UPI Almanac for Sunday, June 21, 2015

Today is Sunday, June 21, the 172nd day of 2015 with 193 to follow.

This is the first day of summer -- and Father's Day in many countries.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include Boy Scouts of America founder Daniel Carter Beard in 1850; cartoonist Al Hirschfeld in 1903; philosopher/author Jean-Paul Sartre in 1905; actor Jane Russell in 1921; actor Maureen Stapleton in 1925; singer O.C. Smith in 1932; actor Bernie Kopell in 1933 (age 82); actor Monte Markham in 1935 (age 80); actor Ron Ely in 1938 (age 77); actor/TV host Mariette Hartley in 1940 (age 75); comic actor Joe Flaherty in 1941 (age 74); actor Michael Gross in 1947 (age 68); actor Meredith Baxter in 1947 (age 68); Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi in 1948 (age 67); musician Ray Davies (The Kinks) in 1944 (age 71); writer Ian McEwan in 1948 (age 67); musician Nils Lofgren in 1951 (age 64); two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto in 1953; actor Robert Pastorelli in 1954; country singer Kathy Mattea in 1959 (age 56); sportscaster Kevin Harlan in 1960 (age 55); Yingluck Shinawatra, ousted in May 2014 as prime minister of Thailand, in 1967 (age 48); actor Juliette Lewis in 1973 (age 42); rock musician Brandon Flowers in 1981 (age 34); Britain's Prince William in 1982 (age 33).

On this date in history:

In 1788, the U.S. Constitution became effective when it was ratified by a ninth state, New Hampshire.

In 1945, Japanese defenders of Okinawa surrendered to U.S. troops.

In 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit the eastern U.S. seaboard, killing 118 people over a seven-state area.

In 1982, John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 1981 shootings of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three other people who were also wounded. (Hinckley has been in a hospital in Washington, with permission in recent years to spend time outside the institution with his family.)

In 1985, international experts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, conclusively identified the bones of a 1979 drowning victim as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi war criminal, ending a 40-year search for the "angel of death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In 1990, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck northwestern Iran, killing as many as 50,000 people.

In 1997, Cambodia announced the capture of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

In 1998, opposition leader Andres Pastrana Arango was elected president of Colombia by a narrow margin.

In 2000, NASA announced that its Mars Global Surveyor had spotted grooved surface features, suggesting a relatively recent water flow on the planet.

In 2004, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland resigned during his third term amid a corruption scandal. (Rowland, a Republican, later pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and spent 10 months in a federal prison.)

In 2005, a Mississippi jury convicted 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

In 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush's public approval rating hit a low, 26 percent, in a Newsweek poll. In the previous 35 years, only Richard Nixon had a lower Newsweek approval rating -- 23 percent in 1974.

In 2008, nearly 1,400 people, most of them on a ferry that capsized, were killed in Typhoon Fengshen in the Philippines.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law making it a crime to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

In 2011, a RusAir passenger plane flying from Moscow to Petrozavodsk in rain and fog crashed on a highway near an airport and broke apart in flames. Forty-four people died, eight survived.

In 2012, the White House announced the resignation of Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who was involved in two traffic accidents after suffering a seizure.

In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated James Comey, a Justice Department official during the George W. Bush administration, to head the FBI. (Comey was sworn-in in September.)

In 2014, Pope Francis went to southern Italy's Calabria region, the Mafia heartland, and lashed out against the mob, declaring that all of its members were excommunicated from the Catholic Church. The pope said the Mafia represents "evil and contempt for common good" and "must be beaten, expelled."

A thought for the day: "I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June." -- L.M. Montgomery