- 156 Day of 2013 / 209 Remaining
- 16 Days Until The First Day of Summer
- Sunrise:5:47
- Sunset:8:28
- 14 Hours 41 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:3:53am
- Moon Set:6:03pm
- Moon’s Phase:7 %
- The Next Full Moon
- June 23 @ 4:33am
- Full Strawberry Moon
- Full Rose Moon
This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!
- Tides
- High:11:25am/10:29pm
- Low:4:49am/4:11pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:16.36
- Last Year:15.77
- Normal To Date:23.76
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Gingerbread Day
- Children's Awareness Memorial Day
- National Cancer Survivors Day
- World Environment Day
- Constitution Day-Denmark
- Liberation Day-Seychelles
- On This Day In …
- 1752 --- Benjamin Franklin flew a kite for the first time to demonstrate that lightning was a form of electricity.
- 1783 --- Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier were brothers. They made their first balloon ascension on this day. This means that their balloon went up, successfully, we might add, to 1,500 feet for about ten minutes.
- 1851 --- Harriet Beecher Stow published the first installment of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in "The National Era."
- 1870 --- A huge section of the city of Constantinople, Turkey, is set ablaze on this day in 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 3,000 homes were destroyed and 900 people were dead. The fire began at a home in the Armenian section of the Valide Tchesme district. A young girl was carrying a hot piece of charcoal to her family's kitchen in an iron pan when she tripped, sending the charcoal out the window and onto the roof of an adjacent home. The fire quickly spread down Feridje Street, one of Constantinople's main thoroughfares. The Christian area of the city was quickly engulfed. There was a high degree of cooperation among the various ethnic groups who called the city home, but even this was no match for the high winds that drove the rapidly spreading fire. An entire square mile of the city near the Bosporus Strait was devastated. Only stone structures, mostly churches and hospitals, survived the conflagration.
- 1876 --- Foil wrapped bananas are sold for a dime at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Bananas become a popular treat for the first time in the U.S. when word spread about how delicious they were.
- 1933 --- United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable.
- 1940 --- During World War II, the Battle of France began when Germany began an offensive in Southern France.
- 1942 --- President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues a stern statement warning Japan to stop using poison gas in its war on China. At this point during World War II, the United States and Japan were engaged in battle in the Pacific; Japan was also at war with China. Roosevelt received intelligence reports that Japanese military forces had used poisonous gas and other forms of what he called inhuman warfare, including biological agents, on innocent Chinese civilians, which violated the Geneva Convention of 1925, an international agreement on the rules of engagement in war. Roosevelt warned that if Japan continued to use chemical warfare against China, the U.S. would consider such actions tantamount to a chemical or biological attack on America and the United Nations and respond with similar attacks. The president minced no words, stating that retaliation in kind and in full measure will be meted out. We shall be prepared to enforce complete retribution. Upon Japan will rest the responsibility.
- 1959 --- Bob Zimmerman graduated from high school in Hibbing, MN. Zimmerman was known as a greaser to classmates in the remote rural community, because of his long sideburns and leather jacket. Soon, Zimmerman would be performing at coffee houses at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and later, in Greenwich Village in New York City. He would also change his name to Bob Dylan (after poet Dylan Thomas, so the story goes).
- 1963 --- British Secretary of War John Profumo resigns his post following revelations that he had lied to the House of Commons about his sexual affair with Christine Keeler, an alleged prostitute. At the time of the affair, Keeler was also involved with Yevgeny "Eugene" Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache who some suspected was a spy. Although Profumo assured the government that he had not compromised national security in any way, the scandal threatened to topple Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's government.
- 1967 --- The National Hockey League (NHL) awarded three new franchises. The Minnesota North Stars (later the Dallas Stars), the California Golden Seals (no longer in existence) and the Los Angeles Kings.
- 1967 --- Ongoing political problems (control and reunification of Jerusalem, access through the strait of Tiran, control of the West Bank of the Jordan River, etc.) came to a head, causing a major outbreak of hostilities (later referred to as the Six Day War) between Israel and Egypt. The Israelis, who had at first met strong Egyptian resistance, destroyed 50 of Egypt’s tanks and stormed through Gaza, and this was only Day One; the beginning of a quick and ferocious victory for the Israeli ground and air forces, led by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan; and a humiliating defeat for Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Both sides are still blaming the other for firing the first shot.
- 1968 --- Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He died a day later. The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John's younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support. Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause. After winning California's primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election. As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy. Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded. Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot.
- 1981 --- The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that five men in Los Angeles were suffering from a rare pneumonia found in patients with weakened immune systems. They were the first recognized cases of what came to be known as AIDS.
- 1998 --- 3,400 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union walk out on their jobs at a General Motors (GM) metal-stamping factory in Flint, Michigan, beginning a strike that will last seven weeks and stall production at GM facilities nationwide. The 1998 strike didn't end GM's problems with the UAW: In September 2007, the union launched a nationwide strike against GM, with 73,000 workers walking out and halting operations in 30 states for two days until a resolution was announced.
- 2007 --- Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation. (President George W. Bush later commuted the prison sentence.)
- Birthdays
- Bill Moyers
- Mark Wahlberg
- Laurie Anderson
- Suze Orman
- Kenny G
- Pat Garrett
- Pancho Villa
- Ruth Benedict
- Thomas Chippendale
- Adam Smith
- Spalding Gray
- William Boyd