UPI Almanac for Monday, Oct. 2, 2017

Today is Monday, Oct. 2, the 275th day of 2017 with 90 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include England's King Richard III in 1452; Nat Turner, a black slave and leader of the only effective and sustained U.S. slave revolt, in 1800; German statesman Paul von Hindenburg in 1847; Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, in 1869; comedian Julius "Groucho" Marx in 1890; comedian Bud Abbott in 1895; child actor George "Spanky" McFarland of Our Gang and Little Rascals fame, in 1928; movie critic Rex Reed in 1938 (age 79); pop singer Don McLean in 1945 (age 72); actor Avery Brooks in 1948 (age 69); fashion designer Donna Karan in 1948 (age 69); photographer Annie Leibovitz in 1949 (age 68); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Sting (Gordon Sumner) in 1951 (age 66); actor Lorraine Bracco in 1954 (age 63); TV personality Kelly Ripa in 1970 (age 47); and actor Camilla Belle in 1986 (age 31); actor Samantha Barks in 1990 (age 27).

On this date in history:

In 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television system.

In 1950, the "Peanuts" comic strip by Charles M. Schulz was published for the first time.

In 1959, The Twilight Zone, with host Rod Serling, premiered on U.S. television.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1970, a plane crash in Colorado killed 31 people, including members of the Wichita State University football team.

In 1984, Richard Miller became the first FBI agent to be charged with espionage. He was convicted of passing government secrets to the Soviet Union through his Russian lover.

In 1985, actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS. He was 59. The first celebrity to publicly acknowledge he suffered from AIDS, Hudson's final days were marked by visits from screen legends.

In 2001, NATO said the United States had shown evidence, sufficient to justify military action, that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2002, a 55-year-old Maryland man was slain in the first in a series of apparent random sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were both convicted of capital murder for the killings, which numbered 17 in total. Muhammad was executed Nov. 10, 2009. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2005, Connecticut issued its first licenses for "civil unions," becoming the third state (after California and Massachusetts) to offer same-sex couples a legal way to unite.

In 2006, five Amish girls were fatally shot in a rural, one-room schoolhouse in Nickle Mines, Pa. The suspect, a milk truck driver who also killed himself, had told his wife he needed to avenge something that had happened 20 years earlier.

In 2009, Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, the first South American city to host the event, beating out Tokyo, Madrid and Chicago.

In 2012, Pennsylvanians could vote in November without having to show a photo identification card, a judge ruled in a challenge to the state's controversial voter ID law.

In 2013, a fiery crash involving a North Carolina-bound church bus, SUV and tractor-trailer killed eight people (six on the bus) and injured 14 in northeastern Tennessee.

A thought for the day: "The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women." -- Queen Elizabeth II