- 225th Day of the Year / 140 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 40 Days
- Sunrise:6:24
- Sunset:8:04
- 13 Hours 40 Minutes
- Moon Rise:9:59pm
- Moon Set:9:55am
- Moon’s Phase 87%
- 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:12:57am/1:50pm
- Low Tide:7:15am/7:49pm
- Holidays
- National Filet Mignon Day
- International Left Handers Day
- Independence Day Republic of Central Africa
- Women’s Day-Tunisia
- O-Bon (Festival Of Souls)-Japan
- On This Day
- 1792 --- French revolutionaries took the entire French royal family and imprisoned them.
- 1889 --- William Gray of Hartford, CT patented the coin-operated telephone.
- 1913 --- True Stainless steel was cast for the first time in Sheffield, England. Harry Brearly of Thomas Firth & Sons discovered how to make 'the steel that doesn't rust'
- 1934 --- Cartoonist Al Capp began his famous comic strip, Li’l Abner. In those early days, the cartoon strip was carried in eight newspapers. Eventually, it would be in more than 500, and would be the basis for a Broadway play and a Hollywood movie, too.
- 1938 --- Robert Johnson played a show at a roadhouse outside Greenwood, MS. It has been speculated that Johnson was poisoned after the show which caused his death several days later.
- 1940 --- German aircraft begin the bombing of southern England, and the Battle of Britain, which will last until October 31, escalates. The Germans called it "the Day of the Eagle," the first day of the Luftwaffe's campaign to destroy the RAF, the British Royal Air Force, and knock out British radar stations, in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the amphibious invasion of Britain. Almost 1,500 German aircraft took off the first day of the air raid, and 45 were shot down. Britain lost 13 fighters in the air and another 47 on the ground. But most important for the future, the Luftwaffe managed to take out only one radar station, on the Isle of Wight, and damage five others. This was considered more trouble than it was worth by Herman Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, who decided to forgo further targeting of British radar stations because "not one of those attacked so far has been put out of operation." Historians agree that this was a monumental mistake on the part of the Germans. Had Goering and the Luftwaffe persisted in attacking British radar, the RAF would not have been able to get the information necessary to
successfully intercept incoming German bombers. "Here, early in the battle, we get a glimpse of fuddled thinking at the highest level in the German camp," comments historian Peter Fleming. Even the Blitz, the intensive and successive bombing of London that would begin in the last days of the Battle of Britain, could not compensate for such thinking. There would be no Operation Sea Lion. There would be no invasion of Britain. The RAF would not be defeated.
- 1942 --- Walt Disney's animated feature "Bambi" premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
- 1942 --- Henry Ford unveiled his "Soybean Car." It was a plastic-bodied car that weighed about 1000 lbs. less than a steel car.
- 1948 --- Cleveland Indians rookie pitcher Satchel Paige threw his first complete game in the major leagues. He allowed the Chicago White Sox only five hits in the 5-0 shutout. Incidentally, the rookie pitcher was 42 years old.
- 1948 --- Responding to increasing Soviet pressure on western Berlin, U.S. and British planes airlift a record amount of supplies into sections of the city under American and British control. The massive resupply effort, carried out in weather so bad that some pilots referred to it as "Black Friday," signaled that the British and Americans would not give in to the Soviet blockade of western Berlin. Berlin, like all of Germany, was divided into zones of occupation following World War II. The Russians, Americans, and British all received a zone, with the thought being that the occupation would be only temporary and that Germany would eventually be reunited. By 1948, however, Cold War animosities between the Soviets and the Americans and British had increased
to such a degree that it became obvious that German reunification was unlikely. In an effort to push the British and Americans out of their zones of occupation in western Berlin, the Soviets began to interfere with road and rail traffic into those parts of the city in April 1948. (Though divided into zones of occupation, the city of Berlin
was geographically located entirely within the Russian occupation area in Germany.) In June 1948, the Russians halted all ground and water travel into western Berlin. The Americans and British responded with a massive airlift to supply the people in their Berlin zones of occupation with food, medicine, and other necessities. It was a daunting logistical effort, and meant nearly round-the-clock flights in and out of western Berlin. August 13, 1948, was a particularly nasty day, with terrible weather compounding the crowded airspace and exhaustion of the pilots and crews. Nevertheless, over 700 British and American planes landed in western Berlin, bringing in nearly 5,000 tons of supplies.
- 1952 --- In Los Angeles, the original version of Hound Dog was recorded byWillie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton. Big Mama Thornton was a native of Montgomery, Alabama, who came of age on the R&B circuit in the 1940s after starting her professional career in 1941 at the age of 14. In 1951, she signed her first record contract with Peacock Records and was soon paired with another of its artists, bandleader Johnny Otis, who brought Thornton out to join
his band in California. It was there, in late 1952, that Otis asked two young songwriters on the Los Angeles music scene if they would write something especially for Thornton. Those songwriters were Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who would go on to have an enormous impact on R&B and early rock and roll through their work with groups like the Coasters and the Drifters. But hits like "Yakkity Yak," "Charlie Brown," "Stand By Me," "Jailhouse Rock" and "Love Potion No. 9" were still ahead of Lieber and Stoller when they did what Otis asked and came back to him with a 12-bar country blues tune called "Hound Dog.
- 1961 --- East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city. After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a
Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans--including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals--were leaving every day. In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei ("Volpos") patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.
- 1965 --- The Jefferson Airplane made its stage debut at the Matrix Club.
- 1967 --- The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Joan Baez to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. because of her opposition to the Vietnam War.
- 1969 --- Bowie Kuhn, who had been the acting commissioner of major-league baseball since February, started this day expecting his term to come to an end. He ended the day having been elected to a seven-year term -- and he stayed on for almost a decade after that first term.
- 1982 --- The teenage coming-of-age comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont Highopens in theaters around the United States. Written by Cameron Crowe and directed by Amy Heckerling, the film follows a year in the life of high school students Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Linda (Phoebe Cates), Mark (Brian Backer) and Mike (Robert Romanus) and their assorted classmates and teachers. The ensemble cast also featured the (then relatively unknown) future A-list actors Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage and Forest Whitaker, as well as Judge Reinhold, Eric Stoltz, Ray Walston and Anthony Edwards.
- 2008 --- American Michael Phelps swam into history as the winningest Olympic athlete ever with his 10th and 11th career gold medals.
- 2011 --- Seven people were killed when a stage collapsed at the Indiana State Fair during a powerful storm just before a concert was to begin.
- Birthdays
- Annie Oakley
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Debi Mazar
- Fidel Castro
- Joycelyn Elders
- Kathleen Battle
- Danny Bonaduce
- Lucy Stone
- Bert Lahr
- Ben Hogan
- George Shearing
- Don Ho
- Son Seals
