The almanac

Today is Monday, Sept. 2, the 245th day of 2013 with 120 to follow.

This is Labor Day in the United States.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include poet Eugene Field and sporting goods entrepreneur Albert Spalding, both in 1850; inventor Hiram Maxim, who invented the first portable automatic machine gun, in 1869; basketball Hall of Fame Coach Adolph Rupp in 1901; authors Cleveland Amory in 1917 and Allen Drury in 1918; dancer Marge Champion in 1919 (age 94); Snapple co-founder Arnold Greenberg in 1932; horse racing Hall of Fame member D. Wayne Lukas in 1935 (age 78); basketball Hall of Fame member John Thompson Jr. in 1941 (age 72); Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher who became an astronaut and died in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, basketball Hall of Fame member Nate Archibald (age 65) and football Hall of Fame member and broadcaster Terry Bradshaw (age 65), all in 1948; actor Mark Harmon in 1951 (age 62); tennis Hall of Fame member Jimmy Connors in 1952 (age 61); Cirque de Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte in 1959 (age 54); football Hall of Fame member Eric Dickerson in 1960 (age 53); actors Keanu Reeves in 1964 (age 49) and Salma Hayek in 1966 (age 47).

On this date in history:

In 1666, the Great Fire of London began. It destroyed 13,000 houses in four days.

In 1935, a hurricane hit the Florida Keys, killing more than 350 people.

In 1945, Japan signed an unconditional surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, formally ending World War II.

In 1983, Moscow admitted to the Sept. 1 shooting down of a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747, killing the 269 people aboard, but said the jumbo jet intentionally intruded into Soviet air space.

In 1992, earthquake-spawned tidal waves killed more than 100 people in Pacific coast villages in Nicaragua.

In 1998, a Swissair jetliner en route from New York to Geneva, Switzerland, crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. All 229 people aboard were killed.

In 1999, the Clintons bought a house in the New York suburb of Chappaqua for $1.7 million, establishing residency for first lady Hillary Clinton, who was planning a run for the U.S. Senate.

In 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush accepted the GOP nomination for re-election, promising to build a "safer world and a more hopeful America."

In 2007, the death toll from flooding in Bihar, India, rose to 556.

In 2010, BP warned the U.S. Congress that it may be unable to pay compensation for its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill if barred from new offshore drilling permits.

In 2011, the U.S. State Department warned American travelers the security threat in Yemen was "extremely high" and urged those already there to leave.

In 2012, several hundred people upset with corporate America marched in Charlotte, N.C., two days before the Democratic National Convention, chanting: "Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."

A thought for the day: "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." -- Ernest Hemingway.