel made things even worse. OPEC announced that it would punish Israel's allies by implementing production cuts of 5 percent a month until that nation withdrew from the occupied territories and restored the rights of the Palestinians. It also declared that the true "enemies" of the Arab cause (in practice, this turned out to mean the United States and the Netherlands) would be subject to an indefinite "total embargo." Traditionally, per-barrel prices had been set by the oil companies themselves, but in December, OPEC announced that from then on, its members would set their own prices on the petroleum they exported. As a result, the price of a barrel of oil went up to $11.65, 130 percent higher than it had been in October and 387 percent higher than it had been the year before. Domestic oil prices increased too, but shortages persisted. People waited for hours in long lines at gas stations—at some New Jersey pumps, lines were four miles long!--and by the time the embargo ended in March 1974, the average retail price of gas had climbed to 84 cents per gallon from 38 cents per gallon. Sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars skyrocketed. At the same time, declining demand for the big, heavy gas-guzzlers that most American car companies were producing spelled disaster for the domestic auto industry.
- 1974 --- The Oakland A’s beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4 games to 1, to win the World Series. In Game 5, played this day, Joe Rudi connected with a homer off Dodger reliever Mike Marshall to break a 2-2 tie. Oakland's bullpen ace, Rollie Fingers preserved the one run lead and the A’s were world champions for the third consecutive year. The A’s were the only team other than the Yankees to win 3 straight series.
- 1979 --- Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the destitute in Calcutta.
- 1989 --- An earthquake hits the San Francisco Bay Area on this day in 1989, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Though this was one of the most powerful and destructive earthquakes ever to hit a populated area of the United States, the death toll was quite small. The proximity of the San Andreas Fault to San Francisco was well-known for most of the 20th century, but the knowledge did not stop the construction of many un-reinforced brick buildings in the area. Finally, in 1972, revised building codes forced new structures to be built to withstand earthquakes. The new regulations also called for older buildings to be retrofitted to meet the new standards, but the expense involved made these projects a low priority for the community. On October 17, the Bay Area was buzzing about baseball. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, both local teams, had reached the World Series. The first game of the series was scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. Just prior to the game, with the cameras on the field, a 7.1-magnitude tremor centered near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains rocked the region from Santa Cruz to Oakland. Though the stadium withstood the shaking, much of the rest of San Francisco was not so fortunate. The city's marina district suffered great damage. Built before 1972, on an area of the city where there was no underlying bedrock, the liquefaction of the ground resulted in the collapse of many homes. Burst gas mains and pipes also sparked fires that burned out of control for nearly two days. Also hard hit by the quake were two area roads, the Nimitz Expressway and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Both roads featured double-decker construction and, on each, the upper level collapsed during the earthquake. Forty-one of the 67 victims of this disaster were motorists on the lower level of the Nimitz, who were killed when the upper level of the road collapsed and crushed them in their cars. Only one person was killed on the Bay Bridge--which had been scheduled for a retrofitting the following week--because there were no cars under the section that collapsed. Other heavily damaged communities included Watsonville, Daly City and Palo Alto. More than 10 percent of the homes in Watsonville were completely demolished. The residents, most of whom were Latino, faced additional hardship because relief workers and the Red Cross did not have enough Spanish-speaking aides or translators to assist them. The earthquake caused billions of dollars in damages, and contributed in part to the deep recession that California suffered in the early 1990s.
- Birthdays
- Evel Knievel(Robert Craig)
- Montgomery Clift
- Jimmy Breslin
- Wyclef Jean
- Arthur Miller
- Michael McKean
- Margot Kidder
- George Wendt
- Mike Judge
- Norm Macdonald
- Ziggy Marley
- Eminem
- Charles Kraft
- Irene Ryan
- Rita Hayworth