UPI Almanac for Friday, Sept. 11, 2015

Today is Friday, Sept. 11, the 254th day of 2015 with 111 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include German optician Carl Zeiss in 1816; short story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) in 1862; British author D.H. Lawrence in 1885; Jimmie Davis, former Louisiana governor and songwriter ("You Are My Sunshine") in 1899; College Football Hall of Fame Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant in 1913; former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos in 1917; Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach Tom Landry in 1924; former U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii in 1924 (age 91); Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man in space, in 1935; filmmaker Brian De Palma in 1940 (age 75); entertainer Lola Falana in 1942 (age 73); musician Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead) in 1943 (age 72); guitarist Leo Kottke in 1945 (age 70); actor Amy Madigan in 1950 (age 65); actor Virginia Madsen in 1961 (age 54); actor Kristy McNichol in 1962 (age 53); Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 1965 (age 50); singer Moby, born Richard Hall, in 1965 (age 50); actor/singer Harry Connick Jr. in 1967 (age 48); rapper Ludacris in 1977 (age 38).

On this date in history:

In 1777, troops commanded by Gen. George Washington were defeated by the British under Gen. William Howe in the Battle of Brandywine.

In 1847, Stephen Foster's first hit, "Oh! Susanna," had its debut at a concert in a Pittsburgh saloon and soon became a standard for minstrel troupes.

In 1921, Fatty Arbuckle, one of the foremost comedians of the silent movie days, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in the death of a starlet in an alleged sexual assault during a wild drinking party.(Arbuckle eventually was cleared but his career had been ruined.)

In 1959, Congress passed a bill authorizing food stamps for low-income Americans.

In 1973, the elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende of Chile was toppled in a right-wing military coup supported by the CIA. Authorities said Allende committed suicide the same day.

In 1985, Pete Rose's 4,192nd hit broke Ty Cobb's 57-year-old career Major League Baseball record. (Rose finished his career with 4,256 hits.)

In 2001, Islamic terrorists attacked the United States, crashing two hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers at New York's World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently en route to Washington, after passengers attacked their captors. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, most of them in the two towers, which collapsed. U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to destroy the responsible terrorist organizations and the regimes that supported them. Osama bin Laden, a wealthy anti-American Saudi exile operating out of Afghanistan and leader of al-Qaida, a shadowy, far-flung terrorist organization, was identified as the ringleader of the attacks.

In 2008, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, forced into a runoff after a disputed election, agreed on a power-sharing arrangement.

In 2011, the National September 11 Memorial was dedicated in New York City's lower Manhattan on the site of the iconic Twin Towers, destroyed 10 years earlier in terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The memorial features the nation's largest man-made waterfalls cascading into two sunken pools marking footprints of the decimated skyscrapers, with 2,980 names nearby, etched in granite.

In 2012, "Even now, all these years later," U.S. President Barack Obama said on the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, "it is easy for those of us who lived through that day to close our eyes and to find ourselves back ... when grief crashed over us like an awful wave." Bagpipes played at Memorial Plaza in New York City.

Also in 2012, heavily armed attackers killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In 2013, hundreds of families gathered at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City on the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people. There were many other observances around the country, including one in Washington where President Obama said, "Our hearts still ache for the futures snatched away, the lives that might have been."

In 2014, a CIA official said the Islamic State forces, which had seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, were much larger than previously believed -- up to 31,500 fighters in the two countries instead of the previous estimate of 10,000.

A thought for the day: "This is not only an attack on the United States but an attack on the civilized world." -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults.