UPI Almanac for Thursday, June 24, 2021

Today is Thursday, June 24, the 175th day of 2021 with 190 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include clergyman Henry Ward Beecher in 1813; writer/satirist Ambrose Bierce in 1842; basketball player/shoe designer Chuck Taylor in 1901; British astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1915; author/editor Norman Cousins in 1915; basketball Hall of Fame member Sam Jones in 1933 (age 88); actor Michele Lee in 1942 (age 79); guitarist Jeff Beck in 1944 (age 77); actor Peter Weller in 1947 (age 74); drummer Mick Fleetwood in 1947 (age 74); actor Nancy Allen in 1950 (age 71); actor Tommy Lister in 1958; actor Mindy Kaling, born Vera Mindy Chokalingam, in 1979 (age 42); actor Minka Kelly in 1980 (age 41); actor Vanessa Ray in 1981 (age 40); singer Solange Knowles in 1986 (age 35); Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi in 1987 (age 34); actor Candice Patton in 1988 (age 33); actor Max Ehrich in 1991 (age 30); actor Beanie Feldstein in 1993 (age 28); actor Harris Dickinson in 1996 (age 25).

On this date in history:

In 1901, Pablo Picasso's artwork had its first exhibition in Paris.

In 1908, former president Grover Cleveland died in Princeton, N.J., at the age of 71.

In 1948, Soviet forces blockaded the western zones of Berlin, setting the stage for the Berlin airlift to support the 2 million people of the divided German city.

In 1970, the Senate repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, named for the 1964 incident the U.S. government used to justify war against Vietnam. The resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization for the war, but the vote was largely symbolic because the Nixon administration didn't use it for legal authority to be in Vietnam.

In 1975, an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 en route from New Orleans crashed at New York's Kennedy International airport, killing 113 people. There were 11 survivors.

In 1986, Raquel Welch won a $10.8 million verdict against MGM, which she said ruined her career by firing her from the 1980 movie Cannery Row.

In 1993, a Yale professor was injured by a mail bomb, the second sent by Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, in two days. It was the 14th bomb Kaczynski sent since the 1970s.

In 2009, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted to having an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina. He resigned as chairman of the GOP governors association but stayed on as governor and was later elected to Congress.

In 2010, John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut in a first-round match played over three days at Wimbledon. The match -- longest in pro-tennis history -- took 11 hours, 5 minutes and 183 games to decide a winner.

In 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt. The military removed him from the office in 2013 and he was later sentenced to death for his role in a mass prison break in 2011.

In 2013, Belgian Steve Darcis, ranked 135th in the world, upset Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon, the first time the Spanish star ever lost in the opening round of a Grand Slam event.

In 2020, Soviet-era tanks, modern military hardware and thousands of troops paraded through Moscow as President Vladimir Putin presided over a celebration of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany during World War II -- a celebration that was delayed for weeks by the coronavirus crisis.

A thought for the day: After winning the 1997 Masters tournament, golfer Tiger Woods said: ''I'm the first [African-American winner] but I wasn't the pioneer. Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Teddy Rhodes, those guys paved the way for me to be here. I thank them."