The Almanac
Today is Tuesday, Feb. 7, the 38th day of 2017 with 327 to follow. The
moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury. Evening
stars are Neptune, Venus, Mars and Uranus. Those born on this date are
under the sign of Aquarius. They include English statesman and writer
Thomas More in 1478; farm equipment manufacturer John Deere in 1804;
English novelist Charles Dickens in 1812; Little House books author
Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1867; novelist Sinclair Lewis in 1885; ragtime
composer and pianist Eubie Blake in 1887; Buster Crabbe, actor (Flash
Gordon) and Olympic swimming gold medalist, in 1908; writer Gay Talese
in 1932 (age 85); actor Pete Postlethwaite in 1946; actor Miguel Ferrer
in 1955; comedian Emo Philips in 1956 (age 61); actor James Spader in
1960 (age 57); actor Eddie Izzard in 1962 (age 55); country singer
Garth Brooks in 1962 (age 55); comedian Chris Rock in 1966 (age 51);
actor Ashton Kutcher in 1978 (age 39). On this date in history: In
1497, the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, Italy, took place when
followers of Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of books, art and
cosmetics. In 1940, British railroads were nationalized. In 1964, the
Beatles arrived in the United States for the first time and immediately
set off a frantic wave of Beatlemania. In 1973, the U.S. Senate voted
to set up a committee to investigate a break-in at the Democratic
National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex. In 1984, U.S.
astronauts Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart made the first
untethered spacewalks. McCandless was the first to float freely in
space, propelled by a nitrogen-powered jetpack after leaving the
shuttle Challenger. In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as
Haiti's first democratically elected president in 186 years. In 1992,
the European Union was created when the Maastricht Treaty was signed.
In 1995, the mastermind in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade
Center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Pakistan. He was sentenced
to life in prison in 1998. In 1999, King Hussein of Jordan died of
cancer at age 63. Hussein ruled Jordan for 46 years. In 2005, rescuers
reported no survivors among the 104 people aboard an Afghan airliner
that crashed in the mountains near Kabul. It was Afghanistan's worst
air disaster. In 2009, the most deadly series of brushfires in
Australian history claimed more than 200 lives, destroyed almost 2,000
homes and burned at least 1.1 million acres in Victoria state. In 2010,
Viktor Yanukovich regained the Ukrainian presidency. In 2012, a federal
appeals court in California rejected a ban on same-sex marriage that
voters had approved four years earlier. In 2013, a Gallup poll
indicated 57 percent of Americans said their standard of living was
improving and 27 percent said it was getting worse. In 2014, the Winter
Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had a spectacular opening ceremony.
Performers in the show watched by 40,000 people at the Olympic stadium,
included Cossack dancers, ballerinas, puppeteers and acrobats. A
thought for the day: Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a
climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have
the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and
remuneration based on ability. -- Sandra Day O'Connor .
