UPI Almanac for Thursday, Nov. 24, 2016

Today is Thursday, Nov. 24, the 329th day of 2016 with 37 to follow.

This is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

The moon is waning. The morning star is Jupiter. The evening stars are Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Mars, Neptune and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include Dutch philosopher Baruch Benedict de Spinoza in 1632; British novelist and clergyman Laurence Sterne and Spanish missionary Junipero Serra, both in 1713; Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States, in 1784; architect Cass Gilbert, who designed the U.S. Supreme Court building, in 1859; painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec in 1864; ragtime composer Scott Joplin in 1868; lecturer and author Dale Carnegie in 1888; pianist Teddy Wilson in 1912; actors Geraldine Fitzgerald in 1913 and Howard Duff in 1917; political columnist William F. Buckley in 1925; basketball Hall of Fame member Oscar Robertson in 1938 (age 78); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1941; comedian Billy Connolly in 1942 (age 74); basketball Hall of Fame member and former mayor of Detroit Dave Bing in 1943 (age 73); serial killer Ted Bundy in 1946; and actors Dwight Schultz in 1947 (age 69), Stanley Livingston in 1950 (age 66), Colin Hanks in 1977 (age 39) and Katherine Heigl in 1978 (age 38).

On this date in history:

In 1859, Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was published.

In 1863, Union Gen. U.S. Grant launched the U.S. Civil War battle of Chattanooga in Tennessee.

In 1869, women from 21 states met in Cleveland to organize the American Women Suffrage Association.

In 1874, Joseph Glidden received a patent for barbed wire, which altered the development of ranching on the Great Plains.

In 1917, nine officers with the Milwaukee Police Department were killed by a bomb, believed to have been made by Gallean anarchists. Prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001, this was the single most fatal event in U.S. law enforcement history.

In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the Dallas police headquarters basement two days after Kennedy was slain.

In 1969, Apollo 12 returned to Earth with astronauts Charles Conrad Jr., Richard Gordon and Alan Bean. It was NASA's second moon-landing mission.

In 1971, a passenger who became known as "D.B. Cooper" hijacked a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., parachuted south of Seattle with a $200,000 ransom collected from the airline -- and disappeared.

In 1985, Arab commandos forced an Egypt Air jetliner to Malta and began shooting passengers, fatally wounding two. Fifty-seven other people died when Egyptian commandos stormed the jet.

In 1995, Irish voters passed a referendum removing a constitutional ban on divorce.

In 2003, Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn, who had more wins (363) than any other left-hander in major league baseball history, died at the age of 82.

In 2007, a brigade of 5,000 U.S. troops left Diyala province in Iraq. It was considered the first significant pullback of American forces from the country.

In 2009, two men were executed in China for involvement in the country's 2008 tainted milk scandal, which sickened 300,000 infants, killing six.

In 2012, at least 112 people were killed in a fire that swept through a clothing factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh.

In 2013, Iran and six of the world's powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- reached an interim agreement, or "first-step deal," in which Iran said it would limit its nuclear activities in exchange for easing some of the economic sanctions it faced.

A thought for the day: "Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people." -- Warren Buffett