UPI Almanac for Thursday, June 21, 2018

Today is Thursday, June 21, the 172nd day of 2018 with 193 to follow.

Today is the first day of summer.

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 Cancer. They include Boy Scouts of America founder Daniel Carter Beard in 1850; cartoonist Al Hirschfeld in 1903; philosopher/author Jean-Paul Sartre in 1905; actor Jane Russell in 1921; actor Maureen Stapleton in 1925; singer O.C. Smith in 1932; actor Bernie Kopell in 1933 (age 85); actor Monte Markham in 1935 (age 83); actor Ron Ely in 1938 (age 80); actor/TV host Mariette Hartley in 1940 (age 78); comic actor Joe Flaherty in 1941 (age 77); actor Michael Gross in 1947 (age 71); actor Meredith Baxter in 1947 (age 71); Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi in 1947 (age 71); musician Ray Davies (The Kinks) in 1944 (age 74); writer Ian McEwan in 1948 (age 70); musician Nils Lofgren in 1951 (age 67); two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto in 1953; actor Robert Pastorelli in 1954; country singer Kathy Mattea in 1959 (age 59); sportscaster Kevin Harlan in 1960 (age 58); Indonesian President Joko Widodo in 1961 (age 57); actor David Morrissey in 1964 (age 54); Yingluck Shinawatra, ousted in May 2014 as prime minister of Thailand, in 1967 (age 51); actor Juliette Lewis in 1973 (age 45); actor Chris Pratt in 1979 (age 39); rock musician Brandon Flowers in 1981 (age 37); Britain's Prince William in 1982 (age 36); actor Jussie Smollett in 1983 (age 35); Edward Snowden, former CIA employee who exposed government secrets, in 1983 (age 35); singer Lana Del Rey in 1985 (age 33); actor Natalie Alyn Lind in 1999 (age 19).

On this date in history:

In 1788, the U.S. Constitution became effective when it was ratified by a ninth state, New Hampshire.

In 1945, Japanese defenders of Okinawa surrendered to U.S. troops.

In 1964, Ku Klux Klan members killed three civil rights activists -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- and hid their bodies in unmarked graves. An informer led the FBI to the three men's graves 44 days later.

In 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit the eastern U.S. seaboard, killing 118 people over a seven-state area.

In 1982, John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 1981 shootings of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three other people who were also wounded. Hinckley has been in a hospital in Washington, with permission in recent years to spend time outside the institution with his family.

In 1985, international experts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, conclusively identified the bones of a 1979 drowning victim as the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi war criminal, ending a 40-year search for the "angel of death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In 1990, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck northwestern Iran, killing up to 50,000 people.

In 1997, Cambodia announced the capture of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

In 2000, NASA announced that its Mars Global Surveyor had spotted grooved surface features, suggesting a relatively recent water flow on the planet.

In 2004, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland resigned during his third term amid a corruption scandal. Rowland, a Republican, later pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and spent 10 months in a federal prison.

In 2005, a Mississippi jury convicted 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

In 2008, nearly 1,400 people, most of them on a ferry that capsized, were killed in Typhoon Fengshen in the Philippines.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law making it a crime to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

In 2011, a RusAir passenger plane flying from Moscow to Petrozavodsk in rain and fog crashed on a highway near an airport and broke apart in flames. Forty-four people died, eight survived.

In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated James Comey, a Justice Department official during the George W. Bush administration, to head the FBI. Comey was sworn-in in September and was later fired by President Donald Trump in 2017.

In 2017, Romania's Parliament ousted Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu in a no-confidence vote six months after he assumed office. The action came after the Social Democrat Party accused Grindeanu of failing to undertake economic reforms.

A thought for the day: "I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June." -- L.M. Montgomery