UPI Almanac for Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2017

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 30, the 242nd day of 2017 with 123 to follow.

The moon is waxing. Morning star is Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter and Mercury.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein) in 1797; civil rights leader Roy Wilkins in 1901; baseball Hall of Fame member Ted Williams in 1918; businessman Warren Buffett in 1930 (age 87); musician John Phillips (The Mamas and the Papas) in 1935; actor Elizabeth Ashley in 1939 (age 78); French Olympic champion skier Jean-Claude Killy in 1943 (age 74); cartoonist Robert Crumb in 1943 (age 74); newspaper columnist Molly Ivins in 1944; comedian Lewis Black in 1948 (age 69); basketball Hall of Fame member Robert Parish in 1953 (age 64); actor Peggy Lipton in 1946 (age 71); actor Timothy Bottoms in 1951 (age 66); actor Michael Chiklis in 1963 (age 54), actor Michael Michele in 1966 (age 51); actor Cameron Diaz in 1972 (age 45); journalist Lisa Ling in 1973 (age 44); tennis player Andy Roddick in 1982 (age 35); actor Michael Grant Terry in 1984 (age 33); actor Raffey Cassidy in 2002 (age 15).

On this date in history:

In 30 B.C., Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, killed herself following the defeat of her forces by Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.

In 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold betrayed the United States when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. He fled to England and died in poverty.

In 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan to oversee the country's formal surrender at the end of World War II. MacArthur told United Press Japan's "punishment for her sins, which is just beginning, will be long and bitter."

In 1954, Hurricane Carol prompted evacuations along the North Carolina coast. The storm later battered states along the northern eastern seaboard and killed 72 people.

In 1967, the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed. Marshall was the first African-American to sit on the court.

In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African-American astronaut in space.

In 1994, the Lockheed and Martin Marietta corporations agreed to a merger that would create the largest U.S. defense contractor.

In 2003, more than 120 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in a bomb attack on Iraq's Imam Ali Mosque.

In 2005, on the day after Hurricane Katrina struck, 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded. Electricity, water, sewage, communication and transportation systems were out. Three-fourths of all houses were reported damaged or destroyed. Thousands of people were rescued, many plucked from rooftops, and some sought shelter in the Superdome. In other areas along the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina flattened much of Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., flooded Mobile, Ala., and heavily damaged smaller towns in between. The Katrina death toll would top 1,800.

In 2008, thousands of residents of Mexico City, Tijuana and other cities in Mexico took to the streets to protest an epidemic of drug-related killings and kidnappings and the Mexican government's apparent inability to stop them.

In 2011, two senior U.S. Justice Department officials charged with overseeing the failed government gun-smuggling "sting" operation dubbed "Fast and Furious" were replaced amid bitter congressional criticism of the mission. The plan was to pass thousands of weapons to suspected Mexican gun smugglers and trace them to drug leaders, but hundreds of firearms were lost, some showing up at crime scenes, including the 2010 slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In 2013, Northern Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney died in Dublin. He was 74.

A thought for the day: Actress Julia Roberts said, "You can be true to the character all you want but you've got to go home with yourself."