- 223rd Day of the Year / 142 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 42 Days
- Sunrise:6:22
- Sunset:8:06
- 13 Hours 46 Minutes
- Moon Rise:8:42pm
- Moon Set:7:33am
- Moon Phase 98%
- Full Moon August 10 @ 11:10am
- Full Sturgeon 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 Tide:12:28pm
- Low Tide:5:47am/5:57pm
- Holidays
- Ingersoll Day
- National Raspberry Bombe Day
- Play In the Sand Day
- Presidential Joke Day
- S.O.S. Day
- Panda Day
- Independence Day-Chad
- Heroes’ Day-Zimbabwe
- Montserrat Annual Pilgrimage
- On This Day
- 1874 --- Harry S. Parmelee of New Haven, Connecticut patented the sprinkler head.
- 1877 --- The two moons of Mars were discovered by Asaph Hall, an American astronomer. He named them Phobos and Deimos.
- 1896 --- Harvey Hubbell received a patent for the electric light bulb socket with a pull-chain.
- 1909 --- The international distress call, SOS, which replaced CQD (All stations -- distress!), was first used by an American ship. The ocean liner Arapahoe found itself in trouble off Cape Hatteras, NC. The ship’s wireless operator, T. D. Haubner, radioed for help when his ship lost its screw propeller near the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’, Diamond Shoals. The call was heard by the United Wireless station at Hatteras.Contrary to popular opinion, SOS (which has no stops between the letters, the signal being a continuous signal of three dots, three dashes and three dots) is not an acronym for any series of words such as Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls. The original call for distress began with the British CQ, meaning “All Stations”, used by telegraph and cable operators worldwide. The D for ’distress’ was added to CQ by the Marconi Company in 1904.In 1906, at the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Conference, the German’s general inquiry call, SOE, was suggested as an international distress signal. Changing the E to S gave the signal its unmistakeable character, and SOS was officially ratified as the international distress signal in 1908, although it was not officially adopted by the USA until 1912 (prompted by the Titanic tragedy).
- 1934 --- A group of federal prisoners classified as "most dangerous" arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts--the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary--joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island's days as a U.S. military prison.
- 1951 --- WCBS-TV in New York City became the first station to televise a baseball game in color. And they didn’t stop there. They were also the first station to broadcast two games in color, as this was doubleheader day at Ebbets Field between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves. (The Dodgers won the first game 8-1; the Braves took the nitecap, 8–4.)The first major league baseball game to be televised in color was broadcast. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves 8-1.
- 1952 --- Hank Williams was fired from the Grand Ole Opry and told not to return until he was sober.
- 1961 --- Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves got his 300th major-league victory as he beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-1.
- 1962 --- Booker T and the MG's released their instrumental single 'Green Onions'.
- 1965 --- The Beatles' movie "Help!" premiered in the New York.
- 1965 --- In the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, racial tension reaches a breaking point after two white policemen scuffle with a black motorist suspected of drunken driving. A crowd of spectators gathered near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest and soon grew angry by what they believed to be yet another incident of racially motivated abuse by the police. A riot soon began, spurred on by residents of Watts who were embittered after years of economic and political isolation. The rioters eventually ranged over a 50-square-mile area of South Central Los Angeles, looting stores, torching buildings, and beating whites as snipers fired at police and firefighters. Finally, with the assistance of thousands of National Guardsmen, order was restored on August 16. The five days of violence left 34 dead, 1,032 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and $40 million worth of property destroyed. The Watts riot was the worst urban riot in 20 years and foreshadowed the many rebellions to occur in ensuing years in Detroit, Newark, and other American cities.
- 1969 --- Diana Ross invited 350 guests to a Beverly Hills club to see the newest Motown act, The Jackson 5.
- 1970 --- Jim Bunning of the Philadelphia Phillies became the first pitcher since Cy Young to win 100 games in each of the two major leagues. Bunning, who later became a U.S. Senator, pushed the Phils over the Houston Astros, by a score of 6-5.
- 1971 --- Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins got his 500th and 501st home runs of his major league baseball career.
- 1973 --- "American Graffiti," a nostalgic coming-of-age tale set on the streets and steeped in the car-centric culture of suburban California, is released in theaters across the United States. The movie went on to become a sleeper hit.
- 1973 --- Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there's a case to be made that it came to life precisely on this day in 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New York City. The location of that birthplace was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, and the man who presided over that historic party was the birthday girl's brother, Clive Campbell—better known to history as DJ Kool Herc, founding father of hip hop. DJ Kool Herc's signature innovation came from observing how the crowds would react to different parts of whatever record he happened to be playing: "I was noticing people used to wait for particular parts of the record to dance, maybe [to] do their specialty move." Those moments tended to occur at the drum breaks, the moments in a record when the vocals and other instruments would drop out completely for a measure or two of pure rhythm. What Kool Herc decided to do was to use the two turntables in a typical DJ setup not as a way to make a smooth transition between two records, but as a way to switch back and forth repeatedly between two copies of the same record, extending the short drum break that the crowd most wanted to hear. He called his trick the Merry Go-Round. Today, it is known as the "break beat."
- 1984 --- A joke about "outlawing" the Soviet Union by President Ronald Reagan turns into an international embarrassment. The president's flippant remarks caused consternation among America's allies and provided grist for the Soviet propaganda mill. As he prepared for his weekly radio address on August 11, 1984, President Reagan was asked to make a voice check. Reagan obliged, declaring, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Since the voice check was not actually broadcast, it was not until after he delivered his radio address that news of his "joke" began to leak out. In Paris, a leading newspaper expressed its dismay, and stated that only trained psychologists could know whether Reagan's remarks were "a statement of repressed desire or the exorcism of a dreaded phantom." A Dutch news service remarked, "Hopefully, the man tests his missiles more carefully." Other foreign newspapers and news services called Reagan "an irresponsible old man," and declared that his comments were "totally unbecoming" for a man in his position
- 1984 --- The Cincinnati Reds honored major league All-Star and Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench by retiring his uniform (#5).
- 1992 --- The Mall of America opened in Bloomington, Minnesota. It was the largest retail and entertainment complex in the United States.
- 1994 --- The longest work stoppage in major league history begins. Because of the strike, the 1994 World Series was cancelled; it was the first time baseball did not crown a champion in 89 years.
- 1997 --- U.S. President Clinton made the first use of the line-item veto approved by Congress, rejecting three items in spending and tax bills.
- 2000 --- Pat Buchanan won the Reform Party presidential nomination.
- Birthdays
- Alex Haley
- Hulk Hogan
- Pablo Sandoval
- Viola Davis
- Ashley Jensen
- Joe Jackson
- Mike Douglas
- Steve Wozniak