UPI Almanac for Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 29th, the 272nd day of 2015 with 93 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include Spanish poet-novelist Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote," in 1547; Italian artist Caravaggio in 1571; Adm. Horatio Nelson, British naval hero, in 1758; pioneer nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1901; actor Greer Garson in 1904; singing movie cowboy Gene Autry in 1907; film director Michelangelo Antonioni in 1912; film director Stanley Kramer in 1913; actor Trevor Howard in 1913; British writer Colin Dexter in 1930 (age 85); actor Anita Ekberg in 1931; rock 'n' roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis in 1935 (age 80); former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 1936 (age 79); actor Larry Linville in 1939; singer/songwriter Tommy Boyce in 1939; actor Madeline Kahn in 1942; actor Ian McShane in 1942 (age 73); Polish leader/Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa in 1943 (age 72); composer Mike Post in 1944 (age 71); TV personality Bryant Gumbel in 1948 (age 67); rock guitarist Mark Farner in 1948 (age 67); Olympic gold medal-winning runner Sebastian Coe in 1956 (age 59); former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 1961 (age 54).

On this date in history:

In 1789, the U.S. War Department organized the country's first standing army -- 700 soldiers who would serve for three years.

In 1923, Britain began to govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

In 1936, in the U.S. presidential race between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Alf Landon, the Democratic and Republican parties used radio for the first time.

In 1941, the Babi Yar massacre of nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children began on the outskirts of Kiev in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

In 1992, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced he was returning to the Los Angeles Lakers less than a year after he retired because he had the AIDS virus.

In 2003, electricity was restored in Italy after a weekend blackout put 57 million people in the dark.

In 2005, John Roberts Jr. easily won confirmation by the U.S. Senate and was sworn in as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He succeeded the late William Rehnquist.

In 2006, U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned in the wake of revelations he sent inappropriate email messages to an underage former Capitol Hill page.

In 2008, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped almost 778 points, its biggest one-day point decline.

In 2009, an 8-magnitude undersea earthquake and tsunami struck Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga, killing about 150 people.

In 2011, a special court in India convicted 269 police officers and others for their roles in a 1992 raid on a small village that resulted in multiple rapes and beatings.

In 2013, Pakistani officials said a car bomb they believed was set off the Taliban killed at least 43 people and injured more than 100 in Peshawar. It was the third deadly strike in the city in a week. The overall death toll for the week was well over 100.

In 2014, Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as president of Afghanistan, succeeding Hamid Karzai.

A thought for the day: British statesman Edmund Burke said, "Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."