- 224th Day of 2015 141 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 42 Days
- Sunrise:6:23
- Sunset:8:05
- 13 Hours 42 Minutes
- Moon Rise:4:40am
- Moon Set:6:49pm
- Phase:3%
- Full Moon August 29 @ 11:37am
- Full Sturgeon Moon / Full Green Corn Moon
- Full Grain Moon/Full Red Moon
- The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
- Tides
- High:11:06am/10:03pm
- Low:4:19am/4:09pm
- Holidays
- Baseball Fans Day
- National Julienne Fries Day
- National Middle Child Day
- National Sewing Machine Day
- Truck Driver Day
- Vinyl Record Day
- National Toasted Almond Bar Day
- World Elephant Day
- International Youth Day
- Annual Pilgrimage-Monserrat
- On This Day
- 1851 --- Isaac Singer was granted a patent on his double-headed sewing machine.
- 1913 --- The National Biscuit Company, Nabisco, registered the "Oreo" trademark. The cookies were introduced in 1912.
- 1877 --- Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and made the first sound recording.
- 1939 --- “The Wizard of Oz”, starring Judy Garland and featuring words and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen, receives its world premiere in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on this day in 1939. The beloved characters and familiar plot points were mostly all there in the original children’s book, from the Kansas farm girl in shiny slippers transported to Munchkin land by a terrible tornado, to the wicked witch, the brainless scarecrow, the heartless tin woodsman and the cowardly lion she encounters once she gets there. But what’s missing, of course, from Frank Baum’s bestselling novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is the music that helped make those characters so beloved and those plot points so familiar. First published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was adapted numerous times for the stage and screen and even set to music prior to 1939. It was that year’s film adaptation, however, that earned Baum’s work a permanent place not only in cinema history, but also in music history.
- 1953 --- Less than one year after the United States tested its first hydrogen bomb, the Soviets detonate a 400-kiloton device in Kazakhstan. The explosive power was 30 times that of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the mushroom cloud produced by it stretched five miles into the sky. Known as the “Layer Cake,” the bomb was fueled by layers of uranium and lithium deuteride, a hydrogen isotope. The Soviet bomb was smaller and more portable than the American hydrogen bomb, so its development once again upped the ante in the dangerous nuclear arms race between the Cold War superpowers.
- 1961 --- In an effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Berlin, the communist government of East Germany begins building the Berlin Wall to divide East and West Berlin. Construction of the wall caused a short-term crisis in U.S.-Soviet bloc relations, and the wall itself came to symbolize the Cold War.
- 1964 --- Mickey Mantle set a major league baseball record when he hit home runs from both the left and ride sides of the plate in the same game.
- 1966 --- John Lennon apologized at a news conference in Chicago for saying "the Beatles are more popular than Jesus."
- 1973 --- Jack Nicklaus wins the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) championship for his 14th major title, surpassing Bobby Jones’ record of 13 major championships a record which had stood for 50 years. Nicklaus shot a seven-under-par 277 at Canterbury Golf Club in Beachwood, Ohio, to win $45,000 and his third PGA National championship. The “Golden Bear” went on to win a total of 20 major tournaments, a record that still stands today.
- 1985 --- A Japan Air Lines Boeing 747SR crashes into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo. There were 524 people aboard, and all but four were dead by the time rescuers reached the remote crash site 12 hours later. JAL flight 123 took off from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport under the command of Captain Takahama at 6:12 p.m. local time. Twelve minutes into the flight, as the jumbo jet was approaching its cruising altitude, an explosion shook the aircraft. A bulkhead had blown in the tail, creating over-pressurization that severed the four sets of hydraulic-control lines and blew part of the tail section off. With a total loss of hydraulic pressure, the captain radioed he was getting no response from his controls. For the next 27 minutes, Takahama attempted unsuccessfully to regain control of the aircraft as it descended uncontrollably in a flight condition known as the “Dutch roll.” At 6:50 p.m., JAL flight 123 crashed into Mount Otsuka at a point 4,780 feet above sea level.
- 1988 --- Francis Ford Coppola’s critically acclaimed biopic “Tucker: The Man & His Dream” premieres in U.S. theaters, starring Jeff Bridges as the brash Chicago businessman-turned-car-designer Preston Tucker who shook up 1940s-era Detroit with his streamlined, affordable “Car of Tomorrow.”
- 1990 --- Fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovers three huge bones jutting out of a cliff near Faith, South Dakota. They turn out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever discovered, a 65 million-year-old specimen dubbed Sue, after its discoverer. Amazingly, Sue’s skeleton was over 90 percent complete, and the bones were extremely well-preserved. Hendrickson’s employer, the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, paid $5,000 to the land owner, Maurice Williams, for the right to excavate the dinosaur skeleton, which was cleaned and transported to the company headquarters in Hill City. The institute’s president, Peter Larson, announced plans to build a non-profit museum to display Sue along with other fossils of the Cretaceous period. Sue’s skeleton went on display at the Field Museum in May 2000. The tremendous T. Rex skeleton–13 feet high at the hips and 42 feet long from head to toe–is displayed in one of the museum’s main halls. Another exhibit gives viewers a close-up view of Sue’s five foot-long, 2,000-pound skull with its 58 teeth, some as long as a human forearm.
- 1994 --- Major league baseball players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. The strike lasted for 232 days. As a result, the World Series was wiped out for the first time in 90 years.
- 2000 --- A Russian nuclear submarine sinks to the bottom of the Barents Sea on this day in 2000; all 118 crew members are later found dead. The exact cause of the disaster remains unknown. The Kursk left port on August 10 to take part in war games with the Russian military. Russian ships, planes and submarines met up in the Barents Sea, which is above the Arctic Circle, to practice military maneuvers. On August 12, the Kursk was scheduled to fire a practice torpedo; at 11:29 a.m., before doing so, two explosions spaced shortly apart occurred in the front hull of the submarine and it plunged toward the bottom of the sea. The Kursk was 500 feet long and weighed 24,000 tons. It had two nuclear reactors and could reach speeds of 28 knots. It was the largest attack submarine in the world, approximately three times the size of the largest subs in the United States Navy.
- Birthdays
- Cecil B DeMille
- James Buchanan “Diamond Jim” Brady
- Christy Mathewson
- Mary Roberts Rinehart
- Oscar Homolka
- Cantinflas
- Jane Wyatt
- Mstislav Rostropovich
- Buck Owens
- Jennifer Warren
- Mark Knopfler
- Kid Creole
- Sir Mix-A-Lot
World Elephant Day-KALW Almanac-August 12, 2015
