UPI Almanac for Sunday, March 11, 2018

Today is Sunday, March 11, the 70th day of 2018 with 295 to follow.

Daylight saving time begins.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus and Venus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include silent movie star Dorothy Gish in 1898; bandleader Lawrence Welk in 1903; former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1916; civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy in 1926; media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1931 (age 87); television newsman Sam Donaldson in 1934 (age 84); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 1936; musician Bobby McFerrin in 1950 (age 68); filmmaker Jerry Zucker in 1950 (age 68); author Douglas Adams in 1952; actor Alex Kingston in 1963 (age 55); director/producer Peter Berg in 1964 (age 54); actor John Barrowman in 1967 (age 51); singer Lisa Loeb in 1968 (age 50); actor Terrence Howard in 1969 (age 49); actor Johnny Knoxville in 1971 (age 47); musician Benji Madden (Good Charlotte) in 1979 (age 39); musician Joel Madden (Good Charlotte) in 1979 (age 39); actor Thora Birch in 1982 (age 36); actor Anton Yelchin in 1989.

On this date in history:

In 1824, the U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 1845, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died in Allen County, Ind.

In 1861, in Montgomery, Ala., delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas adopted the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

In 1918, the first cases of Spanish influenza were reported in the United States. By 1920, the virus had killed up to 22 million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States.

In 1930, William Howard Taft became the first former U.S. president to be buried in the national cemetery at Arlington, Va.

In 1941, the Lend Lease Bill to help Britain survive attacks by Germany was signed into law by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1942, after struggling to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving behind 90,000 U.S. and Filipino troops.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the ruling Politburo, was chosen to succeed President Konstantin Chernenko as Communist Party chief, finally bringing to power the post-World War II generation.

In 1990, Lithuania proclaimed its independence from Moscow in a long-expected move posing the first splintering of the Soviet Union since the communist nation was founded nearly seven decades ago.

In 1993, Janet Reno won unanimous U.S. Senate approval to become the country's first female attorney general.

In 2004, 10 bombs exploded almost simultaneously on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring 1,400.

In 2006, Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his cell at The Hague, of an apparent heart attack.

In 2006, Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured during Chile's years of military dictatorship, was sworn in as the country's first female president.

In 2007, French President Jacques Chirac announced his retirement after more than 40 years in politics.

In 2011, Japan was hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake that struck about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. The quake caused a tsunami that swept away people, homes, vehicles and ships. Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, nuclear power plants were damaged, with three reactor meltdowns at one of them. The disaster's death toll reached nearly 15,900.

In 2013, a federal jury found former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his friend Bobby Ferguson guilty of federal racketeering and extortion charges. Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison and Ferguson to 21 years.

In 2017, at least 65 people died in a landfill landslide in the outskirts of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

A thought for the day: U.S. President William Howard Taft said, "The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts."