- 231st Day of the Year / 134 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 34 Days
- Sunrise:6:29
- Sunset:7:56
- 13 Hours 27 Minutes
- Moon Rise:1:27am
- Moon Set:3:57pm
- Moon’s Phase 28%
- 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:8:14am/7:03pm
- Low Tide:1:26am/1:05pm
- Holidays
- National Aviation Day
- Men’s Grooming Day
- National Potato Day
- Hot & Spicy Food Day
- World Humanitarian Day
- Independence Day-Afghanistan
- Apple Spas-Russia
- Day of he Failed August, 1991 Coup-Russia
- Monserrat Annual Pilgrimage
- On This Day
- 1812 --- During the War of 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.
- 1848 --- The discovery of gold in California was reported by the New York Herald.
- 1856 --- Gail Borden of Brooklyn, NY patented his process for condensed milk. 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.
- 1895 --- John Wesley Hardin, one of the bloodiest killers of the Old West, is murdered by an off-duty policeman in a saloon in El Paso, Texas. Born in central Texas on May 26, 1853, Hardin killed his first man when he was only 15 during the violent period of post-Civil War reconstruction. During the next 10 years, he killed at least 20 more men, and some have suggested the total might have been as high as 40. In 1878, Hardin was convicted of killing a Texas sheriff and sent to the Texas state prison in Huntsville. Prison life seems to have calmed Hardin--during his 14 years behind bars, he studied law. Released in 1892, he settled down in Gonzales where he worked as an attorney and tried, unsuccessfully, to win political office. Eventually, Hardin relocated to the violent town of El Paso, where, since the demands for his legal services were limited, he spent more time arguing in saloons than in court. In 1895, the sheriff of El Paso tried to make the town a bit less deadly by outlawing the carrying of guns within city limits. In August of that year, Hardin's girlfriend ran was caught with a gun in the city and arrested by El Paso officer, John Selman. Hardin, who had never learned completely to control his vicious temper, became angry. Bystanders overhead him threaten Selman for bothering his girl. Not long after, on this day in 1895, Selman went looking for Hardin. He found the famous gunman throwing dice at the bar of the Acme saloon. Without a word, Selman walked up behind Hardin and killed him with a shot in the head. Whether Selman was acting out of anger, self-protection, or perhaps to burnish his own reputation as a gunslinger remains unclear. Regardless, an El Paso jury apparently felt that Selman had done the town a favor. The jurors acquitted him of any wrongdoing.
- 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 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.
- 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 --- In the USSR, captured American 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.
- 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.
- 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. Within the first few seconds of the first song that night, at least one radio journalist traveling with the Beatles had been trampled to the ground along with a young female fan who broke a leg in the melee. And thanks to an offhand comment by George Harrison about the group's favorite candy in the days leading up to the show, the Beatles themselves were pelted with flying jelly beans throughout that night's set. Though John,
Paul, George and Ringo were uninjured, they left the Cow Palace that night by ambulance after their limousine was swarmed by berserk fans. It was a scene that would become familiar to them as they continued on their first historic tour of America in the months ahead.
- 1969 --- Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis began three days of recording for the album "Bitches Brew."
- 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 listener’s right up to the end.
- 1991 --- Soviet hard-liners announced that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power. Gorbachev returned to power two days later.
- 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.
- 2005 --- A Texas jury found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable for the death of a man who'd taken the once-popular painkiller Vioxx.
- Birthdays
- Bill Clinton (42nd President)
- Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel
- Ogden Nash
- Gene Roddenberry
- Kyra Sedgewick
- Jill St John
- Ginger Baker
- Tipper Gore
- Gerald McRaney
- Mary Matalin
- Adam Arkin
- John Stamos
- Orville Wright
- Charles Hires
- Tabitha Soren
- Seth Thomas
- Willie Shoemaker
- Johnny Nash
- Deana Martin
- Peter Gallagher
- Lee Ann Womack
- Mary Jo Fernandez
