UPI Almanac for Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015

Today is Saturday, Aug. 22, the 234th day of 2015 with 131 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Leo. They include French composer Claude Debussy in 1862; Charles Jenkins, inventor of airplane brakes and the conical drinking cup, in 1867; writer-critic Dorothy Parker in 1893; heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley in 1920; science fiction writer Ray Bradbury in 1920; actor Honor Blackman in 1925 (age 90); French fashion designer Marc Bohan in 1926 (age 87); retired U.S. Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf in 1934; writer E. Annie Proulx in 1935 (age 780; baseball Hall of Fame member Carl Yastrzemski in 1939 (age 75); baseball Hall of Fame member Paul Molitor in 1956 (age 59); actor Valerie Harper in 1939 (age 75); actor Cindy Williams in 1947 (age 68); swimming Hall of Fame member Diana Nyad in 1949 (age 66); singer/songwriter Tori Amos in 1963 (age 54); tennis Hall of Fame member Mats Wilander in 1964 (age 51); actor Richard Armitage in 1971 (age 44); actor Kristen Wiig in 1973 (age 42).

On this date in history:

In 1851, the U.S.-built schooner America outran a fleet of Britain's finest ships around England's Isle of Wight in an international race that became known as the America's Cup.

In 1881, American humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons founded the National Red Cross.

In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was discovered stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (It was recovered two years later.)

In 1922, Michael Collins, a founder of the Irish Republican Army and a key figure in Ireland's independence movement, was assassinated by political opponents.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI arrived in Colombia, becoming the first pontiff to visit South America.

In 1986, Kerr-McGee Corp. agreed to pay the estate of nuclear industry worker Karen Silkwood more than $1 million, ending a 10-year legal battle waged by her family over her exposure to radioactive materials at the company's Oklahoma plant.

In 2004, two masked robbers stole Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and another painting from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. (They were found about two years later. "The Scream" had been stolen once before, 10 years earlier, but was recovered within three months.)

In 2005, the last Jewish settlers moved peacefully out of the Gaza Strip after carrying Torah scrolls down the main street of Netzarim, last of 21 settlements to be evacuated.

In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided to make the "morning-after" contraceptive pill known as Plan B available without a prescription to people 18 and older.

In 2010, in the wake of Australia's first parliamentary election in 70 years in which no party won a majority, the ruling Labor Party and Julia Gillard, the nation's first female prime minister, retained power and set about forming a new government.

In 2011, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington opened to the public. The $120 million memorial, 25 years in the making, is on a four-acre site on the National Mall.

In 2013, former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old landscaper and acquaintance of the football player. (In 2014, Hernandez was charged with two more murders.)

In 2014, the United Nations reported that the death toll in three years of Syria's civil war had surpassed 191,000.

A thought for the day: "Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt