Today is Wednesday, Sept. 2, the 246th day of 2020 with 120 to follow.
The moon is full. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, only female monarch of islands and last to rule before statehood, in 1838; sporting goods entrepreneur Albert Spalding in 1850; Hiram Maxim, who invented the first portable automatic machine gun, in 1869; basketball Hall of Fame Coach Adolph Rupp in 1901; dancer Marge Champion in 1919 (age 101); Snapple co-founder Arnold Greenberg in 1932; horse racing Hall of Fame member D. Wayne Lukas in 1935 (age 85); basketball Hall of Fame member John Thompson Jr. in 1941 (age 79); Christa McAuliffe, schoolteacher/astronaut who died in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, in 1948; basketball Hall of Fame member Nate Archibald in 1948 (age 72); football Hall of Fame member/broadcaster Terry Bradshaw in 1948 (age 72); actor Mark Harmon in 1951 (age 69); tennis Hall of Fame member Jimmy Connors in 1952 (age 68); Cirque de Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte in 1959 (age 61); football Hall of Fame member Eric Dickerson in 1960 (age 60); actor Eugenio Derbez in 1961 (age 59); actor Keanu Reeves in 1964 (age 56); actor Salma Hayek in 1966 (age 54); comedian Katt Williams in 1971 (age 49); actor Austin Abrams in 1996 (age 24).
On this date in history:
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In 1666, the Great Fire of London began. It destroyed 13,000 houses in four days.
In 1935, a hurricane hit the Florida Keys, killing more than 350 people.
In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Great Smoky Mountains National Park along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The park officially opened in six years earlier, in 1934.
In 1945, Japan signed an unconditional surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, formally ending World War II.
In 1969, Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader whose founding of North Vietnam and desire for reunification with South Vietnam ultimately resulted in war, died at the age of 79.
In 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, died at age 81.
In 1992, earthquake-spawned tidal waves killed more than 100 people in Pacific coast villages in Nicaragua.
In 1998, a Swissair jetliner en route from New York to Geneva, Switzerland, crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. All 229 people aboard were killed.
In 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush accepted the GOP nomination for re-election, promising to build a "safer world and a more hopeful America."
In 2010, BP warned the U.S. Congress the company might be unable to pay compensation for its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill if barred from new offshore drilling permits.
In 2013, American Diana Nyad, 64, completed a 53-hour swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Fla., becoming the first swimmer to make the crossing without a shark cage.
In 2018, a fire at Brazil's National Museum, the country's oldest and most important natural history museum, destroyed most of its 20 million artifacts, including Egyptian mummies and historic artwork.
In 2019, a fire broke out on a diving boat off the coast of Santa Cruz Island, Calif., killing 34 people.
A thought for the day: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said, "We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers - from tribes to cities to nations - to achieve things we couldn't on our own."
