Wednesday October 24, 2012

• 298^th Day of 2012 / 68 Remaining
• 58 Days Until The First Day of Winter

• Sunrise:7:27
• Sunset:6:20
• 10 Hours 53 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:3:33om
• Moon Set:2:34am
• Moon’s Phase: 77 %

• 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: 8:00am/7:52pm
• Low: 1:10am/2:06pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• This Year:1.31
• Last Year:1.49
• Normal To Date:0.99
• Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

• Holidays
• National Bologna Day

• United Nations Day
• World Development Information Day
• Independence Day-Zambia
• Labor Day-New Zealand
• Suez Day-Egypt

• On This Day In …
• 1648 --- The Treaty of Westphalia is signed, ending the Thirty Years War and radically shifting the balance of power in Europe. The Thirty Years War, a series of wars fought by European nations for various reasons, ignited in 1618 over an attempt by the king of Bohemia (the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II) to impose Catholicism throughout his domains. Protestant nobles rebelled, and by the 1630s most of continental Europe was at war. As a result of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands gained independence from Spain, Sweden gained control of the Baltic and France was acknowledged as the preeminent Western power. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken and the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands. The principle of state sovereignty emerged as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia and serves as the basis for the modern system of nation-states.

• 1795 --- The country of Poland was divided up between Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

• 1836 --- Alonzo Dwight Philips patented the phosphorous friction safety match

• 1861 --- Workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company link the eastern and western telegraph networks of the nation at Salt Lake City, Utah, completing a transcontinental line that for the first time allows instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Stephen J. Field, chief justice of California, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Abraham Lincoln, predicting that the new communication link would help ensure the loyalty of the western states to the Union during the Civil War.

• 1901 --- A 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. After her husband died in the Civil War, the New York-born Taylor moved all over the U. S. before settling in Bay City, Michigan, around 1898. In July 1901, while reading an article about the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, she learned of the growing popularity of two enormous waterfalls located on the border of upstate New York and Canada. Strapped for cash and seeking fame, Taylor came up with the perfect attention-getting stunt: She would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Taylor was not the first person to attempt the plunge over the famous falls. In October 1829, Sam Patch, known as the Yankee Leaper, survived jumping down the 175-foot Horseshoe Falls of the Niagara River, on the Canadian side of the border. More than 70 years later, Taylor chose to take the ride on her birthday, October 24. (She claimed she was in her 40s, but genealogical records later showed she was 63.) With the help of two assistants, Taylor strapped herself into a leather harness inside an old wooden pickle barrel five feet high and three feet in diameter. With cushions lining the barrel to break her fall, Taylor was towed by a small boat into the middle of the fast-flowing Niagara River and cut loose. Knocked violently from side to side by the rapids and then propelled over the edge of Horseshoe Falls, Taylor reached the shore alive, if a bit battered, around 20 minutes after her journey began. After a brief flurry of photo-ops and speaking engagements, Taylor's fame cooled, and she was unable to make the fortune for which she had hoped. She did, however, inspire a number of copy-cat daredevils. Between 1901 and 1995, 15 people went over the falls; 10 of them survived. Among those who died were Jesse Sharp, who took the plunge in a kayak in 1990, and Robert Overcracker, who used a jet ski in 1995. No matter the method, going over Niagara Falls is illegal, and survivors face charges and stiff fines on either side of the border. 

• 1929 --- This day became known as Black Thursday after Wall Street investors panicked and ordered their stock brokers to sell, sell, sell! Nearly 13 million shares traded hands and stock prices plummeted. Many stocks recovered late in the afternoon, but the stage had been set for the October 29th stock market crash -- and the beginning of the Great Depression.

• 1931 --- President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. The 4,760-foot–long suspension bridge, the longest in the world at the time, connected Fort Lee, New Jersey with Washington Heights in New York City. "This will be a highly successful enterprise," FDR told the assembled crowd at the ceremony. "The great prosperity of the Holland Tunnel and the financial success of other bridges recently opened in this region have proven that not even the hardest times can lessen the tremendous volume of trade and traffic in the greatest of port districts." Workers built the six-lane George Washington Bridge in sections. They carried the pieces to the construction site by rail, then hauled them into the river by boat, then hoisted them into place by crane. Though the bridge was gigantic, engineer Othmar Amman had found a way to make it look light and airy: in place of vertical trusses, he used horizontal plate girders in the roadway to keep the bridge steady. Amman used such strong steel that these plate girders could be relatively thin and as a result, the bridge deck was only 12 feet deep. From a distance, it looked as flimsy as a magic carpet. Meanwhile, thanks to Amman's sophisticated suspension system, that magic carpet seemed to be floating: The bridge hung from cables made of steel wires--107,000 miles and 28,100 tons of steel wires, to be exact--that were much more delicate-looking than anything anyone had ever seen. The bridge opened to traffic on October 25, 1931. One year later, it had carried 5 million cars from New York to New Jersey and back again. In 1946, engineers added two lanes to the bridge. In 1958, city officials decided to increase its capacity by 75 percent by adding a six-lane lower level.

