The Almanac
Today is Tuesday, Sept. 6, the 250th day of 2016 with 116 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 the Marquis de Lafayette,
French hero of the American Revolutionary War, in 1757; pioneer social
worker/Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jane Addams in 1860;
financier/diplomat Joseph P. Kennedy in 1888; theatrical producer Billy
Rose in 1899; comedienne Jo Anne Worley in 1937 (age 79);
singer/songwriter David Allen Coe in 1939 (age 77); musician Rogers
Waters (Pink Floyd) in 1943 (age 73); actor Swoosie Kurtz in 1944 (age
72); actor Jane Curtin in 1947 (age 69); business executive Carly
Fiorina in 1954 (age 62); comedian Jeff Foxworthy in 1958 (age 58);
comedian Michael Winslow in 1958 (age 58); singer/actor Rosie Perez in
1964 (age 52); singer Macy Gray in 1967 (age 49); actor Justin Whalin
in 1974 (age 42); rapper Foxy Brown in 1978 (age 38); British socialite
Pippa Middleton in 1983 (age 33). On this date in history: In 1522, one
of Ferdinand Magellan's five ships -- the Vittoria -- arrived at
Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain, completing the first circumnavigation
of the world. In 1620, 149 Pilgrims set sail from England aboard the
Mayflower, bound for the New World. In 1901, U.S. President William
McKinley was shot by an anarchist at the Pan American Exposition in
Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley died eight days later. In 1909, word was
received that U.S. Navy Adm. Robert Peary had reached the North Pole
five months earlier, on April 6, 1909. In 1966, South African Prime
Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, an architect of his nation's apartheid
policies, was stabbed to death by a deranged messenger during a
parliamentary meeting in Cape Town. In 1995, the U.S. Senate Ethics
Committee unanimously recommended that Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., be
expelled from the Senate on charges of sexual misconduct and
influence-peddling. (He resigned two days later.) In 1995, Baltimore
Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., played his 2,131st consecutive game,
breaking the record set in 1939 by Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees.
Ripken voluntarily ended his streak at 2,362 games in 1998. In 1997,
Britain bid an emotional farewell to Princess Diana -- killed in a car
accident a week earlier -- in a funeral at London's Westminster Abbey
that was broadcast worldwide. In 2003, an unemployed electrician was
charged in the bombing of an open market in Omagh, Northern Ireland,
that killed 29 people and injured 220. In 2004, former U.S. President
Bill Clinton underwent a 4-hour quadruple heart bypass operation at New
York Presbyterian Hospital. In 2007, Luciano Pavarotti, one of opera's
foremost tenors, died of cancer at his home in Modena, Italy. He was
71. In 2008, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of slain politician Benazir
Bhutto, was elected president of Pakistan by a wide margin. Bhutto, a
two-time prime minister who had returned from self-imposed exile a
short time earlier, was assassinated two weeks before the 2007
presidential election in which she was a leading candidate. In 2010,
officials said they feared as many as 270 people died in two weekend
riverboat accidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2012, a
jury in Joliet, Ill., found Drew Peterson, a former police sergeant,
guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen
Savio. Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison. In 2013, on the
last day of a G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, U.S. President
Barack Obama called a recent chemical weapons attack in Syria a
challenge to the world. U.S. officials said they believed Syrian
government forces used the poisonous gas. Russian President Vladimir
Putin, also at the summit, said Syrian rebels were responsible. In
2014, oc'cup'ants of hundreds of homes were either ordered or advised
to evacuate while crews battled a lightning-caused wildfire (the Meadow
Fire) about 15 miles from Yosemite National Park in California.
Although the fire eventually covered almost 5,000 acres, authorities
said there were no fatalities or serious injuries and no major
structural damage was reported. A thought for the day: We are bound
together by the most powerful of all ties -- our fervent love for
freedom and independence, which knows no homeland but the human heart.
-- Gerald R. Ford .
