UPI Almanac for Friday, May 12, 2017

Today is Friday, May 12, the 132nd day of 2017 with 233 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Edward Lear, an English painter/writer of limericks/nonsense poems, in 1812; nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale in 1820; French composer Jules Emile Massenet in 1842; lawmaker and author Henry Cabot Lodge in 1850; novelist Philip Wylie in 1902; actor Katharine Hepburn in 1907; orchestra leader Gordon Jenkins in 1910; jazz trombonist Jack Jenney in 1910; newscaster Howard K. Smith in 1914; businesswoman Mary Kay Ash in 1918; convicted spy Julius Rosenberg in 1918 (executed with his wife on June 19, 1953); baseball Hall of Fame member Yogi Berra in 1925; composer Burt Bacharach in 1928 (age 89); TV personality Tom Snyder in 1936; artist Frank Stella in 1936 (age 81); comedian George Carlin in 1937; musician Steve Winwood in 1948 (age 69); actor Bruce Boxleitner in 1950 (age 67); actor Gabriel Byrne in 1950 (age 67); actor Ving Rhames in 1959 (age 58); political commentator Paul Begala in 1961 (age 56); actor Emilio Estevez in 1962 (age 55); punk rock guitarist/songwriter/producer Brett Gurewitz in 1962 (age 55); actor Stephen Baldwin in 1966 (age 51); skateboarder Tony Hawk in 1968 (age 49); actor Kim Fields in 1969 (age 48); actor Jason Biggs in 1978 (age 39) and Emily VanCamp in 1986 (age 31).

On this date in history:

In 1909, two giraffes, one leopard and one buffalo killed, and two leopard cubs captured were the latest additions to the former President Teddy Roosevelt's hunting trophies, according to reports out of Nairobi.

In 1922, the magazine Radio Broadcast commented, "The rate of increase in the number who spend at least part of an evening listening to radio is almost incomprehensible."

In 1926, the British general strike, which had held the nation in its grip for more than 8 1/2 days, was called off.

In 1937, George VI was crowned king of England, succeeding his brother Edward, who abdicated to marry U.S. divorcee Wallis Simpson.

In 1949, Soviet authorities announced the end of a land blockade of Berlin. The blockade lasted 328 days but was neutralized by the Allies' Berlin airlift.

In 1975, a Cambodian gunboat fired on the U.S. cargo ship Mayaguez and forced it into a Cambodian port, setting off an international incident. Although authorities were to release the ship's crew members unharmed, a mission to rescue them led to many deaths among U.S. troops and others.

In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter began a visit to Cuba. He was the first president, in or out of office, to visit the island since communists took over in 1959.

In 2007, about 100,000 people attended a "Family Day" rally in Rome to protest a move that would grant more rights to same-sex and unmarried couples in Italy.

In 2008, a magnitude-8 earthquake, China's deadliest in three decades, killed more than 69,000 people, with nearly 18,000 missing and hundreds of thousands homeless. It is often called the Great Sichuan Earthquake.

In 2010, a man armed with a meat cleaver entered a central China kindergarten classroom and slaughtered seven children, a teacher and her mother before taking his own life. Seventeen people died and about 100 were wounded in five attacks in Chinese schools in a two-month period.

In 2011, a German court sentenced John Demjanjuk, 91, to five years in prison for his role in killing 28,060 Jews as a World War II Nazi concentration camp guard in Poland. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who worked for decades in a U.S. auto plant, died the following year.

In 2013, 19 people were injured in what police said were gang-related shootings at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans.

In 2014, authorities confirmed that Galindo Mellado Cruz, founder of the Zetas drug cartel, was killed three days earlier in a gunbattle with the Mexican army.

A thought for the day: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." -- Jimmy Carter