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Wednesday September 17, 2014

  • 260th Day of the Year / 105 Remaining
  • Autumn Begins in 5 Days

  • Sunrise:6:53
  • Sunset:7:13
  • 12 Hours 20 Minutes

  • Moon Rise:1:02am
  • Moon Set:3:24pm
  • Moon Phase:34%
  • Full Moon September 8 @ 6:38pm
  • Full Corn Moon
  • Full Harvest Moon

This full moon’s name is attributed to Native Americans because it marked when corn was supposed to be harvested. Most often, the September full moon is actually the Harvest Moon, which is the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox. In two years out of three, the Harvest Moon comes in September, but in some years it occurs in October. At the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of this Moon. Usually the full Moon rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the Moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the U.S., and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice the chief Indian staples are now ready for gathering.

  • Tides
  • High Tide:7:45am/6:31pm
  • Low Tide:12:43am/12:54pm

  • Holidays
  • Constitution Day
  • Citizenship Day
  • National Apple Dumpling Day
  • Time’s Up Day

  • International Country Music Day
  • International Coastal Clean Up Day
  • International Eat An Apple Day
  • Heroes Day-Angola

  • On This Day
  • 1787 --- The Constitution of the United States of America is signed by 38 of 41 delegates present at the conclusion of the Constitutional 
    Convention in Philadelphia. Supporters of the document waged a hard-won battle to win ratification by the necessary nine out of 13 U.S. states.

  • 1862 --- Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War battle of Antietam. With 23,100 killed, 
    wounded or captured, it remains the bloodiest day in U.S. military history.

  • 1872 --- Phillip W. Pratt of Abington, Masssachusetts patented an automatic sprinkler system for putting out fires. The system was operated by means of a valve to which cords and fuses were attached. The 
    cords held the valve closed with a spring-loaded lever. In case of a fire, when the fuses ignited, the cords burned, and the valve opened, releasing a stream of water.

  • 1920 --- The American Professional Football Association - a precursor of the National Football League - was formed in Canton, Ohio.

  • 1923 --- A fire in northern California threatens the University of California at Berkeley, kills 2 people and causes $10 million in damages. The exact cause of the devastating fire has never been 
    determined, but it began in the dry forests northeast of Berkeley. Strong winds from the east blew cinders into the air and caused the fire to spread rapidly. The red-hot cinders sometimes jumped several houses at a time, resulting in a random pattern of destruction.

  • 1930 --- Construction on Boulder Dam, later renamed Hoover Dam, began in Black Canyon, near Las Vegas. 

  • 1931 --- RCA Victor began demonstrating a very early version of the long-playing (LP), 33-1/3 RPM phonograph record. It would be another 17 years before RCA rival Columbia would begin mass production of the LP.

  • 1939 --- Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the "fine print" of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact—the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland. Hitler's troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month. The Polish army began retreating and regrouping east, near 
    Lvov, in eastern Galicia, attempting to escape relentless German land and air offensives. But Polish troops had jumped from the frying pan into the fire—as Soviet troops began occupying eastern Poland. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-aggression Pact, signed in August, had eliminated any hope Poland had of a Russian ally in a war against Germany. Little did Poles know that a secret clause of that pact, the details of which would not become public until 1990, gave the U.S.S.R. the right to mark off for itself a chunk of Poland's eastern region.

  • 1953 --- Ernie Banks became the first black baseball player to wear a Chicago Cubs uniform. Banks was also quick to say, “Let’s play two!” Banks was the Cubs’ outstanding shortstop from 1954 to 
    1960. In 1961 he was moved to left field, then to first base, where he spent the rest of his career. In 1969, Ernie Banks was voted the Cub’s best player ever by Chicago fans. ‘Mr. Cub’ retired in 1971.

  • 1955 --- The Perry Como Show moved to Saturday nights on NBC-TV. Soon, U.S.A. audiences would “Sing along with me ... I’m on my way to the stars...” with the incomparable Mr. C. Como’s hourlong variety show replaced his three-times-per-week, 15-minute show, which had been on the air since 1948. The new version of The Perry Como Show soon became Saturday’s highest-rated TV program, beating CBS competitor Jackie Gleason.

