UPI Almanac for Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021

Today is Sunday, Dec. 12, the 346th day of 2021 with 19 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French novelist Gustave Flaubert in 1821; Norwegian painter Edvard Munch in 1863; actor Edward G. Robinson in 1893; English writer Patrick O'Brian in 1914; singer/actor Frank Sinatra in 1915; TV game show host Bob Barker in 1923 (age 98); former New York Mayor Edward Koch in 1924; basketball Hall of Fame member Bob Pettit in 1932 (age 89); singer Connie Francis in 1937 (age 84); singer Dionne Warwick in 1940 (age 81); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Dickey Betts in 1943 (age 78); actor Bill Nighy in 1949 (age 72); former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby in 1952 (age 69); musician Sheila E., born Sheila Escovedo, in 1957 (age 64); former tennis star Tracy Austin in 1962 (age 59); actor Jennifer Connelly in 1970 (age 51); actor Regina Hall in 1970 (age 51); actor Mädchen Amick in 1970 (age 51); actor Mayim Bialik in 1975 (age 46); actor Lincoln Melcher in 2003 (age 18).

In this date in history:

In 1870, Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina was sworn in as the first African-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1901, Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1913, two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was recovered in a Florence, Italy, hotel room.

In 1917, the Rev. Edward J. Flanagan, a 31-year-old Irish priest, opened the doors to Boys Town, a home for troubled and neglected children in Omaha. He lived by the adage, "There is no such thing as a bad boy." It graduated its first class of girls in 1983.

In 1937, Japanese warplanes sank the USS Panay, a U.S. gunboat, in China as part of the Sino-Japanese War. The incident killed three people.

In 1968, Arthur Ashe became the first African American to be ranked No. 1 in tennis in the United States.

In 1975, Sara Jane Moore said she willfully tried to kill U.S. President Gerald Ford. She was sentenced to life in prison but released Dec. 31, 2007.

In 1980, a U.S. oil tycoon spent $5 million at auction for a notebook written by Leonardo da Vinci. The 36 pages of notes featured "remarkably illegible right-to-left writing" and was "illustrated with marginal sketches of a technical nature."

In 1985, the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, a military charter, on takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killed all 256 people aboard, including 248 U.S. soldiers.

In 1988, three trains collided in London, killing 40 people, Britain's worst railway accident in 21 years.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 it was reversing the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court allowing hand recount of votes in Florida, in effect ensuring the Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush would win the presidency over former Vice President Al Gore.

In 2015, Saudis elected women to municipal councils for the first time in Saudi Arabian history.

In 2019, a project to map the topography of land beneath Antarctica's ice sheet revealed the world's deepest land canyon underneath Denman Glacier.

A thought for the day: "One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier." -- French novelist Gustave Flaubert