Anything to do with the moon automatically get's posted to MM's journal -.-

[msmoon]

Beware, for I am: I'm Hot just thinking about working with the files in the hot room...

 

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On This Day: Monday July 31, 2006

This is the 212th day of the year, with 153 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: lunar sea

A lunar sea is any flat, dark plain of lower elevation on the Moon. The term was erroneously applied to this feature of the lunar surface by telescopic observers of the 17th century; in actuality, a lunar sea (or mare) is a huge lava flow and does not contain any water. All lunar seas occur on the side of the Moon that always faces the Earth. They are the largest topographic features on the Moon and can be seen from the Earth with the unaided eye, appearing as dark patches on a paler background.

Holidays

• Feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Justin de Jacobis, St. Neot, and St. Helen of Skövde.

Events

• 1498 - Christopher Columbus first sighted the island of Trinidad.
• 1777 - Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, became a major-general in the Continental Army of the U.S.
• 1790 - The first U.S. Patent Office opened and the first patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a method of making pearlash and potash.
• 1792 - The first government building's cornerstone was laid: the Philadelphia Mint.
• 1904 - The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural Mountains with Russia's Pacific coast, was completed.
• 1919 - Germany's Weimar Constitution was adopted.
• 1922 - The first water skis were demonstrated, by Ralph Samuelson.
• 1948 - New York's International Airport was dedicated; it was later renamed John F. Kennedy Airport.
• 1964 - Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, took the first close-up images of the Moon.
• 1971 - The Apollo 15 astronauts drove a car on the Moon.
• 1972 - U.S. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the ticket with George McGovern, following disclosures Eagleton had once undergone psychiatric treatment.
• 1981 - A seven-week-old Major League Baseball strike ended.

Births

• 1867 - S.S. Kresge, American five-and-dime merchant, chain store developer.
• 1912 - Milton Friedman, American Nobel Prize-winning economist.
• 1929 - Lynne Reid Banks, English author.

Deaths

• 1875 - Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States of America.

 

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MM