The Almanac
Today is Monday, March 6, the 65th day of 2017 with 300 to follow. The
moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Venus.
Evening stars are Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars. Those born on this
date are under the sign of Pisces. They include Italian
painter/sculptor Michelangelo in 1475; French dramatist Cyrano de
Bergerac in 1619; English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1806;
Union Army Gen. Philip Sheridan in 1831; humorist/short story writer
Ring Lardner in 1885; baseball Hall of Fame member Robert Moses Lefty
Grove in 1900; Texas swing bandleader Bob Wills in 1905; comic actor
Lou Costello in 1906; one-armed professional baseball player Pete Gray
in 1915; television personality Ed McMahon in 1923; symphony conductor
Sarah Caldwell in 1924; former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan
Greenspan in 1926 (age 91); Mercury astronaut L. Gordon Cooper in 1927;
Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1927; former District of
Columbia Mayor Marion Barry in 1936; baseball Hall of Fame member
Willie Stargell in 1940; actor Ben Murphy in 1942 (age 75); singer Mary
Wilson in 1944 (age 73); musician/singer David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) in
1946 (age 71); actor/director Rob Reiner in 1947 (age 70); high jumper
Dick Fosbury, who created the Fosbury Flop, in 1947 (age 70); news
commentator John Stossel in 1947 (age 70); actor Tom Arnold in 1959
(age 58); actor D.L. Hughley in 1963 (age 54); basketball star
Shaquille O'Neal in 1972 (age 45); rapper Tyler, The Creator in 1991
(age 26). On this date in history: In 1836, Mexican forces captured the
Alamo in San Antonio, killing the last of 187 defenders who had held
out in the fortified Texas mission for 13 days. Frontiersman Davy
Crockett was among those killed on the final day. In 1853, La Traviata
by Giuseppe Verdi premiered in Venice, Italy. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme
Court handed down its landmark ruling that slave Dred Scott couldn't
sue for his freedom in a federal court, even though his white owner had
died in a free state. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt declared a
national banking holiday in an effort to shore up the banking system.
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. bombers flying from Britain began
the first daytime attacks on Berlin. In 1965, Alabama Gov. George
Wallace declared There will be no march between Selma and Montgomery,
and that he had ordered the highway patrol to use whatever measures are
necessary to prevent a march. In 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph
Stalin's daughter, defected to the United States. She would return to
the Soviet Union 17 years later stating, In America, I ended up living
the life of a suburban housewife, which is not at all what I wanted. In
1981, Walter Cronkite signed off from the CBS Evening News for the
final time after 19 years at the anchor's desk. In 1982, an Egyptian
court sentenced five Muslim fundamentalists to death for the
assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Seventeen others drew prison
terms. In 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush, addressing a joint
session of Congress, declared the Persian Gulf War over. In 2014,
Boeing said it would end pension plans for 68,000 non-union employees
by 2016, switching to 401k plans. In 2015, Islamic State militants
devastated the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq, using
bulldozers to raze the site. A thought for the day: Don't confuse being
'soft' with seeing the other guy's point of view. -- George H.W. Bush .