  • 1957 --- Louis Armstrong, the famous African-American jazz musician, angrily announces that he will not participate in a U.S. government-sponsored tour of the Soviet Union. Armstrong was 
    furious over developments in Little Rock, Arkansas, where mobs of white citizens and armed National Guardsmen had recently blocked the entrance of nine African-American students into the all-white Central High School.

  • 1961 --- The Minnesota Vikings were debuted as the new National Football League (NFL) team. 

  • 1965 --- The Smothers Brothers Show, a sitcom, debuted on CBS-TV. Dick Smothers played young executive Dick Smothers, who worked for publisher Leonard J. Costello (Rolland Winters). Dick was trying to enjoy life as a prosperous bachelor, when his brother Tom (played by Tom) showed up as an apprentice angel. Tom, who had been lost at sea some years before, had to perform good deeds 
    on earth in order to gain permanent angel wings. Instead of the helpful angel, he was often the blundering angel, constantly depending on brother Dick to get him out of scrape after scrape. The Smothers Brothers Show ran in this format for one year. The funny and talented duo returned in February of 1967 with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and continued to get into scrape after scrape -- this time with the network.

  • 1965 --- Four adventurous Englishmen arrive at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany after crossing the English Channel by Amphicar, the world's only mass-produced amphibious passenger car. Despite 
    choppy waters, stiff winds, and one flooded engine, the two vehicles made it across the water in about seven hours.

  • 1966 --- "Mission Impossible" premiered on CBS-TV. 

  • 1967 --- The Doors appear on the "Ed Sullivan Show" and performed "Light My Fire" and "People Are Strange."

  • 1967 --- The Who appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. An incident occurred with flash explosions that damaged Pete Townsend's ears.

  • 1972 --- The comedy series "M.A.S.H." premiered on CBS.

  • 1976 --- NASA publicly unveils its first space shuttle, the Enterprise, during a ceremony in Palmdale, California. Development of the 
    aircraft-like spacecraft cost almost $10 billion and took nearly a decade.

  • 1978 --- At the White House in Washington, D.C., Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords, laying the groundwork for a permanent peace agreement between Egypt and Israel after three 
    decades of hostilities. The accords were negotiated during 12 days of intensive talks at President Jimmy Carter's Camp David retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. The final peace agreement--the first between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors--was signed in March 1979. Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

  • 1981 --- Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela throws his eighth shutout of the season to set a new National League rookie record. Valenzuela’s three-hitter beat the Atlanta Braves 2-0 and put an exclamation point on one of the greatest rookie seasons 
    in baseball history. "Fernandomania" swept across Southern California and much of the country that summer became the biggest story in baseball.

  • 1983 --- Vanessa Williams, Miss New York, was crowned Miss America. Williams was the first black woman in the 62-year history of the Miss America Pageant to win the coveted title. Williams relinquished her crown during her reign when nude pictures of her were published in Penthouse magazine.

  • 1984 --- Seventeen years to the day after his first major-league home run, Reggie Jackson of the California Angels hit his 500th career homer -- in a game against the Kansas City Royals.

  • 1986 --- The Senate confirmed the nomination of William H. Rehnquist as the 16th chief justice of the United States.

  • 1991 --- The United Nations General Assembly opened its 46th session. The new members were Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North and South Korea, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. 

  • 1998 --- An American Airlines flight made an emergency stop in Denver because a passenger had become violent after meeting Hootie & The Blowfish on the plane. 

  • 2003 --- David Lee Roth injured himself while doing a very fast, complicated 15th-century samurai move onstage. Roth needed 21 stitches when a staff he was using hit him in the face. A few days later the remainder of his tour was canceled.

  • 2004 --- San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds hit his 700th career home run, joining Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755) as the only players to reach the milestone.
  • Birthdays
  • Ken Kesey
  • Rube Foster
  • Hank WIlliams
  • Maureen Connolly
  • Justice Warren Burger
  • George Blanda
  • Roddy McDowall
  • Orlando Cepeda
  • Casandra Peterson
  • Rita Rudner