The Almanac
Today is Wednesday, Aug. 3, the 216th day of 2016 with 150 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Neptune and Uranus. Evening stars
are Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Neptune. Those born on this date
are under the sign of Leo. They include Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of
the modern elevator, in 1811; World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle in
1900; Monkey Trial defendant John Scopes in 1900; orchestra leader Ray
Bloch in 1902; Mexican actor Dolores del Rio in 1905; band leader Les
Elgart in 1917; author P. D. James in 1920; author Leon Uris in 1924;
football Hall of Fame Coach Marv Levy in 1925 (age 91); singer Tony
Bennett in 1926 (age 90); football Hall of Fame member Lance Alworth in
1940 (age 76); TV personality/lifestyle consultant Martha Stewart in
1941 (age 75); actor Martin Sheen in 1940 (age 76); actor Jay North in
1951 (age 65); film director John Landis in 1950 (age 66); hockey Hall
of Fame member Marcel Dionne in 1951 (age 65); pro football quarterback
Tom Brady in 1977 (age 39); actor Evangeline Lilly in 1979 (age 37). On
this date in history: In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from
Spain, seeking a western route to India, with a convoy of three small
ships -- the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria -- and fewer than 100
crew. They reached land at Guanahani, an island in the Caribbean, on
Oct. 12. In 1914, Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium.
The following day, Britain declared war on Germany and World War I was
underway. In 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus crossed under
the North Pole. In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike.
The strikers were fired within one week. In 1990, the prime ministers
of East and West Germany agreed to move up unification to early fall
and rescheduled all-German elections for Oct. 14. In 2004, the Statue
of Liberty in New York Harbor was opened to the public for the first
time since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
In 2005, in the first emergency repair conducted in space, astronauts
fixed a potentially dangerous problem by removing two strips of
protruding cloth from the underside of the space shuttle Discovery. In
2007, the U.S. Congress passed a bill allowing the National Security
Agency to monitor email and telephone communications between the United
States and foreign countries without a court warrant if terrorism was
believed to be involved. In 2008, once-exiled Russian writer Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, whose works revealed the harshness of the Soviet penal
system, died at the age of 89. The Nobel Prize-winning author of One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had been reported ill for years. In
2010, a Manchester, Conn., beer and wine distributorship driver who was
allegedly caught stealing beer, went on a shooting rampage after a
disciplinary hearing at the company, killing eight people and himself.
In 2013, incumbent Robert Mugabe, 89, was declared winner of Zimbabwe's
presidential election. Opponents alleged the vote that gave Mugabe a
seventh term was rigged. In 2014, an earthquake in southern China's
Yunnan province killed nearly 400 people, injured 1,800 and destroyed
thousands of homes.. A thought for the day: Sometimes it is better to
lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing. -- Tony
Blair .