• 1939 --- Employees at DuPont's factory in Wilmington, Delaware purchased the first nylon stockings for sale in the U.S. They were available nationally in May, 1940.

• 1945 --- The United Nations charter took effect at the San Francisco Conference. 51 countries came together determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to reaffirm faith in human rights; to promote social progress and better standards of life; to practice tolerance and live together in peace and unite their strength to maintain international peace and security. There are 191 member countries in the United Nations, led by a Secretary-General, controlled by the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Security Council has five permanent members (United States, Great Britain, France, China, Russian Federation) and ten temporary members (serving two-year terms, representing five regions of the world). Fifty-four members sit on the Economic and Social Council for three-year terms. There is also a Trusteeship Council and an International Court of Justice. At least fifteen agencies also exist under the auspices of the United Nations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.  Since 1971, by unanimous request of the U.N. General Assembly (the world’s forum for discussing matters affecting world peace and security), this day has been observed throughout all UN member nations as a public holiday, United Nations Day.

• 1948 --- The term "cold war" was used for the first time. It was in a speech by Bernard Baruch before the Senate War Investigating Committee.

• 1962 --- James Brown began his professional career at a time when rock and roll was opening new opportunities for black artists to connect with white audiences. But the path he took to fame did not pass through Top 40 radio or through The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. James Brown would make his appearance in all of those places eventually, but only after a decade spent performing almost exclusively before black audiences and earning his reputation as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. On this day in 1962, he took a major step toward his eventual crossover and conquest of the mainstream with an electrifying performance on black America's most famous stage—a performance recorded and later released as Live at the Apollo (1963), the first breakthrough album of James Brown's career. By the time 1962 rolled around, James Brown was one of the most popular figures on the R&B scene, not so much on the strength of his recordings, but on the strength of his live act. As he would throughout his long career, Brown ran his band, the Famous Flames, like a military unit, demanding of his instrumentalists and backing vocalists the same perfection he demanded of himself. Even in the middle of a performance, Brown would turn around and dish out fines for missed or flubbed notes, all without missing or flubbing a dance step himself. At the midnight show at the Apollo on October 24, 1962, however, every member of Brown's band knew that the fines they faced would be far greater than normal. "You made a mistake that night," band member Bobby Byrd told Rolling Stone magazine, "the fine would move from five or ten dollars to fifty or a hundred dollars." The reason was simple. Having failed to convince the head of his label, King Records, to record and release the performance as a live album, James Brown, a man who was famously wise to the value of a dollar, was financing the Apollo recording himself. In the end, the show went off not only without a hitch, but with such success that the famously tough Apollo crowd was in a state of rapture. Released in May 1963, Live at the Apollo ended up spending an astonishing 66 weeks on the Billboard album chart and selling upwards of a million copies, giving James Brown his first smash hit album and setting him on a course for his incredible crossover success in the mid-1960s and beyond.

• 1962 --- During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. military forces went on the highest alert in the postwar era in preparation for a possible full-scale war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. blockade of Cuba officially began on this day.

• 1970 --- U.S. President Richard Nixon appealed to radio broadcasters to screen songs with lyrics that urge drug use.

• 1970 --- Salvador Allende becomes president of Chile after being confirmed by the Chilean congress. For the next three years, the United States would exert tremendous pressure to try to destabilize and unseat the Allende government. Allende's election in 1970 was his third attempt at the presidency. In 1958, and again in 1964, Allende had run on a socialist/communist platform. In both elections, the United States government (as well as U.S. businesses such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), which had significant investments in Chile) worked to defeat Allende by sending millions of dollars of assistance to his political opponents. Yet, Allende posed an interesting problem. Unlike Castro, he had come to power peacefully and democratically. Thus, the United States could hardly launch a Bay-of-Pigs-like attack on the Allende regime. Undaunted, the administration of President Richard Nixon began to formulate plans to destabilize the Chilean government and see to the removal of Allende. These plans came to fruition in 1973 when a coup by the Chilean military overthrew Allende and assassinated him.

• 1978 --- In Toronto, Keith Richards (Rolling Stones) pled guilty to heroin possession. He was given a one-year suspended sentence.

• 1988 --- The John Fogerty vs. Fantasy Records case began. Fantasy claimed that Fogerty had plagiarized his own song "Run Through The Jungle" when he wrote "The Old Man Down The Road."

• 1989 --- Reverend Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000 for his conviction on 24 counts of fraud. In 1991, his sentence was reduced to eighteen years and he was released on parole after a total five years in prison.

• 1989 --- Hank Ballard, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Bobby Darin, the Four Tops, the Four Seasons, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the Kinks, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, the Platters, the Who, Simon & Garfunkel were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

• 1992 -- The Toronto Blue Jays became the first team outside the United States to win a World Series as they defeated the Atlanta Braves 4-3 in Game 6.

• Birthdays
• Sarah J Hale
• Santo Farina
• Kweisi Mfume
• Belva Lockwood
• Kevin Kline
• B D Wong
• Y A Tittle
• F Murray Abraham
• Bill Wyman
• Bob Kane(Batman)
• Anthony van Leeuwenhoek