UPI Almanac for Monday, March 16, 2015

Today is Monday, March 16, the 75th day of 2015 with 290 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include James Madison, fourth president of the United States, in 1751; German physicist Georg Ohm, a pioneer in the study of electricity, in 1789; comedian Henny Youngman in 1906; German doctor Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," in 1911; former U.S. first lady Pat Nixon in 1912; actor Mercedes McCambridge in 1916; actor Leo McKern in 1920; entertainer Jerry Lewis in 1926 (age 89); former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., in 1927; filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci in 1940 (age 75); game-show host Chuck Woolery in 1941 (age 74); singer/songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker in 1942 (age 73); actor Erik Estrada in 1949 (age 66); actor Kate Nelligan in 1951 (age 64); musician Nancy Wilson (Heart) in 1954 (age 61); football Hall of Fame member Ozzie Newsome in 1956 (age 59); rapper Flavor Flav (born William Drayton Jr.) in 1959 (age 56); singer/songwriter Patty Griffin in 1964 (age 51); film director Gore Verbinski in 1964 (age 51); musician Wolfgang Van Halen in 1991 (age 24).

On this date in history:

In 1802, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

In 1827, Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the United States, was published in New York.

In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuel rocket.

In 1945, the Island of Iwo Jima was declared secure by U.S. forces in one of the major World War II conflicts in the Pacific.

In 1966, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott docked their Gemini 8 space vehicle with an Agena craft, a first in orbital history.

In 1968, about 300 Vietnamese villagers died at the hands of U.S. troops in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre.

In 1994, the International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea barred its inspectors from checking one of the nation's seven nuclear sites.

In 2009, Japan reported its gross domestic product fell at a 12.7 percent annual rate in the last quarter of 2008, plunging the country into what experts said was its worst financial crisis since World War II.

In 2012, Belgium observed a national day of mourning for 28 people, 22 of them children, killed in a bus crash in Switzerland.

In 2013, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told conservatives the Republican Party establishment lacks new ideas and is "mired in stupidity."

In 2014, results of a referendum showed that people in Crimea voted overwhelmingly for the autonomous Black Sea peninsula to break from Ukraine and join Russia.

A thought for the day: Albert Einstein wrote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."