Wednesday September 5, 2012

• 249^th Day of 2012 /117 Remaining
• 17 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

• Sunrise:6:44
• Sunset:7:33
• 12 Hours 49 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:10:12pm
• Moon Set:11:47am
• Moon’s Phase: 75 %

• The Next Full Moon
• September 29 @ 8:18pm
• Full Corn Moon
• Full Harvest Moon

This full moon’s name is attributed to Native Americans because it marked when corn was supposed to be harvested. Most often, the September full moon is actually the Harvest Moon, which is the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. In two years out of three, the Harvest Moon comes in September, but in some years it occurs in October. At the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of this Moon. Usually the full Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the Moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice the chief Indian staples are now ready for gathering.

• Tides
• High:2:44am/2:20pm
• Low:8:13am/9:11pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• This Year:0.03
• Last Year:0.11
• Normal To Date:0.00
• Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

• Holidays
• Be Late for Something Day
• National Cheese Pizza Day
• Jury Rights Day

• Anniversary of Chachapoyas-Peru
• Teachers Day-India

• On This Day In …
• 1670 --- William Penn's jurors refused to convict him of preaching an illegal religion (Quakerism) to an unlawful assembly, his congregation. The action provided the bases for the U.S. Constitution's first amendment rights of freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly.

• 1698 --- Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards.

• 1774 --- The first session of the U.S. Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. The delegates drafted a declaration of rights and grievances, organized the Continental Association, and elected Peyton Randolph as the first president of the Continental Congress.

• 1877 --- Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. The battle, in which 265 members of the Seventh Cavalry, including Custer, were killed, was the worst defeat of the U.S. Army in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans. After the victory at Little Bighorn, U.S. Army forces led by Colonel Nelson Miles pursued Crazy Horse and his followers. His tribe suffered from cold and starvation, and on May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered to General George Crook at the Red Cloud Indian Agency in Nebraska. He was sent to Fort Robinson, where he was killed in a scuffle with soldiers who were trying to imprison him in a cell.

• 1882 --- The first Labor Day holiday parade was held in New York City. It was sponsored by the Central Labor Union. Some 10,000 workers -- all men -- participated in the parade.

• 1914 --- Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run for Providence in the International League. He also pitched a one-hit shut-out against Toronto.

• 1935 --- A new star emerged with release of the Hollywood western "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," the first of 93 feature films starring Gene Autry. He also made 91 TV episodes and wrote hundreds of songs.

• 1957 --- "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, the defining novel of the Beat Generation, was published. "On the Road" is an autobiographical novel about a series of cross-country automobile trips that Kerouac made between 1947 and 1950, both by himself and with his friend Neal Cassady. Cassady--Dean Moriarty in the book--was a colorful character, a charming and good-looking hustler, occasional car thief (or not-so-occasional: he claimed to have stolen more than 500 cars while growing up on the streets of Denver), and aspiring writer who accompanied Kerouac on most of his journeys. (Cassady usually drove; after a childhood car accident, Kerouac hated to be behind the wheel.) In fact, Kerouac was inspired by Cassady's straightforward, vernacular writing style--the poet Frank O'Hara described it as "I do this, I do that"--and he adapted it to his own epic narrative: To tell the story of his journey, he just wrote down what happened. Legend has it that Kerouac wrote "On the Road" in just three weeks, typing it on a 120-foot scroll made from taped-together sheets of tracing paper. The scroll exists--in 2001, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts pro football franchise paid $2.4 million for it--but in fact the process of writing the book was hardly as improvisational as it sounds. After typing that first draft, Kerouac spent six years revising his manuscript before it was published.

• 1958 --- "Doctor Zhivago" by Russian author Boris Pasternak was published in the United States. Pasternak was born in Russia in 1890, and by the time of the Russian Revolution was a well-known avant-garde poet. His work fell into disfavor during the 1920s and 1930s as the communist regime of Joseph Stalin imposed strict censorship on Russian art and literature. During this time, Pasternak eked out a living as a translator. In 1956, he completed the book that would make him a worldwide name. Dr. Zhivago was an epic love story set during the tumult of the Russian Revolution and World War I. The book infuriated Soviet officials, particularly Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets argued that the book romanticized the pre-Revolution Russian upper class and degraded the peasants and workers who fought against the czarist regime. The official Soviet press refused to publish the book and Pasternak found himself the target of unrelenting criticisms. Admirers of Pasternak's work, however, began secretly to smuggle the manuscript out of Russia piece by piece. By 1958, the book began to appear in numerous translations around the world, including an edition in the United States that appeared on September 5, 1958. The book was hailed as an instant classic, and Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. None of the acclaim for the book helped Pasternak, though. The Soviet government refused to allow him to accept the Nobel Prize, and he was banished from the Soviet Writers Union. The latter action ended Pasternak's writing career. Pasternak died in May 1960 from a combination of cancer and heart disease. Dr. Zhivago refused to die with him, though. In 1965, it was made into a hit movie starring Omar Sharif as the title character. In 1987, as part of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's democratic reforms, Pasternak, though dead for nearly 30 years, was readmitted to the union and his book was finally published in Russia.

• 1960 --- Cassius Clay of Louisville, KY won the gold medal in light heavyweight boxing at the Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. Clay would later change his name to Muhammad Ali and become one of the great boxing champions in the world. In 1996, at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA, Muhammad Ali was given the honor of lighting the Olympic flame.

• 1968 --- Herbert Khaury, known better as Tiny Tim, sued Bouguet Records for $1 million in damages when the record label released early recordings of Khaury without his permission.

• 1972 --- During the Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September, in return for the release of the hostages, they demanded that Israel release over 230 Arab prisoners being held in Israeli jails and two German terrorists. In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one West German policeman. Olympic competition was suspended for 24 hours to hold memorial services for the slain athletes. The Munich Olympics opened on August 26, 1972, with 195 events and 7,173 athletes representing 121 countries. On the morning of September 5, Palestinian terrorists in ski masks ambushed the Israeli team. After negotiations to free the nine Israelis broke down, the terrorists took the hostages to the Munich airport. Once there, German police opened fire from rooftops and killed three of the terrorists. A gun battle erupted and left the hostages, two more Palestinians and a policeman dead. After a memorial service was held for the athletes at the main Olympic stadium, International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage ordered that the games continue, to show that the terrorists hadn't won. Although the tragedy deeply marred the games, there were numerous moments of spectacular athletic achievement, including American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven gold medals and teenage Russian gymnast Olga Korbut's two dramatic gold-medal victories. In the aftermath of the murders at the '72 Olympics, the Israeli government, headed by Golda Meir, hired a group of Mossad agents to track down and kill the Black September assassins. The 2005 Stephen Spielberg movie Munich was based on these events.

• 1987 --- After 30 years on television, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was canceled.

• 1996 --- Research reported in The London Times showed 46% of dogs began watching up to an hour before their owners returned home each day, even when the owners worked irregular hours.

• Birthdays
• John Cage
• Jesse James
• Dweezil Zappa
• Bob Newhart
• Raquel Welch
• William Devane
• Cathy Guisewite
• Werner Herzog
• Bill Mazeroski
• Al Stewart
• Michael Keaton
• Louis XIV, King of France(A gourmet, gourmand and many say a glutton. During his reign food began to be served in courses, rather than placed on the table all at once, and forks came into widespread use.)