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The almanac

By United Press International
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Today is Wednesday, June 6, the 158th day of 2012 with 208 to follow.

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

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Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Spanish painter Diego Velazquez in 1599; American patriot Nathan Hale in 1755; painter John Trumbull in 1756; Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin in 1799; clothier David T. Abercrombie in 1867; British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1868; German novelist Thomas Mann in 1875; bandleader Ted Lewis in 1892; Indonesian dictator Achmed Sukarno in 1901; bandleader Jimmie Lunceford in 1902; singers Levi Stubbs in 1936 and Gary "U.S." Bonds in 1939 (age 73); Olympic gold medal sprinter and protester Tommie Smith in 1944 (age 68); actors David Dukes in 1945, Robert Englund in 1947 (age 65) and Harvey Fierstein in 1952 (age 60); comedian Sandra Bernhard in 1955 (age 57); tennis player Bjorn Borg in 1956 (age 56); and actors Amanda Pays in 1959 (age 53) and Paul Giamatti in 1967 (age 45).

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On this date in history:

In 1844, the Young Men's Christian Association -- YMCA -- founded in London.

In 1872, feminist Susan B. Anthony was fined for voting in an election in Rochester, N.Y. She refused to pay the fine and the judge allowed her to go free.

In 1933, the first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, N.J.

In 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops began crossing the English Channel in the "D-Day" invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. It was the largest invasion in history.

In 1966, James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi, was wounded by a sniper during a civil rights march through the South.

In 1972, a coal mine explosion in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, trapped 464 miners underground. More than 425 people died.

In 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon.

In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush proposed creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security whose main responsibility would be prevention of terrorist attacks.

In 2003, the U.S. Labor Department said unemployment in May hit a 9-year high of 6.1 percent. The report said 2.5 million jobs had been lost in a little more than two years.

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Also in 2003, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the Justice Department's detention of 762 illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and urged Congress to give the authorities even broader power to pursue suspected terrorists.

In 2005, at least 37 people were killed and dozens more injured in southern Nepal after a bus hit a land mine planted by suspected Maoist rebels.

In 2007, the remains of thousands of Jews killed by Nazis during World War II were unearthed from a mass grave found by workers digging pipelines in Ukraine.

Another mass grave suspected of holding the bodies of as many as 500 ethnic Albanians killed in the Kosovo War was found in an abandoned Serbian quarry.

Also in 2007, an estimated 10,000 young protesters clad in black threw stones at riot police at the Group of Eight summit in Germany, prompting a response of tear gas and water cannon.

In 2009, leaping over from a tire store next door, a raging fire destroyed a child-care center in Hermosillo, Mexico, killing 35 children in the 1-5 age range and injuring about 100 others.

Also in 2009, a landslide in a mining area near China's Chongqing City buried as many as 106 people.

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In 2010, U.S. payrolls increased by 431,000 in May, the Labor Department announced but that figure was lower than most economists had predicted.

Also in 2010, U.S. Homeland Security officials said two New Jersey men were arrested on terrorism charges as they waited at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to fly to Somalia to join militant Muslim fighters.

In 2011, thousands fled their homes and many more were ready to go as a rash of Arizona wildfires, fanned by gusty winds, spread toward New Mexico. Foremost among the flames was the fast-moving Wallow fire, termed Arizona's second worst blaze, which had consumed close to 400,000 acres.


A thought for the day: "The only certainty is that nothing is certain," from Pliny the Elder.

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