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UPI Almanac for Friday, Oct. 9, 2015

The Washington Monument opens to public, Al Capone on trial for tax evasion ... on this date in history.

By United Press International
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (L) and Major Ernesto "Che" Guevara wait to board a plane for Montevideo, Uruguay. Guevara was killed in Bolivia on Oct. 9, 1967. File Photo by UPI
1 of 8 | Cuban leader Fidel Castro (L) and Major Ernesto "Che" Guevara wait to board a plane for Montevideo, Uruguay. Guevara was killed in Bolivia on Oct. 9, 1967. File Photo by UPI | License Photo

Today is Friday, Oct. 9, the 282nd day of 2015 with 83 to follow.

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

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Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include French composer Camille Saint-Saens in 1835; French officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of treason, in 1859; Charles Rudolph Walgreen, drugstore chain founder, in 1873; baseball Hall of Fame member Rube Marquard in 1886; American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1890; Civil War historian Bruce Catton in 1899; Scottish actor Alastair Sim in 1900; baseball Hall of Fame member Walter O'Malley in 1903; convicted Watergate burglar, novelist and lecturer E. Howard Hunt Jr. in 1918; former Beatle John Lennon in 1940; C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb in 1941 (age 74); The Who bassist John Entwistle in 1944; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Jackson Browne in 1948 (age 67); Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams in 1950 (age 65); writer/actor Robert Wuhl in 1951 (age 64); television personality Sharon Osbourne in 1952 (age 63); football Hall of Fame member Mike Singletary in 1958 (age 57); film director Guillermo del Toro in 1964 (age 51); actors Tony Shalhoub in 1953 (age 62); Scott Bakula and John O'Hurley, both in 1954 (age 61), Michael Pare in 1958 (age 57) and Zachery Ty Bryan in 1981 (age 34); British Prime Minister David Cameron in 1966 (age 49); and golf Hall of Fame member Annika Sorenstam in 1970 (age 45).

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On this date in history:

In 1888, 40 years after construction began, the Washington Monument opens to the public. Work on the obelisk was halted from 1854 to 1877 due to a lack of funds, internal squabbling within the Washington National Monument Society, and the American Civil War.

In 1919, the Cincinnati Reds win the World Series defeating the Chicago White Sox. Eight members of the White Sox would be accused of intentionally losing games in exchange for money from gamblers in what would become known as the Black Sox Scandal. The players were later found not guilty, though all were banned from the sport for life.

In 1931, gangster Al Capone's Florida spending told at tax evasion trial. The government's contention was that if Mr. Capone was "rich enough to be a moviesque Florida Play-boy, then he certainly must have an income worthy of taxation."

In 1931, the Japanese government endorses military action against Manchuria. The invasion was one of a series of battles and skirmishes which took place in the run-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated by a Croatian terrorist during a state visit to France.

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In 1967, one day after being captured in the jungles of Bolivia where he was waging a guerrilla war, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, a leading figure in the 1959 Cuban revolution, is executed by the Bolivian military.

In 1974, Oskar Schindler, the German businessman credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66.

In 1975, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1983, James Watt, facing U.S. Senate condemnation for a racially insensitive remark, resigned as U.S. President Ronald Reagan's interior secretary.

In 1992, NASA announced that the unmanned Pioneer spacecraft was apparently lost after orbiting Venus for 14 years.

In 1997, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned after Communist members of Parliament withdrew their support for his coalition government. (Prodi was also PM from May 2006 until January 2008.)

In 2002, as stock prices continued to fluctuate wildly, the Dow Jones industrials closed at 7,286.27, a five-year low.

In 2006, the U.N. Security Council approved South Korean Foreign Secretary Ban Ki-moon as the next U.N. secretary-general to succeed Kofi Annan.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

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In 2012, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report said Transportation Security Administration screeners routinely failed to check bags for explosives at Honolulu International Airport. It said inspectors found "a lack of effective and consistent supervision of TSA screeners by their managers, as well as inconsistent adherence to operating procedures."

In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Janet L. Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve System. (She officially became Fed chairwoman in early 2014.)


A thought for the day: "Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -- George Bernard Shaw

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