Advertisement

The almanac

By United Press International
Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter

Today is Saturday, July 6, the 187th day of 2013 with 178 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Mars, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. Evening stars are Mercury, Saturn and Venus.

Advertisement


Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include John Paul Jones, founder of the U.S. Navy, in 1747; Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in 1907; singer LaVerne Andrews, of the Andrews Sisters, in 1911; British actor Sebastian Cabot in 1918; former U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan in 1921 (age 92); TV entertainer-producer Merv Griffin and rock 'n' roll pioneer Bill Haley ("Rock Around The Clock"), both in 1925; actor Janet Leigh in 1927; singer/actor Della Reese in 1931 (age 82); the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in 1935 (age 78); actors Ned Beatty in 1937 (age 76), Burt Ward in 1945 (age 68) and Sylvester Stallone in 1946 (age 67); former U.S. President George W. Bush, also in 1946 (age 67); actors Shelley Hack in 1947 (age 66), Geoffrey Rush in 1951 (age 62) and Allyce Beasley in 1954 (age 59); singer Nanci Griffith in 1953 (age 60); and rapper 50 Cent, born Curtis James Jackson III, in 1975, (age 38).

Advertisement


On this date in history:

In 1699, pirate Capt. William Kidd was seized in Boston and deported to England where he was hanged.

In 1854, the Republican Party was formally established at a meeting in New York City.

In 1885, French bacteriologist Louis Pasteur inoculated the first human being, a boy, who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The youngster didn't develop rabies.

In 1919, a British dirigible landed at New York's Roosevelt Field to complete the first airship crossing of the Atlantic.

In 1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.

In 1933, the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The American League beat the National League 4-2.

In 1942, diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge in a secret section of an Amsterdam warehouse where they hid from the Nazis for two years. Finally discovered, they were sent to concentration camps where Anne died.

In 1944, fire in the big top of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hartford, Conn., killed 167 people, two-thirds of them children, and injured 682 others.

In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first black athlete to win a Wimbledon championship.

Advertisement

Also in 1957, while attending a church picnic near Liverpool, 15-year-old Paul McCartney met 16-year-old John Lennon. Lennon's band was playing at the picnic and by the end of the day McCartney had joined the group.

In 1958, Alaska became the 49th U.S. state.

In 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria.

In 1971, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, one of the 20th century's most influential American musicians, died at age 69.

In 1976, women were first admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy. The other military academies soon followed suit.

In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a TV interview, said it was a "probability" that many young people now paying into Social Security "will never be able to receive as much as they're paying."

In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder deployed the remote-controlled Sojourner to explore the surface of Mars.

In 1999, U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton announced she was forming a committee to look into running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y.

In 2004, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, chose Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., as his running mate.

Advertisement

In 2005, London was chosen as the site of the 2012 Olympic Games in a close decision over Paris.

In 2006, Felipe Calderon of Mexico's ruling National Action Party won a tight race for president over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama met in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, and announced an agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals.

In 2011, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2018 Winter Olympic Games to the South Korea city of Pyeongchang, set in the Taebaek Mountains 110 miles east of Seoul and host to the 2013 Special Olympics.

In 2012, Hong Kong customs officials who had been tipped by U.S. drug agents announced a record seizure of more than 1,400 pounds of cocaine, with a street value of $98 million. The cocaine was in a shipment from Ecuador.


A thought for the day: Ambrose Bierce defined a cynic as "a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."

Latest Headlines