UPI Almanac for Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018

Today is Thursday, Aug. 30, the 242nd day of 2018 with 123 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include English author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein) in 1797; civil rights leader Roy Wilkins in 1901; baseball Hall of Fame member Ted Williams in 1918; businessman Warren Buffett in 1930 (age 88); musician John Phillips (The Mamas and the Papas) in 1935; actor Elizabeth Ashley in 1939 (age 79); French Olympic champion skier Jean-Claude Killy in 1943 (age 75); cartoonist Robert Crumb in 1943 (age 75); newspaper columnist Molly Ivins in 1944; comedian Lewis Black in 1948 (age 70); basketball Hall of Fame member Robert Parish in 1953 (age 65); actor Peggy Lipton in 1946 (age 72); actor Timothy Bottoms in 1951 (age 67); actor Michael Chiklis in 1963 (age 55), actor Michael Michele in 1966 (age 52); actor Cameron Diaz in 1972 (age 46); journalist Lisa Ling in 1973 (age 45); tennis player Andy Roddick in 1982 (age 36); actor Michael Grant Terry in 1984 (age 34); singer Bebe Rexha in 1989 (age 29); actor Raffey Cassidy in 2002 (age 16).

On this date in history:

In 30 B.C., Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, killed herself following the defeat of her forces by Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.

In 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold betrayed the United States when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. He fled to England and died in poverty.

In 1918, Fanta Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, attempted to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Lenin, shooting him twice. He survived wounds to each shoulder, one of which pierced his lung.

In 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan to oversee the country's formal surrender at the end of World War II. MacArthur told United Press Japan's "punishment for her sins, which is just beginning, will be long and bitter."

In 1954, Hurricane Carol prompted evacuations along the North Carolina coast. The storm later battered states along the northern eastern seaboard and killed 72 people.

In 1967, the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed. Marshall was the first African American to sit on the court.

In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African-American astronaut in space.

In 1994, the Lockheed and Martin Marietta corporations agreed to a merger that would create the largest U.S. defense contractor.

In 2003, more than 120 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, were killed in a bomb attack on Iraq's Imam Ali Mosque.

In 2008, thousands of residents of Mexico City, Tijuana and other cities in Mexico took to the streets to protest an epidemic of drug-related killings and kidnappings and the Mexican government's apparent inability to stop them.

In 2011, two senior U.S. Justice Department officials charged with overseeing the failed government gun-smuggling "sting" operation dubbed "Fast and Furious" were replaced amid bitter congressional criticism of the mission. The plan was to pass thousands of weapons to suspected Mexican gun smugglers and trace them to drug leaders, but hundreds of firearms were lost, some showing up at crime scenes, including the 2010 slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In 2013, Northern Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney died in Dublin. He was 74.

In 2017, flooding and landslides from the monsoon season in Bangladesh, India and Nepal killed more than 1,200 people and affected 41 million people over the summer, the United Nations said.

A thought for the day: Actress Julia Roberts said, "You can be true to the character all you want but you've got to go home with yourself."