UPI Almanac for Friday, Dec. 1, 2017

This is Friday, Dec. 1, the 335th day of 2017 with 30 to follow.

The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Venus. Evening stars are Mercury and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French wax-figure sculptor Marie Tussaud in 1761; baseball Hall of Fame member Walter Alston in 1911; singer/actor Mary Martin in 1913; comedian/filmmaker Woody Allen in 1935 (age 82); golf Hall of Fame member Lee Trevino in 1939 (age 78); comedian Richard Pryor in 1940; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member John Densmore (The Doors) in 1944 (age 73); singer/actor Bette Midler in 1945 (age 72); actor Treat Williams in 1951 (age 66); actor Deep Roy in 1957 (age 60); model Carol Alt in 1960 (age 57); actor Golden Brooks in 1970 (age 47); comedian Sarah Silverman in 1970 (age 47); Matthew Shepard, University of Wyoming student killed because he was gay, in 1976; actor Dean O'Gorman in 1976 (age 41); actor Riz Ahmed in 1982 (age 35); rapper Yolandi Visser (Die Antwoord) in 1984 (age 33) singer/actor Janelle Monae in 1985 (age 32); rock singer Tyler Joseph (Twenty One Pilots) in 1988 (age 29); actor Zoe Kravitz in 1988 (age 29).

On this date in history:

In 1891, the game of basketball was invented when James Naismith, a physical education teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., put peach baskets at the opposite ends of a gym and gave students soccer balls to toss into them.

In 1903, the world's first drive-in gasoline station opened for business in Pittsburgh.

In 1943, ending a "Big Three" meeting in Tehran, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian Premier Josef Stalin pledged a concerted effort to defeat Nazi Germany.

In 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in a cable to United Press, said that his U.N. forces were fighting in Korea against "military odds without precedent in history," and warned that failure to meet the issue there will leave it to "be fought, and possibly lost, on the battlefields of Europe."

In 1953, the first Playboy magazine was published. Marilyn Monroe was on the cover.

In 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus, signaling, along with its resulting bus boycott and related events, the birth of the modern civil rights movement.

In 1988, Benazir Bhutto was appointed prime minister of Pakistan, a post she held until August 1990, and again from October 1993 to November 1996.

In 1990, workers broke through in the tunnel under the English Channel for the first time. The Chunnel connecting Britain and France opened four years later.

In 2005, same-sex marriage became legal in South Africa when the country's Constitutional Court ruled that laws banning it were unconstitutional.

In 2008, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama introduced Hillary Clinton, his chief rival in the Democratic presidential race, as his choice for secretary of state.

In 2011, Iceland became the first Western European country to recognize a Palestinian sovereign state.

In 2012, police said Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed himself at the team's practice facility after killing his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins.

In 2012, Enrique Pena Nieto, 46, was sworn in as president of Mexico.

In 2013, a Metro-North commuter train derailed along the Hudson River in New York City's Bronx borough, killing four people and injuring 67. Officials said the train was going 82 mph as it reached a curve with a speed limit of 30 mph.

In 2016, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn was formally proclaimed King Maha X of Thailand, the country's first new monarch in seven decades.

In 2016, former New York Jets running back Joe McKnight was fatally shot in a road-rage incident outside of New Orleans.

A thought for the day: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." -- Nelson Mandela