The Almanac
Today is Wednesday, Aug. 31, the 244th day of 2016 with 122 to follow.
The moon is new. 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 Virgo. They include Roman Emperor Caligula in
A.D. 12; Italian educator Maria Montessori in 1870; actor Fredric March
in 1897; entertainer Arthur Godfrey in 1903; writer William Saroyan in
1908; English astronomer Alfred Bernard Lovell in 1913; actor Richard
Basehart in 1914; journalist Daniel Schorr in 1916; lyricist Alan Jay
Lerner in 1918; comedian Buddy Hackett in 1924; actor James Coburn in
1928; baseball Hall of Fame member Frank Robinson, first
African-American to manage a Major League Baseball team, in 1935 (age
81); black militant Eldridge Cleaver in 1935; violinist Itzhak Perlman
in 1945 (age 71); musician Van Morrison in 1945 (age 71); musician Bob
Welch in 1945; actor Richard Gere in 1949 (age 67); Olympic track star
Edwin Moses in 1955 (age 61); Jordanian Queen Rania in 1970 (age 46);
singer/actor Debbie Gibson in 1970 (age 46); actor Chris Tucker in 1972
(age 44); Olympic gold medal skier Ted Ligety in 1984 (age 32). On this
date in history: In 1897, Thomas Edison was awarded a patent for his
movie camera, the Kinetograph. In 1888, prostitute Mary Ann Nichols
became the first reported victim of the London serial killer known as
Jack the Ripper. In 1903, a Packard automobile completed a 52-day
journey from San Francisco to New York, becoming the first car to cross
the nation under its own power. In 1986, an Aeromexico DC-9 collided
with a single-engine plane over Cerritos, Calif., killing 82 people,
including 15 on the ground. In 1997, Britain's Princess Diana died of
injuries following a car accident in Paris that also killed her
companion, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul. In 2003, a Russian
K-159 nuclear-powered submarine was lost in the Barents Sea, claiming
the lives of nine of its 10-member crew. Russian authorities blamed
negligence by navy officials. In 2004, in the first major attacks
inside Israel in nearly six months, Palestinian suicide bombers blew up
two buses almost simultaneously in Beersheba, killing 16 passengers and
wounding more than 80. In 2005, close to 1,000 people, most of whom
were Shiite pilgrims, died in a stampede and the partial collapse of a
bridge over the Tigris River in northern Baghdad. In 2010, U.S.
President Barack Obama announced the end of the American combat mission
in Iraq, seven years after the war began. In 2013, U.S. President
Barack Obama, in a TV speech from the White House Rose Garden, said ,
Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children
were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the
21st century. He said the United States had presented a powerful case
that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack and was ready
to take military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
pending approval by Congress. In 2014, Iraqi officials said the
country's military, with help from Shiite militias, ended the militant
Islamic State's two-month siege on the town of Amerli. A thought for
the day: I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it. â" William Saroyan .
