The Almanac
Today is Friday, Sept. 2, the 246th day of 2016 with 120 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 Virgo. They include poet Eugene Field in 1850;
sporting goods entrepreneur Albert Spalding in 1850; Hiram Maxim, who
invented the first portable automatic machine gun, in 1869; basketball
Hall of Fame Coach Adolph Rupp in 1901; author Cleveland Amory in 1917;
author Allen Drury in 1918; dancer Marge Champion in 1919 (age 97);
Snapple co-founder Arnold Greenberg in 1932; horse racing Hall of Fame
member D. Wayne Lukas in 1935 (age 81); basketball Hall of Fame member
John Thompson Jr. in 1941 (age 75); Christa McAuliffe,
schoolteacher/astronaut who died in the 1986 explosion of the space
shuttle Challenger, in 1948; basketball Hall of Fame member Nate
Archibald (in 1968 age 68); football Hall of Fame member/broadcaster
Terry Bradshaw in 1948 (age 68);actor Mark Harmon in 1951 (age 65);
tennis Hall of Fame member Jimmy Connors in 1952 (age 64); Cirque de
Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte in 1959 (age 57); football Hall of Fame
member Eric Dickerson in 1960 (age 56); actor Keanu Reeves in 1964 (age
52); actor Salma Hayek in 1966 (age 50). On this date in history: In
1666, the Great Fire of London began. It destroyed 13,000 houses in
four days. In 1935, a hurricane hit the Florida Keys, killing more than
350 people. In 1945, Japan signed an unconditional surrender aboard the
U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, formally ending World War II. In
1992, earthquake-spawned tidal waves killed more than 100 people in
Pacific coast villages in Nicaragua. In 1998, a Swissair jetliner en
route from New York to Geneva, Switzerland, crashed off the coast of
Nova Scotia, Canada. All 229 people aboard were killed. In 2004, U.S.
President George W. Bush accepted the GOP nomination for re-election,
promising to build a safer world and a more hopeful America. In 2010,
BP warned the U.S. Congress the company might be unable to pay
compensation for its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill if barred from
new offshore drilling permits. In 2011, the U.S. State Department
warned American travelers the security threat in Yemen was extremely
high and urged those already there to leave. In 2012, several hundred
people upset with corporate America marched in Charlotte, N.C., two
days before the Democratic National Convention, chanting: Banks got
bailed out. We got sold out. In 2013, American Diana Nyad, 64,
completed a 53-hour swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Fla., becoming
the first swimmer to make the crossing without a shark cage. In 2014, a
judge in North Carolina ordered the release of Henry Lee McCollum, 50,
and Leon Brown, 46, half-brothers who were declared innocent after
spending decades in prison for their convictions in the murder of an
11-year-old girl. DNA evidence implicated another suspect, a man who
was imprisoned in a different case. A thought for the day: The best way
to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. -- Ernest
Hemingway.
