The Almanac
Today is Sunday, Sept. 11, the 255th day of 2016 with 111 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Uranus and Venus.
Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune and Saturn. Those born on this date
are under the sign of Virgo. They include German optician Carl Zeiss in
1816; short story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) in 1862;
British author D.H. Lawrence in 1885; Jimmie Davis, former Louisiana
governor and songwriter ( You Are My Sunshine ) in 1899; College
Football Hall of Fame Coach Paul Bear Bryant in 1913; former
Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos in 1917; Pro Football Hall of
Fame Coach Tom Landry in 1924; former U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii
in 1924 (age 92); Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man in
space, in 1935; filmmaker Brian De Palma in 1940 (age 76); entertainer
Lola Falana in 1942 (age 74); musician Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead) in
1943 (age 73); guitarist Leo Kottke in 1945 (age 71); actor Amy Madigan
in 1950 (age 66); actor Virginia Madsen in 1961 (age 55); actor Kristy
McNichol in 1962 (age 54); Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 1965
(age 51); singer Moby, born Richard Hall, in 1965 (age 51);
actor/singer Harry Connick Jr. in 1967 (age 49); rapper Ludacris in
1977 (age 39). On this date in history: In 1777, troops commanded by
Gen. George Washington were defeated by the British under Gen. William
Howe in the Battle of Brandywine. In 1847, Stephen Foster's first hit,
Oh! Susanna, had its debut at a concert in a Pittsburgh saloon and soon
became a standard for minstrel troupes. In 1921, Fatty Arbuckle, one of
the foremost comedians of the silent movie days, was arrested on
suspicion of manslaughter in the death of a starlet in an alleged
sexual assault during a wild drinking party. Arbuckle eventually was
cleared but his career had been ruined. In 1959, Congress passed a bill
authorizing food stamps for low-income Americans. In 1973, the elected
Socialist government of Salvador Allende of Chile was toppled in a
right-wing military coup supported by the CIA. Authorities said Allende
committed suicide the same day. In 1985, Pete Rose's 4,192nd hit broke
Ty Cobb's 57-year-old career Major League Baseball record. Rose
finished his career with 4,256 hits. In 2001, Islamic terrorists
attacked the United States, crashing two hijacked airliners into the
Twin Towers at New York's World Trade Center and another into the
Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania,
apparently en route to Washington, after passengers attacked their
captors. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, most of them in the two
towers, which collapsed. U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to
destroy the responsible terrorist organizations and the regimes that
supported them. Osama bin Laden, a wealthy anti-American Saudi exile
operating out of Afghanistan and leader of al-Qaida, a shadowy,
far-flung terrorist organization, was identified as the ringleader of
the attacks. In 2008, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai, forced into a runoff after a disputed
election, agreed on a power-sharing arrangement. In 2011, the National
September 11 Memorial was dedicated in New York City on the site of the
iconic Twin Towers, destroyed 10 years earlier in terrorist attacks
that killed nearly 3,000 people. The memorial features the nation's
largest man-made waterfalls cascading into two sunken pools marking
footprints of the decimated skyscrapers, with 2,980 names nearby,
etched in granite. In 2012, heavily armed attackers killed four
Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the U.S.
diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. In 2014, a CIA official said
the Islamic State forces, which had seized large parts of Iraq and
Syria, were much larger than previously believed -- up to 31,500
fighters in the two countries instead of the previous estimate of
10,000. A thought for the day: This is not only an attack on the United
States but an attack on the civilized world. -- German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
assaults. .
