- 189th Day of 2015 176 Remaining
- Autumn Begins in 77 Days
- Sunrise:5:55
- Sunset:8:34
- 14 Hours 39 Minutes
- Moon Rise:12:30am
- Moon Set:1:22pm
- Phase:Last Quarter
- Full Moon July 1 @ 7:22pm and July 31 @ 3:45pm
- Full Thunder Moon / Full Hay Moon
- July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.
- Tides
- High:4:26am/5:18pm
- Low:10:29am/11:57pm
- Holidays
- Be A Kid Again Day
- National Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Omelet Day
- National Ice Cream Sundae Day
- Milk Chocolate With Almonds Day
- Video Game Day
- On This Day
- 1099 --- Christian soldiers on the First Crusade march around Jerusalem.
- 1497 --- Vasco de Gama left Lisbon with four ships, to search for a sea route to India. He was the first European to sail there (notwithstanding Columbus’ valiant try), and he opened the area to Portuguese trade.
- 1776 --- In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rings out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon. On July 4, the historic document was adopted by delegates to the Continental Congress meeting in the State House. However, the Liberty Bell, which bore the apt biblical quotation, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof,” was not rung until the Declaration of Independence returned from the printer on July 8.
- 1795 --- Kent County Free School changed its name to Washington College. It was the first college to be named after U.S. President George Washington. The school was established by an act of the Maryland Assembly in 1723.
- 1853 --- Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries before.
- 1881 --- Edward Berner, druggist in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, poured chocolate syrup on ice cream in a dish. To this time chocolate syrup had only been used for making ice-cream sodas.
- 1907 --- Florenz Ziegfeld staged his first "Follies," on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.
- 1918 --- Ernest Hemingway, an 18-year-old ambulance driver for the American Red Cross, is struck by a mortar shell while serving on the Italian front, along the Piave delta, in World War I. A native of Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway was working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star when war broke out in Europe in 1914. He volunteered for the Red Cross in France before the American entrance into the war in April 1917 and was later transferred to the Italian front, where he was on hand for a string of Italian successes along the Piave delta in the first days of July 1918, during which 3,000 Austrians were taken prisoner. On the night of July 8, 1918, Hemingway was struck by an Austrian mortar shell while handing out chocolate to Italian soldiers in a dugout. The blow knocked him unconscious and buried him in the earth of the dugout; fragments of shell entered his right foot and his knee and struck his thighs, scalp and hand.
- 1941 --- With his team trailing 5-4 with two outs in the ninth inning, Ted Williams hits a three-run home run to lead the American League to a 7-5 victory in the All-Star Game at Briggs Stadium in Detroit.
- 1960 --- Shot down just two months before while flying a secret mission over Moscow, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage by the Soviet Union on July 8, 1960. Although he would not be found guilty until August 17 of the same year, Powers’ indictment signaled a massive setback in the peace process between the United States and the Soviet Union.
- 1970 --- The San Francisco Giant’s Jim Ray Hart became the first National League player in 59 seasons to collect six runs batted (RBI) during a single inning.
- 1997 --- Torrential rains in the Carpathian Mountains cause serious flooding in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. In all, 104 people died as a result of the deluge.
- Birthdays
- Angelica Huston
- Wolfgang Puck
- John D Rockefeller
- Ernst Bloch
- Louis Jordan
- Billy Eckstine
- Ferdinand Von Zeppelin
- Pamela Brown
- Marty Feldman
- Jai Johnny Johnson
- Kim Darby
- Kevin Bacon
- Beck
KALW Almanac * July 8, 2015 * Ice Cream Sundae Day
