UPI Almanac for Thursday, April 30, 2015

Today is Thursday, April 30, the 120th day of 2015 with 245 days to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1777; Hungarian composer Franz Lehar, who wrote the operetta "The Merry Widow," in 1870; actor Eve Arden in 1908; actor Cloris Leachman in 1926 (age 89); singer Willie Nelson in 1933 (age 82); actor Gary Collins in 1938; actor Burt Young in 1940 (age 75); singer Bobby Vee in 1943 (age 74); actor Jill Clayburgh in 1944; Sweden's King Carl Gustaf XVI in 1946 (age 69); U.S. Olympic champion swimmer Don Schollander in 1946 (age 69); actor Perry King in 1948 (age 67); film director Jane Campion ("The Piano") in 1954 (age 61); Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 1959 (age 56); basketball Hall of Fame member Isiah Thomas in 1961 (age 54); actor Kirsten Dunst in 1982 (age 33);

On this date in history:

In 1789, George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States.

In 1803, the United States more than doubled its land area with the Louisiana Purchase. It obtained all French territory west of the Mississippi River for $15 million.

In 1812, Louisiana entered the union as the 18th U.S. state.

In 1927, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first movie personalities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to appear on television when he was shown on opening day at the New York World's Fair.

In 1945, the burned body of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was found in a bunker in the ruins of Berlin.

In 1948, 21 countries of the Western Hemisphere formed the Organization of American States.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight boxing championship title after he refused to be drafted into the U.S. military.

In 1975, South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered to North Vietnam. (The communists occupied Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.)

In 1993, tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed and wounded by a self-described fan of Steffi Graf during a break between games in a match against another player in Hamburg, Germany. (Seles, who won nine grand-slam singles titles in her career, was out of competitive tennis for more than two years after the attack.)

In 2002, the United States sent 1,000 more troops to eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border to prevent Taliban and al-Qaida forces from regrouping.

In 2005, the bodies of 113 people, nearly all women and children, were found in a mass grave in southern Iraq.

In 2006, rebel factions in Sudan rejected a peace agreement in the Darfur conflict. Officials estimated the fighting had killed at least 180,000 people and driven more than 2 million from their homes.

In 2009, Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection in a key move of a restructuring plan backed by the Obama administration.

In 2011, a NATO airstrike in Tripoli killed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's youngest son and three of his grandchildren but Gadhafi and his wife escaped injury.

In 2012, Israel began construction of a wall that would be 23 feet high and less than a mile long on its border with Lebanon. Security officials said the concrete wall would protect residents in the Matulla area from sniper fire from nearby Lebanese villages.

In 2013, Queen Beatrix, the 75-year-old monarch of the Netherlands, signed a formal declaration abdicating in favor of her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, 46, who became the country's first king in 123 years.

In 2014, activists said an airstrike by Syrian fighter jets hit a school in Aleppo, killing 19 people including many children.

A thought for the day: "You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child." -- Dr. Seuss