UPI Almanac for Monday, March 13, 2017

Today is Monday, March 13, the 72nd day of 2017 with 293 to follow.

The moon is waning. 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 English chemist Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, in 1733; astronomer Percival Lowell in 1855; baseball Hall of Fame member John "Home Run" Baker in 1886; publisher Walter Annenberg in 1908; bandleader Sammy Kaye in 1910; L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology, in 1911; former CIA Director William Casey in 1913; cartoonist Al Jaffee in 1921 (age 96); Helen "Callaghan" Candaele Saint Aubin, known as the "Ted Williams of women's baseball," in 1929; singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka in 1939 (age 78); actor William H. Macy in 1950 (age 66); political commentator Charles Krauthammer in 1950 (age 67); actor Dana Delany in 1956 (age 61); musician Adam Clayton, U2 bass player, in 1960 (age 57); actor Emile Hirsch in 1985 (age 32).

On this date in history:

In 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel.

In 1868, the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and successor to Abraham Lincoln, climaxing a political feud following the Civil War. (He was acquitted by one vote.)

In 1881, Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in a St. Petersburg street by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary "People's Will" group.

In 1887, Chester Greenwood of Maine received a patent for earmuffs.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, banks throughout the United States began to reopen after a week-long bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a successful effort to stop runs on bank assets.

On the same day in 1933, President Roosevelt sent word to Congress calling for the immediate modification of the Volstead act to permit the manufacture and sale of beer.

In 1990, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies formally ended the Communist Party's monopoly rule, establishing a presidential system and giving Mikhail Gorbachev broad new powers.

In 1996, a gun collector opened fire at a school in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 kindergarten children and their teacher, and then himself.

In 2000, the Tribune Co. and the Times Mirror Co., media giants featuring two of the nation's oldest and largest newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times) announced they would merge.

In 2008, gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

In 2011, the Dalai Lama, 75-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet, formally submitted his resignation as Tibet's political leader, a post he had held since he was 18, to the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile.

In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, a Jesuit, became pope of the Catholic Church. He chose the name of Francis.

In 2014, Reubin Askew, a progressive two-term governor of Florida in the 1970s who made a brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1983, died in Tallahassee at the age of 85.

In 2016, an explosion in the Turkish capital of Ankara killed 37 and injured 127. Government sources said a female suicide bomber and alleged PKK member crashed her bomb-laden car into a bus.

A thought for the day: Donald Trump said, "Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make."