- 303rd Day of 2012 / 63 Remaining
- 53 Days Until The First Day of Winter
- Sunrise:7:32
- Sunset:6:14
- 10 Hours 42 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise: 6:10pm
- Moon Set:7:28am
- Full Moon
- October 29 @ 12:50 pm
- Full Hunter’s Moon
- Full Harvest Moon
This full Moon is often referred to as the Full Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon. Many moons ago, Native Americans named this bright moon for obvious reasons. The leaves are falling from trees, the deer are fattened, and it’s time to begin storing up meat for the long winter ahead. Because the fields were traditionally reaped in late September or early October, hunters could easily see fox and other animals that come out to glean from the fallen grains. Probably because of the threat of winter looming close, the Hunter’s Moon is generally accorded with special honor, historically serving as an important feast day in both Western Europe and among many Native American tribes.
- Tides
- High: 8:00am/7:52pm
- Low: 1:10am/2:06pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:1.26
- Last Year:1.49
- Normal To Date:1.30
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- National Cat Day
- National Forgiveness Day
- Oatmeal Day
- Republic Day-Turkey
- Creole Day-Dominica
- Naming Day-Tanzania
- National Youth Day-Liberia
- On This Day In …
- 1618 --- Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer, writer, and favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded in London, under a sentence brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I. During Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the first English settlement in America, in 1587—the ill-fated Roanoke settlement located in present-day North Carolina. Raleigh later fell out of favor with Elizabeth after she learned of his secret marriage to Bessy Throckmorton, one of her maids-of-honor, and he was imprisoned with his wife in the Tower of London. After buying his freedom, Raleigh married Bessy and distanced himself from the jealous English queen. After Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was implicated as a foe of King James I and imprisoned with a death sentence. The death sentence was later commuted, and in 1616 Raleigh was freed to lead an expedition to the New World, this time to establish a gold mine in the Orinoco River region of South America. However, the expedition was a failure, and when Raleigh returned to England the death sentence of 1603 was invoked against him.
- 1652 --- The Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaimed itself to be an independent commonwealth.
- 1929 --- Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated. Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24—Black Thursday—a record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely.
- 1945 --- The first commercially-made ballpoint pens went on sale -- at Gimbels Department Store in New York City. The pens sold for $12.50 and racked up a tidy profit of $500,000 in the first month!
- 1947 --- The first successful cloud seeding (with dry ice) took place at Concord, New Hampshire.
- 1956 --- John Cameron Swayze and The Camel News Caravan were replaced by Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC-TV. The Huntley-Brinkley Report clicked so well that the respected newsmen reported nightly until July of 1970. “Good night Chet. Good night David. And good night from NBC News.”
- 1956 --- Israeli armed forces push into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, initiating the Suez Crisis. They would soon be joined by French and British forces, creating a serious Cold War problem in the Middle East. The catalyst for the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt was the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian leader General Gamal Abdel Nasser in July 1956. The situation had been brewing for some time. Two years earlier, the Egyptian military had begun pressuring the British to end its military presence (which had been granted in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty) in the canal zone. Nasser's armed forces also engaged in sporadic battles with Israeli soldiers along the border between the two nations, and the Egyptian leader did nothing to conceal his antipathy toward the Zionist nation. Supported by Soviet arms and money, and furious with the United States for reneging on a promise to provide funds for construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River, Nasser ordered the Suez Canal seized and nationalized. The British were angry with the move and sought the support of France (which believed that Nasser was supporting rebels in the French colony of Algeria), and Israel (which needed little provocation to strike at the enemy on its border), in an armed assault to retake the canal. The Israelis struck first, but were shocked to find that British and French forces did not immediately follow behind them. Instead of a lightening strike by overwhelming force, the attack bogged down. The United Nations quickly passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire. The Soviet Union began to issue ominous threats about coming to Egypt's aid. A dangerous situation developed quickly, one that the Eisenhower administration hoped to defuse before it turned into a Soviet-U.S. confrontation. Though the United States sternly warned the Soviet Union to stay out of the situation, Eisenhower also pressured the British, French, and Israeli governments to withdraw their troops. They eventually did so in late 1956 and early 1957.
- 1966 --- The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed.
- 1971 --- Duane Allman, a slide guitarist and the leader of the Allman Brothers Band, is killed when he loses control of his motorcycle and drives into the side of a flatbed truck in Macon, Georgia. He was 24 years old. After Allman's death, his band continued to tour and record and it is still together today. In 2004, Rolling Stone declared that the Allman Brothers were the 52nd-greatest rock band of all time. Duane Allman was born in Nashville and grew up in Florida. Before he formed the Allman Brothers Band with his brother Gregg, a singer and keyboard player, Duane had made a name for himself as a session musician for Atlantic Records at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Georgia. There, he played with artists like Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, John Hammond, Ronnie Hawkins, Boz Scaggs and Herbie Mann. In 1969, the Allmans put together their own band and moved to Macon. They released two promising studio albums and a live album, 1970's "At Fillmore East," that many people say is among the best concert recordings ever made. When Allman died, the band was working on a new studio record, "Eat a Peach," which would eventually hit No. 4 on Billboard's album sales chart.
- 1983 --- Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon became the longest-charting album of all time when it logged its 491st week on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. The previous champ had been Johnny’s Greatest Hits, by Johnny Mathis (490 weeks: April 1958-July 1968). Dark Side of the Moon stayed on the chart for 724 consecutive weeks (740 weeks altogether) and didn’t drop off until July 13, 1988. Michael Jackson’s Thriller sold the most copies ever -- 40 million -- but it spent ‘only’ 122 weeks on the album chart.
- 1992 --- Depo Provera, a contraceptive, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
- 1995 --- Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers became the NFL's career leader in receiving yards with 14,040 yards.
- 1998 --- East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and D.H. Peligro, all former members of the Dead Kennedys, filed suit against Jello Biafra. The claim was that the former lead singer had diverted money owed to the other band members for his own use.
- 1998 --- The space shuttle Discovery blasted off, returning 77-year-old U.S. Senator John Glenn to space some 36 years after he became the first American in orbit. Glenn was part of a crew of seven astronauts shepherding scientific payloads on the shuttle mission.
- Birthdays
- Fanny Brice
- Peter Green
- Zoot Sims
- Melba Moore
- Richard Dreyfuss
- Kate Jackson
- Winona Ryder
- Diane Elise Fratus