UPI Almanac for Monday, April 15, 2019

Today is Monday, April 15, the 105th day of 2019 with 260 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include Italian painter/inventor Leonardo da Vinci in 1452; British polar explorer James Clark Ross in 1800; distiller Joseph E. Seagram in 1841; author Henry James in 1843; former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1894; singer Bessie Smith in 1894; actor Marian Jordan in 1898; artist Arshile Gorky in 1904; former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1912; businessman Alfred S. Bloomingdale in 1916; Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, in 1922; country singer Roy Clark in 1933; actor Elizabeth Montgomery in 1933; actor Claudia Cardinale in 1938 (age 81); musician Dave Edmunds in 1944 (age 75); actor Amy Wright in 1950 (age 69); newspaper columnist Heloise Cruse Evans in 1951 (age 68); actor Emma Thompson in 1959 (age 60); country singer Chris Stapleton in 1978 (age 41); actor Luke Evans in 1979 (age 40); actor Seth Rogen in 1982 (age 37); singer/actor Ester Dean in 1982 (age 37); actor Samira Wiley in 1987 (age 32); actor Emma Watson in 1990 (age 29); actor Cody Christian in 1995 (age 24); actor Maisie Williams in 1997 (age 22).

On this date in history:

In 1817, the first U.S. public school for the deaf, Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (now the American School for the Deaf), was founded at Hartford, Conn.

In 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died of an assassin's bullet fired the night before at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as chief executive.

In 1912, the luxury liner Titanic sank in the northern Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland after striking an iceberg the previous night. Approximately 1,500 people died in the tragedy.

In 1931, Spanish Republicans formed a new government as King Alfonso sailed into exile.

In 1944, the Soviet army captured the Polish city of Tarnopol from German occupation. When Nazi Germany took the city in 1941, it murdered thousands of Jews, and in 1944, the Soviets killed some 4,500 Germans and destroyed much of the city.

In 1947, Major League Baseball's color line was officially broken with the debut of Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on opening day. Robinson, who went on to become one of the game's great stars, walked and scored a run in the Dodgers' 5-3 victory over the Boston Braves.

In 1955, the first franchised McDonald's was opened in Des Plaines, Ill., by Ray Kroc, who got the idea from a hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, Calif., run by the McDonald brothers.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon asked Congress for legislation to prohibit dumping of polluted dredge waste into the lakes.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered airstrikes against the Libyan regime of Moammar Gadhafi in response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. serviceman.

In 1990, Greta Garbo, the legendary film actor who starred in Anna Christie, Grand Hotel and Mata Hari, died. She was 84.

In 1998, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who presided over a reign of terror in Cambodia in the late 1970s, died at a jungle outpost near the Cambodia-Thailand border.

In 2009, Tea Party protests, largely critical of President Barack Obama and his policies, had their biggest turnout to date on April 15, tax day -- in many cities.

In 2013, two pressure-cooker bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260.

In 2014, after sending a distress signal, a South Korean ferry capsized off the country's southern coast, an incident that killed about 300 people.

In 2017, the bombing of a convoy of buses carrying evacuees killed at least 126 people in Aleppo, Syria, including dozens of children.

A thought for the day: "Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind." -- Walter Bagehot