UPI Almanac for Saturday, March 11, 2017

Today is Saturday, March 11, the 70th day of 2017 with 295 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include silent movie star Dorothy Gish in 1898; bandleader Lawrence Welk in 1903; former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1916; civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy in 1926; media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1931 (age 86); television newsman Sam Donaldson in 1934 (age 83); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 1936; musician Bobby McFerrin in 1950 (age 67); filmmaker Jerry Zucker ("Airplane!," the "Naked Gun" movies) in 1950 (age 67); author Douglas Adams ("Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") in 1952; singer Lisa Loeb in 1968 (age 49), director/producer Peter Berg in 1962 (age 55); actor Alex Kingston in 1963 (age 54); actor Thora Birch in 1982 (age 35); actor Anton Yelchin in 1989.

On this date in history:

In 1824, the U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 1845, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died in Allen County, Ind.

In 1861, in Montgomery, Ala., delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas adopted the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

In 1888, authorities said more than 200 people had died in a four-day snowstorm that crippled New York City.

In 1918, the first cases of "Spanish influenza" were reported in the United States. By 1920, the virus had killed as many as 22 million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States.

In 1930, William Howard Taft became the first former U.S. president to be buried in the national cemetery at Arlington, Va.

In 1941, the Lend Lease Bill to help Britain survive attacks by Germany was signed into law by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1942, after struggling to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving behind 90,000 U.S. and Filipino troops.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the ruling Politburo, was chosen to succeed President Konstantin Chernenko as Communist Party chief, finally bringing to power the post-World War II generation.

In 1993, Janet Reno won unanimous U.S. Senate approval to become the country's first female attorney general.

In 2001, one of the worst weeks in Wall Street history began with a 436.37-point (4.1 percent) decline in the Dow Jones industrial average. By week's end, all major indexes were down 6 percent.

In 2004, 10 bombs exploded almost simultaneously on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring 1,400.

In 2006, Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his cell at The Hague, an apparent heart attack victim.

In 2007, French President Jacques Chirac announced his retirement after more than 40 years in politics.

In 2011, Japan was hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake that struck about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. The quake caused a tsunami that swept away people, homes, vehicles and ships. Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, nuclear power plants were damaged, with three reactor meltdowns at one of them. The disaster's death toll reached nearly 15,900.

In 2013, a federal jury found former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his friend Bobby Ferguson guilty of federal racketeering and extortion charges. Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison and Ferguson to 21 years.

In 2014, a report from the American Society of Clinical Oncology said cancer will surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States by 2030, with the number of new cancer cases having increased by almost 45 percent.

A thought for the day: U.S. President William Howard Taft said, "The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts."