The almanac

Today is Monday, Sept. 1, the 245th day of 2008 with 121 to follow.

This is Labor Day in the United States.

The moon is waxing. The morning star is Uranus. The evening stars are Neptune, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn.

Those born on this day are under the sign of Virgo. They include German composer Engelbert Humperdinck in 1854; "Tarzan" author Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1875; dancer/singer Marilyn Miller in 1898; actress Yvonne De Carlo ("The Munsters") in 1922; undefeated heavyweight boxing champ Rocky Marciano in 1923; country music singer Conway Twitty in 1933; symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa in 1935 (age 73); attorney Alan Dershowitz in 1938 (age 70); comedian/actress Lily Tomlin in 1939 (age 69); Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees pop music group in 1946 (age 62); and singer Gloria Estefan in 1957 (age 51).

On this date in history:

In 1807, Aaron Burr, vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, was acquitted of treason charges growing out of an alleged plot to set up an independent empire in the nation's south and west.

In 1914, the last known passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

In 1923, an earthquake struck Yokohama, Japan, killing an estimated 143,000 people.

In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France served an ultimatum on Adolf Hitler but it was ignored.

In 1983, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 strayed into Soviet air space and was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter. All 269 people aboard died.

In 1985, scientists found the wreck of the British luxury liner Titanic, sunk by an iceberg in 1912, in the Atlantic Ocean south of Newfoundland.

In 1990, three planes left Iraq with about 500 Western and Japanese women and children in the first airlift, four days after Saddam Hussein's pledge to begin releasing some of his so-called guests.

In 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush established diplomatic relations with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In 1995, a peace agreement worked out among Liberia's warring militias moved forward with the swearing in of an interim ruling council.

In 1996, the United Nations suspended the permission it gave Iraq to sell oil again after Iraq took over the unofficial Kurdish capital city in violation of the cease-fire terms of the Gulf War.

In 2003, Libya agreed to compensate relatives of the 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over the Sahara.

In 2004, a heavily armed band of 31 Chechen terrorists seized a school in Belstan in southern Russia, taking hundreds of hostages.

In 2005, U.S. President George Bush ordered a suspension of rules restricting shipments of oil and gasoline between U.S. ports to help ease hurricane-caused shortages.

Meanwhile, floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina were reported receding in New Orleans where many of its thousands of homeless were being sent to other states for shelter.

In 2006, the U.S. Defense Department said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces had increased 51 percent from May 20 to Aug. 11, compared to the previous three-month period, said to be an average of nearly 120 Iraqis a day.

Also in 2006, a fiery airport crash of a Russian-made Tupolev 154 airliner in Mashland, Iran, left 29 people dead but 148 passengers survived.

In 2007, six Democratic presidential hopefuls, including frontrunners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, agreed not to campaign in Florida and Michigan because of party primary rules infractions.

Also in 2007, Russia was reported set to expand testing of new warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles. That word came amid growing tensions about a U.S. plan to deploy elements of its global anti-ballistic missile defense system in Central Europe.

A thought for the day: Edward Bellamy wrote, "An American credit card ... is just as good in Europe as American gold used to be."