UPI Almanac for Monday, Jan. 12, 2015

Today is Monday, Jan. 12, the 12th day of 2015 with 353 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include French fairy tale writer Charles Perrault, author of the Mother Goose stories, in 1628; British statesman Edmund Burke in 1729; painter John Singer Sargent in 1856; novelist Jack London in 1876; World War II Nazi leader Hermann Goering in 1893; western singer/actor Tex Ritter in 1905; mentalist The Amazing Kreskin (born George Joseph Kresge) in 1935 (age 60); champion heavyweight boxer Joe Frazier in 1944; radio personality Rush Limbaugh in 1951 (age 64); radio personality Howard Stern in 1954 (age 61); journalist Christiane Amanpour in 1958 (age 57); actor Kirstie Alley in 1951 (age 64); actor Oliver Platt in 1960 (age 55); Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in 1964 (age 51); musician and film director Rob Zombie in 1965 (age 50); Heather Mills, activist and former wife of Paul McCartney, in 1968 (age 47).

In 1921, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected the first commissioner of Major League Baseball.

In 1932, Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, D-Ark., became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1943, the U.S. wartime Office of Price Administration said standard frankfurters would be replaced during World War II by "Victory Sausages" consisting of a mixture of meat and soy meal.

In 1986, U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., traveled into space aboard the shuttle Columbia.

In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton asked Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater land deal affair that involved him and the first lady.

In 2003, Maurice Gibb, 53, of the Bee Gees, died of complications from an intestinal blockage.

In 2006, about 350 people were crushed to death by a stampeding crowd at the entrance to Jamarat Bridge in Mina, Saudi Arabia, during a pilgrimage to Mecca.

In 2010, a magnitude-7 earthquake dealt Haiti and its capital Port-au-Prince a catastrophic blow, killing tens of thousands of people.

In 2013, a bus struck a pole on the side of a road in Nepal and plunged 700 feet down a slope. Authorities said the accident killed at least 30 people and injured many others. In 2014, Six world powers (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) and Iran agreed on a plan to restrict Iranian nuclear operations in return for the easing of some economic sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, " We've taken a critical, significant step forward towards reaching a verifiable resolution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."