UPI Almanac for Thursday, March 21, 2019

Today is Thursday, March 21, the 80th day of 2019 with 285 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include composer Johann Sebastian Bach in 1685; Mexican revolutionary/President Benito Juarez in 1806; theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld in 1867; British theatrical director Peter Brook in 1925 (age 94); actor Al Freeman Jr. in 1934; actor Timothy Dalton in 1946 (age 73); musician Eddie Money in 1949 (age 70); actor Gary Oldman in 1958 (age 61); actor Matthew Broderick in 1962 (age 57); actor Rosie O'Donnell in 1962 (age 57); singer Michale Graves, born Michael Emanuel, in 1975 (age 44); actor Sonequa Martin-Green in 1985 (age 34); actor Scott Eastwood in 1986 (age 33); rapper Diggy Simmons, born Daniel Dwayne Simmons, in 1995 (age 24); actor Forrest Wheeler in 2004 (age 15).

On this date in history:

In 1413, Henry V was crowned king of England.

In 1617, Pocahontas died in England at about age 22. Three years earlier, she converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca and married Englishman John Rolfe.

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia became the first U.S. secretary of state.

In 1857, 100,000 people were killed in an earthquake in Tokyo.

In 1945, 7,000 Allied planes dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on Germany during a single World War II daytime bombing raid.

In 1952, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed organized the first rock 'n' roll concert -- the Moondog Coronation Ball.

In 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged that Russia would cooperate with the United States in the peaceful exploration of space.

In 1963, the U.S. prison on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island was closed.

In 1965, more than 300 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and protected by Army and federalized National Guard troops, began a four-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to demand federal protection of voting rights. This was the main Selma-Montgomery march. Two previous attempts had stopped in Selma -- one blocked by state troopers on March 7 ("Bloody Sunday"); the other halted voluntarily on March 9.

In 1984, a nuclear-powered Soviet submarine collided with the U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, in the Sea of Japan but no significant damage was reported.

In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev chaired his first regular Politburo meeting since taking power and renewed his call for detente with the West. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan stated that it was ''high time'' for a U.S.-Soviet summit and that he was ready to meet with Gorbachev.

In 1989, Dick Clark retired from hosting the TV show American Bandstand after 33 years.

In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed near Cairo after becoming the first people to circle the globe by balloon.

In 2005, a 17-year-old boy at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota killed nine people, injured several others and then killed himself.

In 2010, the first eruption of a volcano in southern Iceland since the 1820s forced the evacuation of 450 people, but there were no reports of injuries or major property damage.

In 2011, surgeons at a Boston hospital said they had performed the first full-face transplant in the United States on a Texas man burned in a 2008 electrical accident.

In 2018, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a statement acknowledging mistakes and a "breach of trust" after it was revealed data analytics firm Cambridge Analytics collected more than 50 million users' private information without permission.

A thought for the day: "Before achieving a dream you need to make very little steps ... People don't understand that when you want to make a big dream you have a lot of fastidious little things you have to do." -- Bertrand Piccard