thursday 13: july notes

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1. the Buck Moon

The full moon of July is the Buck Moon, and it will reach it’s peak illumination at 4:37 pm EST on 10 July. It will still be below the horizon at that time, but if you look to the southeast after sunset, you can watch it rise. You can check the time for your area here. The Buck Moon got its name because of, you guessed it, male deer. The antlers of bucks are in full-growth phase at this time. As a part of their cycle of life, bucks shed and regrow their antlers every year, with each subsequent set larger than the last.

2. the Summer Triangle

The three stars of the summer are Vega, Altair, and Deneb, which appear in July every year. Although they appear similar in brightness in the night sky, they really aren’t. Vega is the brightest of the three, part of the constellation Lyra the Lyre, some 25 light years away from Earth. Altair is found in Aquila the Eagle, 17 light years away from Earth, and it is the second brightest of the Summer Triangle. Finally, Deneb is found in the tail of Cygnus the Swan. It has the dubious distinction of being the farthest away from Earth, some 2,600 light years. It is so far away that the light we see from it now left it around the time that the pyramids in Egypt were built.

3. ruby the protector

The July birthstone is the ruby, which is believed to protect wearers from evil. A ruby is a form of corundum, its color because of chromium within the stone, which also makes it vulnerable to cracks. Yet it is still second only to diamonds in hardness. Corundom without chromium are sapphires.

4. the dancing plague

July of 1518 saw the most bizarre plague In Strasbourg, France. Some 400 people began to dance uncontrollably. Purportedly, it began with a single woman, Frau Troffea. She danced alone for a week, then was joined by almost three dozen others. By the following month, the plague reached its peak. At the time, the “plague” was attributed to “hot blood” and the afflicted were advised to just dance it away. The powers that be went so far as to hire a band and introduce pro dancers to the mess. But dancers began to collapse from exhaustion, others dying from strokes and heart issues. Finally, in September, the afflicted were taken to a mountaintop shrine to pray for absolution. To this day, no one really knows what caused it. Some believe it to be the result of a mass hysteria caused by the pious who thought Saint Vitus possessed the ability to curse the unworthy. Others lay blame to a religious cult, or perhaps the consumption of a toxic mold that grows on damp rye.

5. the rabies vaccination

On 6 July 1885, the first human received the rabies vaccination. The vaccine, developed by Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux, was life-changing. Prior to it, almost all rabies infections ended in death. But on this day, the vaccine was administered to 9yo Joseph Meister, who’d been attacked by a rabid dog. He received his first dose that day, with 12 more over the course of the next 10 days.

6. speaking of the moon

The first crewed mission was Apollo 11, which left from the Kennedy Space Center on 16 July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step onto the moon’s surface on 21 July, just 6+ hours after landing. Minutes later, Buzz Aldrin joined him, and together they spent a little more than two hours exploring and collecting samples.

7. the Wonderland Murders

On 1 July 1981, four people were murdered in a townhouse on Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon part of Los Angeles. The house, known to be a drug house and base for the appropriately named Wonderland Gang, was targeted. Three of those killed were part of the gang: Ron Launius, Billy Deverell, and Joy Miller. Barbara Richardson was the fourth murder victim, the girlfriend of David Lind, an Aryan Brotherhood biker and new recruit to the gang. The only survivor of the attack was Susan Launius, the wife of the leader of the gang. Allegedly, the attack was ordered by Eddie Nash, a well-known club owner who was deeply entrenched with organized crime. It was thought to be retaliation for a armed robber at Nash’s home just days earlier. Throughout the investigation and criminal proceedings, at various times Nash, his muscle Gregory Diles, and infamous porn star John C. Holmes were all arrested, tried, and then acquitted for involvement in the murders.

Another weird connection to the case was Liberace. Nash suspected Holmes of being involved with the robbery of his home, as the porn star had been in the house multiple times that day, leaving a sliding door open. Nash sent his muscle after Holmes, who came back to Nash’s home. Scott Thorson, the then-purported-boyfriend of Liberace was there, buying drugs, and claimed to have seen Holmes tied to a chair and beaten.

8. famous July births

• 4 July 1804: Nathaniel Hawthorne (writer)
• 6 July 1979: Kevin Hart (actor)
• 15 July 1975: Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias (comedian)
• 18 July 1918: Nelson Mandela (activist, president)
• 24 July 1898: Amelia Earhart (pilot)

9. famous July deaths

• 3 July 1971: Jim Morrison (musician)
• 6 July 1971: Louis Armstrong (musician)
• 8 July 1967: Vivian Leigh (actress)
• 20 July 1973: Bruce Lee (actor)
• 23 July 2012: Sally Ride (astronaut)

Honorable mention: Three former American presidents have died on the 4th: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe.

10. July stats

• As of the writing of this post, the world population was 8,127,694,905 and rapidly counting.
• Also as of the writing of this post, the US population was 342,044, 780 and counting.

11. from sinkholes to restoration

On 2 July 1992, the one-millionth Chevy Corvette came off the assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Not quite 22 years later, on 12 February 2014, that ‘vette, along with seven others, were swallowed by a sinkhole 40′ wide and 20’ deep. The sinkhole opened beneath part of Chevorlet’s Sky Dome wing, which housed the National Corvette Museum. While the Dome itself suffered no structural damage, a massive cave was discovered beneath it. But it wasn’t the end, at least for the white 1-million ‘vette (and two others). It was fully restored in a painstaking process to retain its historic significance, revealed on 3 September 2015.

12. more Amelia Earhart

Not only was the famous pilot born in this month, she also disappeared in it, on 2 July 1937. She and her navigator, Frederick Noonan, disappeared somewhere around Howland Island in the midst of an attempt to circumnavigate the world. Few mysteries exist with as many theories as this one. Coincidentally, she is back in the news today, with an archaeologist claiming he’s likely found a piece of the aircraft on Nikumaroro Island, within its lagoon. Previously, remains were found on the island, in 1940, ruled out as belonging to her as they were believed to be male. But as recently as 2018, the bone measurements were run through modern forensics software, then compared to estimations of Earhart’s bone lengths. That analysis not only found that they were female but that they matched with the pilot better than 99% of others. But the bones are long gone, so DNA testing will likely never be possible.

13. Apex the stegosaurus

On 17 July 2024, the skeleton of Apex the stegosaurus was sold for $44.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction. This set a new record for the sale of a fossil. The skeleton was discovered by a paleontologist in 2022, in… Dinosaur, Colorado. The sale sparked controversy within the scientific community, the sale of fossils with high scientific value to private individuals. The owner, Kenneth C. Griffin, loaned it to the American Museum of Natural History, where it will be for four years while researchers study it. One goal is to find out what its true species, as now it is only classed with the genus stegosaurus.