On This Day in History - December 1st - Almanac

This is Thursday, Dec. 1, the 336th day of 2016 with 30 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French wax-figure sculptor Marie Tussaud in 1761; detective novelist Rex Stout in 1886; former United Mine Workers President W.A. "Tony" Boyle in 1904; baseball Hall of Fame member Walter Alston in 1911; singer/actor Mary Martin in 1913; soul singer Lou Rawls in 1933; comedian/filmmaker Woody Allen in 1935 (age 81); golf Hall of Fame member Lee Trevino in 1939 (age 77); comedian Richard Pryor in 1940; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member John Densmore (The Doors) in 1944 (age 72); singer/actor Bette Midler in 1945 (age 71); actor Treat Williams in 1951 (age 65); model Carol Alt in 1960 (age 56); comedian Sarah Silverman in 1970 (age 46); and Matthew Shepard, University of Wyoming student killed because he was gay, in 1976.

On this date in history:

In 1891, the game of basketball was invented when James Naismith, a physical education teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., put peach baskets at the opposite ends of a gym and gave students soccer balls to toss into them.

In 1903, the world's first drive-in gasoline station opened for business in Pittsburgh.

In 1917, the Rev. Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town near Omaha.

In 1943, ending a "Big Three" meeting in Tehran, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian Premier Josef Stalin pledged a concerted effort to defeat Nazi Germany.

In 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in a cable to United Press, said that his United Nations forces were fighting in Korea against "military odds without precedent in history," and warned that failure to meet the issue there will leave it to "be fought, and possibly lost, on the battlefields of Europe."

In 1953, the first Playboy magazine was published. Marilyn Monroe was on the cover.

In 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, signaling, along with its resulting bus boycott and related events, the birth of the modern civil rights movement.

In 1988, Benazir Bhutto was appointed prime minister of Pakistan, a post she held until August 1990, and again from October 1993 to November 1996.

In 2005, same-sex marriage became legal in South Africa when the country's Constitutional Court ruled that laws banning it were unconstitutional.

In 2008, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama introduced Hillary Clinton, his chief rival in the Democratic presidential race, as his choice for secretary of state.

In 2011, Iceland became the first Western European country to recognize a Palestinian sovereign state.

In 2012, police said Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher committed suicide at the team's practice facility after killing his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins.

In 2013, a Metro-North commuter train derailed along the Hudson River in New York City's Bronx borough, killing four people and injuring 67. Officials said the train was going 82 mph as it reached a curve with a speed limit of 30 mph.

A thought for the day: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." -- Nelson Mandela