UPI Almanac for Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 6, the 249th day of 2017 with 116 to follow.

The moon is full. Morning stars are Venus and Mars. Evening stars are Jupiter and Saturn.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolutionary War, in 1757; pioneer social worker/Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jane Addams in 1860; financier/diplomat Joseph P. Kennedy in 1888; comedienne Jo Anne Worley in 1937 (age 80); singer/songwriter David Allen Coe in 1939 (age 78); musician Rogers Waters (Pink Floyd) in 1943 (age 74); actor Swoosie Kurtz in 1944 (age 73); actor Jane Curtin in 1947 (age 70); business executive Carly Fiorina in 1954 (age 63); comedian Jeff Foxworthy in 1958 (age 59); comedian Michael Winslow in 1958 (age 59); New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 1962 (age 55); novelist Alice Sebold in 1963 (age 54); singer/actor Rosie Perez in 1964 (age 53); singer Macy Gray in 1967 (age 50); actor Idris Elba in 1972 (age 45); actor Anika Noni Rose in 1972 (age 45); actor Justin Whalin in 1974 (age 43); rapper Foxy Brown in 1978 (age 39); British socialite Pippa Middleton in 1983 (age 34).

On this date in history:

In 1522, one of Ferdinand Magellan's five ships -- the Vittoria -- arrived at Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the world.

In 1620, 149 Pilgrims set sail from England aboard the Mayflower, bound for the New World.

In 1901, U.S. President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. McKinley died eight days later.

In 1909, word was received that U.S. Navy Adm. Robert Peary had reached the North Pole five months earlier, on April 6, 1909.

In 1914, World War I's first Battle of the Marne took place outside Paris, France. The allied forces of France and Britain defeated Germany, resulting in the deaths of some 150,000 people.

In 1966, South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, an architect of his nation's apartheid policies, was stabbed to death by a deranged messenger during a parliamentary meeting in Cape Town.

In 1995, the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee unanimously recommended that Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., be expelled from the Senate on charges of sexual misconduct and influence-peddling. He resigned two days later.

In 1995, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., played his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking the record set in 1939 by Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. Ripken voluntarily ended his streak at 2,362 games in 1998.

In 1997, Britain bid an emotional farewell to Princess Diana -- killed in a car accident a week earlier -- in a funeral at London's Westminster Abbey that was broadcast worldwide.

In 2004, former U.S. President Bill Clinton underwent a 4-hour quadruple heart bypass operation at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

In 2007, Luciano Pavarotti, one of opera's foremost tenors, died of cancer at his home in Modena, Italy. He was 71.

In 2008, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of slain politician Benazir Bhutto, was elected president of Pakistan by a wide margin. Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who had returned from self-imposed exile a short time earlier, was assassinated two weeks before the 2007 presidential election in which she was a leading candidate.

In 2010, officials said they feared as many as 270 people died in two weekend riverboat accidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2012, a jury in Joliet, Ill., found Drew Peterson, a former police sergeant, guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Peterson was sentenced to 38 years in prison.

A thought for the day: "We are bound together by the most powerful of all ties -- our fervent love for freedom and independence, which knows no homeland but the human heart." -- Gerald R. Ford