UPI Almanac for Sunday, June 17, 2018

Today is Sunday, June 17, the 168th day of 2017 with 197 to follow.

This is Father's Day.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include British clergyman John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, in 1703; John Robert Gregg, inventor of the Gregg shorthand system, in 1867; Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky in 1882; Dutch artist M.C. Escher in 1898; author John Hersey in 1914; Egyptian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei in 1942 (age 76); former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1943 (age 75); singer Barry Manilow in 1943 (age 75); musician/songwriter George S. Clinton in 1947 (age 71); comedian Joe Piscopo in 1951 (age 67); actor Mark Linn-Baker in 1954 (age 64); actor Thomas Haden Church in 1960 (age 58); actor Greg Kinnear in 1963 (age 55); Olympic gold medal speed skater Dan Jansen in 1965 (age 53); actor Jason Patric in 1966 (age 52); actor Will Forte in 1970 (age 48); singer Paulina Rubio in 1971 (age 47); tennis star Venus Williams in 1980 (age 38); Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar in 1987 (age 31); actor KJ Apa in 1997 (age 21).

On this date in history:

In 1885, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to the United States, arrived in New York Harbor.

In 1967, China announced it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

In 1972, the Watergate scandal began with the arrest of five burglars inside Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.

In 1982, Argentina's President Leopoldo Galtieri resigned in response to Britain's victory in the Falkland Islands war.

In 1986, Kate Smith, one of America's most popular singers in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, died at the age of 79.

In 1991, a coroner in Kentucky exhumed the remains of the 12th U.S. president, Zachary Taylor, to prove or disprove rumors he was killed by arsenic poisoning. The testing proved he wasn't.

In 1994, former NFL player O.J. Simpson led California Highway Patrol on a low-speed chase in his white Bronco. The 90-minute televised chase occurred shortly after he was charged for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

In 1996, ValuJet Airlines shut down about a month after a crash in the Florida Everglades led to questions about the carrier's safety and maintenance records.

In 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon and co-founder of al-Qaida, moved up to assume leadership of the terrorist network six weeks after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden.

In 2015, Dylann Roof killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a mass shooting.

In 2017, the USS Fitzgerald Navy destroyer collided with a container ship in the Pacific off the coast of Japan, killing seven U.S. sailors.

A thought for the day: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King Jr.