- 261st Day of 2013 / 104 Remaining
- 4 Days Until The First Day of Autumn
- Sunrise:6:55
- Sunset:7:11
- 12 Hours 16 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:6:39pm
- Moon Set:6:05am
- Moon’s Phase: 99 %
- The Next Full Moon
- September 19 @ 4:12am
- Full Corn Moon
- Full Barley Moon
This full Moon corresponds with the time of harvesting corn. It is also called the Barley Moon, because it is the time to harvest and thresh the ripened barley. The Harvest Moon is the full Moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which can occur in September or October and is bright enough to allow finishing all the harvest chores.
- Tides
- High:10:51am/10:56pm
- Low:4:20am/4:45pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- Normal To Date:0.10
- This Year:0.05
- Last Year:0.02
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day
- National Play-Doh Day
- National Cheeseburger Day
- Independence Day-Chile
- On This Day In …
- 1759 --- The French formally surrendered Quebec to the British.
- 1763 --- It was reported, by the Boston Gazette, that the first piano had been built in the United States. John Harris made the spinet, a small upright piano with a three to four octave range.
- 1793 --- George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government. The building would take nearly a century to complete, as architects came and went, the British set fire to it and it was called into use during the Civil War. Today, the Capitol building, with its famous cast-iron dome and important collection of American art, is part of the Capitol Complex, which includes six Congressional office buildings and three Library of Congress buildings, all developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- 1810 --- Chile declared its independence from Spain.
- 1830 --- A race was held between a horse and an iron horse. Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in America, was pitted against a real horse in a nine-mile course between Riley’s Tavern and
Baltimore. Tom Thumb suffered mechanical difficulties including a leaky boiler. If you had your money on the horse, you won! Tom Thumb lost by more than a nose.
- 1846 --- Weeks behind schedule and the massive Sierra Nevada mountains still to be crossed, on this day in 1846, the members of the ill-fated Donner party realize they are running short of supplies and send two men ahead to California to bring back food. The group of 89 emigrants had begun their western trek earlier that summer in Springfield, Illinois, under the leadership of the brothers Jacob and George Donner. Unfortunately, the Donner brothers had recently
read The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, the imaginative creation of an irresponsible author-adventurer named Lansford Hastings, who wanted to encourage more overland emigrants to travel to the Sacramento Valley of California. The Donners innocently accepted Hastings' claim that a shorter route he had blazed to California would cut weeks off the usual trip and agreed to place the fate of the wagon train in his hands once they reached Fort Bridger, Wyoming. From that point forward, the men, women, and children of the Donner Party were in trouble.
- 1851 --- The first edition of the New York Times was published.
- 1891 -- Harriet Maxwell Converse (her Indian name was Ga-is-wa-noh: the Watcher) became the first white woman to be named chief of an Indian tribe.
Converse became chief of the Six Nations tribe at Tonawanda reservation in New York. She had been adopted by the Seneca tribe 7 years earlier because of her efforts on behalf of the tribe.
- 1895 --- If you’ve ever had a chiropractic adjustment you owe it to not only your chiropractor, but to Daniel David Palmer. He gave the
first chiropractic adjustment to Harvey Lillard in Davenport, Iowa (now the home of Palmer Chiropractic College).
- 1927 --- The Columbia Broadcasting System was born, although its rival, NBC, had been on the air for some time. The Tiffany Network, as CBS was called, broadcast an opera, The King’s Henchman, as its first program. William S. Paley put the network together, purchasing a chain of 16 failing radio stations. The controlling interest cost between $250,000 and $450,000. The following year, the 27-year-old Paley became President of CBS. It only took one more year for him to profit 2.35 million dollars as the network grew to over 70 stations.
- 1947 --- The National Security Act, which unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force, went into effect.
- 1947 --- Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City, NY. It was the first country music show at the venue.
- 1955 --- What had been The Toast of the Town on CBS Television (since 1948) became The Ed Sullivan Show. This “rilly big shew” remained a mainstay of Sunday night television until June 6, 1971. Sullivan was a newspaper columnist/critic before and during the early years of this pioneering TV show.
- 1960 --- Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro's visit stirred
indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26.
- 1970 --- Jimi Hendrix died of a drug overdose at age 27.
- 1973 --- Jimmy Carter files a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969. During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion's Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called "the darndest thing I've ever seen" in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as "very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon." Carter reported that "the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance." He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.
- 1975 --- Publishing heiress Patricia Hearst was rescued/captured by the FBI in San Francisco, CA. She had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army on Feb 4, 1974, but had apparently fallen in with her captors and had participated in a bank holdup.
Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on Mar 20, 1976. On Feb 1, 1979, her sentence was commuted to time served by President Jimmy Carter, but her conviction stood. On Jan 20, 2001, outgoing President Bill Clinton granted Patricia Hearst a full pardon.
- 1981 --- The 20,000-car parking lot at Canada's West Edmonton Mall makes the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest parking lot in the world. The mall has held other records, too: At one time or another it's been the World's Largest Shopping Mall (5.2 million square feet, or about 48 city blocks), the World's Largest Indoor Amusement Park and the World's Largest Indoor Water Park (which includes the World's Largest Indoor Lake and the World's Largest Indoor Wave Pool).
- 2009 --- Tens of thousands of protesters rallied in defiance of Iran's Islamic leadership, clashing with police and confronting state-run anti-Israel rallies.
- Birthdays
- Greta Garbo
- Elmer Maytag
- Jimmie Rodgers
- Fred Willard
- Frankie Avalon
- Holly Robinson Peete
- Aisha Taylor
- Jada Pinkett Smith
- Samuel Johnson
- Agnes de Mille
- Edwin McMillan
- Eddie “Rochester” Anderson
- Lance Armstrong