UPI Almanac for Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016

Today is Thursday, Aug. 25, the 238th day of 2016 with 128 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include Czar Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible") of Russia, in 1530; author Bret Harte in 1836; Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the electric toy train, in 1877; dancer/actor Ruby Keeler in 1910; "Pogo" cartoonist Walt Kelly in 1913; actor Michael Rennie in 1909; actor Van Johnson in 1916; actor Mel Ferrer in 1917; composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1918; former Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1919; Monty Hall, host of "Let's Make A Deal," in 1921 (age 95); tennis champion Althea Gibson in 1927; actor Sean Connery in 1930 (age 86); TV personality Regis Philbin in 1931 (age 85); actor Tom Skerritt in 1933 (age 83); writer Frederick Forsyth in 1938 (age 78); baseball Hall of Fame member Rollie Fingers in 1946 (age 70); writer Martin Amis in 1949 (age 67); actor John Savage in 1949 (age 67); rock singer Gene Simmons of Kiss in 1949 (age 67); singer/songwriter Elvis Costello in 1954 (age 62); film director Tim Burton in 1958 (age 58); country singer Billy Ray Cyrus in 1961 (age 55); actor Ally Walker in 1961 (age 55); actor Blair Underwood in 1964 (age 52); actor Joanne Whalley in 1964 (age 52); television cook Rachael Ray in 1968 (age 48); supermodel Claudia Schiffer in 1970 (age 46).

On this date in history:

In 1609, Galileo Galilei exhibited his first telescope in Venice.

In 1718, the city of New Orleans was founded.

In 1875, Matthew Webb, a 27-year-old British merchant navy captain, became the first person known to successfully swim the English Channel.

In 1967, a sniper assassinated American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in Arlington, Va.

In 1985, Samantha Smith, 13, was killed with her father and six other people in a plane crash in Maine. Samantha's 1983 letter to Soviet President Yuri Andropov about her fear of nuclear war earned her a visit to the Soviet Union.

In 1992, researchers reported that cigarette smoking significantly boosts the risk of developing cataracts, a leading cause of blindness.

In 2006, Pulkova Airlines Flight 612 crashed near the Russian border in Ukraine, killing 171 people.

In 2008, two Afghan army commanders were fired after a U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed 89 civilians, many of them children. Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed the casualties on a failure of coordination between coalition forces and the Afghan army.

In 2009, U.S. Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, D-Mass., a liberal fixture in the Senate for 46 years, died of brain cancer at the age of 77.

In 2010, dozens of girls and teachers at a high school in Kabul, Afghanistan, were sickened by poison gas. Officials said the Taliban, who had been accused in eight similar attacks, sought to keep the girls from going to school.

In 2011, Mexican gunmen stormed a Monterrey casino and set it on fire, killing at least 57 people, mostly women.

In 2012, former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died in Cincinnati. He was 82.

In 2013, an offer by Syria to allow a U.N. investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus was dismissed by a senior U.S. official as "too late to be credible." Anti-government groups in Syria said government forces used poisonous gas that killed at least 300 people.

In 2014, Tiger Woods announced that Sean Foley was no longer his coach. Woods said Foley ,who joined him in 2010 as his third coach as a pro, "is one of the outstanding coaches in golf today." But Woods added that he wasn't going to compete for a few months and "this is the right time to end our professional relationship."

A thought for the day: "It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." -- Ronald Reagan