216th day of 2012, 150 remaining
Sunrise: 6:16am
Sunset: 8:16pm
99% of the moon is visible, setting at 8:02am, rising at 9:01pm
Low Tides at the Golden Gate: 6:53am/7:06pm
High Tides: 12:28pm/1:51pm
Special Celebrations today:
Armed Forces Day - Angola
Confederation Day - Switzerland
Emancipation Day - Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago
Independence Day/National Day - Benin
Mini Fêtes - French Polynesia
National Day - Switzerland
Parent's Day Zaire - (Democratic Congo)
People's Liberation Army Day - China
Special Holiday - Guadalcanal Province Solomon Islands
St. Dominic's Day - Nicaragua
St. Lydia’s Day (patron of cloth dyers)
TMT Day - Cyprus (Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus)
Lammas - Scotland
Lughnasadh (Festival of Light) - Celticism
Braham Pie Day
Watermelon Day
On this day in...
1492 - Christopher Columbus left Palos, Spain with three ships. The voyage would lead him to what is now known as the Americas. He reached the Bahamas on October 12.
1750 - Christopher Dock completed the first book of teaching methods. It was titled "A Simple and Thoroughly Prepared School Management."
1880 - The American Canoe Association was formed at Lake George, NY.
1900 - Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. was founded.
1914 - Germany declared war on France. The next day World War I began when Britain declared war on Germany.
1922 - WGY radio in Schenectady, NY, presented the first full-length melodrama on radio. The work was "The Wolf", written by Eugene Walter.
1923 - Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the U.S. after the sudden death of President Harding.
1933 - The Mickey Mouse Watch was introduced for the price of $2.75.
1936 - The U.S. State Department advised Americans to leave Spain due to the Spanish Civil War.
1936 - Jesse Owens won the first of his four Olympic gold medals.
1943 - Gen. George S. Patton verbally abused and slapped a private. Later, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered him to apologize for the incident.
1949 - The National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed. The league was formed by the merger between the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
1956 - Bedloe's Island had its name changed to Liberty Island.
1958 - The Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater. The mission was known as "Operation Sunshine."
1979 - "More American Graffiti" was released.
1979 - Johnny Carson, the "Tonight Show" host, was on the cover of the Burbank, CA, telephone directory.
1981 - U.S. traffic controllers with PATCO, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, went on strike. They were fired just as U.S. President Reagan had warned.
1984 - Mary Lou Retton won a gold medal at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
1985 - Mail service returned to a nudist colony in Paradise Lake, FL. Residents promised that they'd wear clothes or stay out of sight when the mailperson came to deliver.
1988 - The Iran-Contra hearings ended. No ties were made between U.S. President Reagan and the Nicaraguan Rebels.
1988 - The Soviet Union released Mathias Rust. He had been taken into custody on May 28, 1987 for landing a plane in Moscow's Red Square.
1989 - Hashemi Rafsanjani was sworn in as the president of Iran.
1990 - Thousands of Iraqi troops pushed within a few miles of the border of Saudi Arabia. This heightened world concerns that the invasion of Kuwait could spread.
1992 - The U.S. Senate voted to restrict and eventually end the testing of nuclear weapons.
1992 - Russia and Ukraine agreed to put the Black Sea Fleet under joint command. The agreement was to last for three years.
1995 - Eyad Ismoil was flown from Jordan to the U.S. to face charges that he had driven the van that blew up in New York's World Trade Center.
2004 - In New York, the Statue of Liberty re-opened to the public. The site had been closed since the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
2004 - NASA launched the spacecraft Messenger. The 6 1/2 year journey was planned to arrive at the planet Mercury in March 2011.
2009 - Bolivia became the first South American country to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves.
If today's your birthday, you share it with:
Ernie Pyle 1900
John T. Scopes 1900
Ray Bloch 1902
Margaret Kuhn 1905
Dolores Del Rio 1905
John Gunther 1910
Charlie Shavers 1917
P.D. James 1920
Richard Adler 1921
Marilyn Maxwell 1921
Leon Uris 1924
Gordon Stoker 1924
Tony Bennett 1926
Gordon Scott 1927
Alex Cord 1931
Elsa Martinelli 1933
Stephen Berkoff 1937
Martin Sheen 1940
Lance Alworth 1940
Martha Stewart 1941
Beverly Lee 1941
B.B. Dickerson 1949
John Landis 1950
JoMarie Payton 1950
Jay North 1951
Marcel Dionne 1951
Johnny Graham 1951
John C. McGinley 1959
James Hetfield 1963
Ed Roland 1963
Dean Sams 1966
Shirly Manson 1966
Evangeline Lilly 1979
Holly Artnstein 1985
