UPI Almanac for Saturday, May 28, 2016

Today is Saturday, May 28, the 149th day of 2016 with 217 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include British statesman William Pitt (the Younger) in 1759; Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz in 1807; all-around athlete Jim Thorpe in 1888; British novelist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, in 1908; biologist/politician Barry Commoner in 1917; musician Pappa John Creach in 1917; actor Carroll Baker in 1931 (age 85); Annette and Cecile Dionne, surviving members of Canada's Dionne quintuplets, in 1934 (age 82); basketball Hall of Fame member Jerry West in 1938 (age 78); singer Gladys Knight in 1944 (age 72); actor Sondra Locke in 1944 (age 72); former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1944 (age 72); musician John Fogerty in 1945 (age 71); actor Christa Miller in 1964 (age 52); singer Kylie Minogue in 1968 (age 48); TV talk show host Elisabeth Hasselbeck in 1977 (age 39).

On this date in history:

In 1798, the U.S. Congress empowered President John Adams to recruit an American army of 10,000 volunteers.

In 1892, the Sierra Club was founded by naturalist John Muir.

In 1934, the Dionne sisters, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, Marie and Annette, first documented set of quintuplets to survive, were born near Callander, Ontario, and soon became world-famous. Emilie died in 1954, Marie in 1970 and Yvonne in 2001.

In 1961, Amnesty International was founded in London by lawyer Peter Berenson.

In 1977, a flash fire swept through a nightclub in Southgate, Ky., killing 162 people and injuring 30.

In 1987, West German Mathias Rust, 19, flew a single-engine plane from Finland through Soviet radar and landed beside the Kremlin in Moscow. Three days later, the Soviet defense minister and his deputy were fired.

In 1998, digitized pictures taken by the Hubbell Space Telescope seemed to show an image of a planet outside the solar system. The planet circled two stars in the constellation Taurus.

In 2000, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori easily won a runoff election but nationwide demonstrations against him continued. He resigned in September.

In 2002, NASA said the Mars Odyssey found evidence of ice on Mars. "We were hopeful that we could find evidence of ice, but what we have found is much more ice than we ever expected," a scientist said.

In 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law his modified tax-reduction plan, which lowered the tax rate for upper- and middle-income taxpayers and trimmed rates on capital gains and dividends.

In 2008, Nepal's newly elected Constituent Assembly voted to dissolve the 239-year-old monarchy and form a republic, officially ending the reign of King Gyanendra.

In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama, in a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, said: "For the first time in nine years, Americans are not fighting or dying in Iraq. We are winding down the war in Afghanistan and our troops will continue to come home."

In 2013, Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home-price index posted the biggest gains in seven years, with prices rising on both new and existing homes.

In 2014, author-poet-activist Maya Angelou ("I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings") died in Winston-Salem, N.C. U.S. President Barack Obama called Angelou, who was 86, "one of the brightest lights of our time."

In 2015, former U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was indicted by a federal grand jury for violating banking laws in an effort to pay off a person who accused the former congressman of "past misconduct." Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on April 27, 2016.

A thought for the day: "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." -- Jean-Paul Sartre