Monday August 19, 2013

• 231^st Day of 2013 /134 Remaining
• 34 Days Until The First Day of Autumn

• Sunrise:6:29
• Sunset:7:56
• 13 Hours 35 Minutes of Daylight

• Moon Rise:6:52pm
• Moon Set:4:56am
• Moon’s Phase:98 %

• The Next Full Moon
• August 20 @ 6:45 pm
• Full Sturgeon Moon
• Full Red Moon
• Full Green Corn Moon
• Full Grain 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:10:49am/10:05pm
• Low:4:01am/4:01pm

• Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
• Normal To Date:0.00
• This Year:0.04
• Last Year:0.02
• Annual Seasonal Average:23.80

• Holidays
• National Aviation Day
• National Men's Grooming Day
• National Soft Ice Cream Day (many sources list August 18)
• National Hot & Spicy Food Day
• National Potato Day

• World Humanitarian Day
• Independence Day-Afghanistan
• Revolution of 1945-Vietnam
• Montserrat Annual Pilgrimage
• Cupcake Day for the RSPCA-Australia

• On This Day In …
• 1812 --- The U.S. Navy frigate Constitution defeats the British frigate Guerrière in a furious engagement off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British shot merely bounced off the Constitution's sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. By the war's end, "Old Ironsides" destroyed or captured

  

  seven more British ships. The success of the USS Constitution against the supposedly invincible Royal Navy provided a tremendous boost in morale for the young American republic.

• 1856 --- Gail Borden was granted patent #15,553 for a process to make condensed milk, which he had developed in 1853. “The milk from contented cows.” This slogan was used in one of the great American advertising campaigns. The familiar flat- topped cans of Borden’s condensed milk are still available, as are Borden’s ice cream, cheese and other products -- all with the seal of approval by Borden’s famous mascot, Elsie, the cow.

• 1909 --- The first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world's most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500. Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local businessmen as a testing facility for Indiana's growing automobile industry. The idea was that occasional races at the track

  

  would pit cars from different manufacturers against each other. After seeing what these cars could do, spectators would presumably head down to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look. The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each exactly 440 yards from start to finish, by two long and two short straight sections. In that first five-mile race on August 19, 1909, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The track's surface of crushed rock and tar proved a disaster, breaking up in a number of places and causing the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators. The surface was soon replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks, laid in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar. Dubbed "The Brickyard," the speedway reopened in December 1909.

• 1917 --- Team managers John McGraw and Christy Matthewson were arrested for breaking New York City's blue laws. The crime was their teams were playing baseball on Sunday.

• 1929 --- "Amos and Andy," the radio comedy program, made its debut on NBC starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.

• 1953 --- The Iranian military, with the support and financial assistance of the United States government, overthrows the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq and reinstates the Shah of Iran. Iran remained a solid Cold War ally of the United States until a revolution ended the Shah's rule in 1979.

• 1960 --- The USSR launched Sputnik 5 into Earth orbit carrying 2 dogs, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants. The capsule was successfully returned to Earth the next day on August 20. These were the first living organisms to return from space.

• 1960 --- U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his confessed espionage. On May 1, 1960, Powers took off from Pakistan at the controls of an ultra-sophisticated Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. A CIA-employed pilot, he was to fly over some 2,000 miles of Soviet territory to BodØ military airfield in Norway, collecting intelligence information en route. Roughly halfway through his journey, he was shot down by the Soviets over Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains. Forced to bail out at 15,000 feet, he survived the parachute jump but was promptly arrested by Soviet authorities.

• 1964 --- The Beatles took America by storm during their famous first visit, wowing the millions who watched them during their historic television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. But after the first great rush of stateside Beatlemania, the Beatles promptly returned to Europe, leaving their American fans to make do with mere records. By late summer of that same year, however,

  

  having put on an unprecedented and still unmatched display of pop-chart dominance during their absence, the Beatles finally returned. On August 19, 1964, more than six months after taking the East Coast by storm, the Fab Four traveled to California to take the stage at the Cow Palace in San Francisco for opening night of their first-ever concert tour of North America.

• 1969 --- Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis began three days of recording

  

  sessions that yielded the album "Bitches Brew."

• 1974 --- During an anti-American protest in Nicosia, Cyprus, U.S Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet while in the American embassy.

• 1989 --- Authorities from four European countries (on the Dutch vessel Volans and the British launch Landward) boarded the offshore rock station Radio Caroline (on the ship Ross Revenge) in

  

  international waters in the North Sea and forced it to shut down. Disc jockeys relayed a blow-by-blow account of events to the astonished listeners right up to the end.

• 1991 --- Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, is stabbed to death by an angry mob in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The crowd, consisting of young black men, had been intent on seeking revenge against Jewish people for the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, who had been struck by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew three hours earlier. Following Rosenbaum's murder, rioting continued against Jews for four days in Crown Heights, while many complained that the response by police and Mayor David Dinkins was inadequate.

• 1991 --- Hurricane Bob was located 30-35 miles east of Cape Hatteras NC, and was at its peak intensity of 115 mph. Damage from Bob was estimated at $1.5 billion, making it the 15th most costly hurricane in U.S. History. A total of 18 people died in the storm: six in Connecticut, three in both New York and Maine, two in both Nova Scotia and New Hampshire, and one in both North and South Carolina.

• 1996 --- A judge sentenced former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker to four years' probation for his Whitewater crimes.

• Birthdays
• William Jefferson ‘Bill’ Clinton-42nd President
• Ogden Nash
• Gene Roddenberry
• Orville Wright
• Charles E. Hires
• Kyra Sedgwick
• Matthew Perry
• Ginger Baker
• Jill St John
• Sen Fred Thompson
• Tipper Gore
• Mary Matalin
• Tabitha Soren
• Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel
• Seth Thomas
• Gene Roddenberry