UPI Almanac for Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Today is Wednesday, April 12, the 102nd day of 2023 with 263 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include U.S. statesman Henry Clay in 1777; opera singer Lily Pons in 1898; author Beverly Cleary in 1916; actor/dancer Ann Miller in 1923; singer Tiny Tim in 1932; opera singer Montserrat Caballé in 1933; jazz keyboard player Herbie Hancock in 1940 (age 83); former South African President Jacob Zuma in 1942 (age 81); actor Ed O'Neill in 1946 (age 77); author Tom Clancy in 1947; entertainer David Letterman in 1947 (age 76); actor Dan Lauria in 1947 (age 76); writer Scott Turow in 1949 (age 74); actor/singer David Cassidy in 1950; musician Pat Travers in 1954 (age 69); writer Jon Krakauer in 1954 (age 69); actor Andy Garcia in 1956 (age 67); country singer Vince Gill in 1957 (age 66); actor Retta, born Marietta Sirleaf, in 1970 (age 53); actor Shannen Doherty in 1971 (age 52); actor Christina Moore in 1973 (age 50); actor Riley Smith in 1978 (age 45); actor Claire Danes in 1979 (age 44); actor Jennifer Morrison in 1979 (age 44); actor/model Brooklyn Decker in 1987 (age 36); singer Brendon Urie in 1987 (age 36); country singer Jessie James Decker in 1988 (age 35); rapper Travis Mills in 1989 (age 34); actor Saoirse Ronan in 1994 (age 29).

On this date in history:

In 1861, the Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

In 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the longest-serving president in U.S. history, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., three months into his fourth term. About 3 hours later, Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as chief executive.

In 1955, U.S. health officials announced that the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk was "safe, potent and effective."

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in Vostok 1, became the first human to travel to outer space and the first to orbit Earth.

In 1975, the U.S. military evacuated Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as part of Operation Eagle Pull. The evacuation came as the communist Khmer Rouge seized the capital city to end a five-year war.

In 1976, Knopf published Anne Rice's debut novel, Interview with a Vampire, the first of a series of several books. The book was adapted into a movie starring Tom Cruise in 1994.

In 1981, the Columbia was launched on the first U.S. space shuttle flight. The crowd of more than 3,000 VIPs oohed-and-aahed, shouting, "Go Baby Go," and staring into the bright early-morning sky long after Columbia was out of sight over the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2003, Gen. Amir al-Saadi, Saddam Hussein's top science adviser, denied Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction and surrendered to U.S. forces.

In 2007, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., whose novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five resonated with a generation, died in New York at the age of 84.

In 2009, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued a U.S. ship captain, Richard Phillips, held hostage by pirates off the Somalia coast, by killing three of the kidnappers four days after the standoff began. The incident inspired the 2013 Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips.

In 2012, North Korea, defying international warnings, fired a long-range test rocket but the launch ended in failure. U.S. officials said the rocket broke up and fell into the sea.

In 2014, pro-Russian gunmen seized police stations and other facilities in an escalating crisis in eastern Ukraine.

In 2022, a gunman opened fire at a Brooklyn subway station, injuring 29 people. Frank James pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges in January 2023.

A thought for the day: "The shadows and ghosts of the past remind us that those who would be tyrants cannot be called free men." -- American historian Nathan Irvin Huggins