The Almanac
Today is Thursday, Feb. 9, the 40th day of 2017 with 325 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 William Henry Harrison, ninth
president of the United States, in 1773; actor Ronald Colman in 1891;
former Secretary of State Dean Rusk in 1909; actor Carmen Miranda in
1909; country singer Ernest Tubb in 1914; baseball entrepreneur Bill
Veeck in 1914; actor Kathryn Grayson in 1922; Irish playwright Brendan
Behan in 1923; television journalist Roger Mudd in 1928 (age 89);
evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong in 1930; South African author J. M.
Coetzee, Nobel laureate, in 1940 (age 75); singer/songwriter Carole
King in 1942 (age 75); Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in
1943 (age 74); author Alice Walker in 1944 (age 73); actor Joe Pesci in
1943 (age 74); actor Mia Farrow in 1945 (age 72); actor Judith Light in
1949 (age 68); actor Ciaran Hinds in 1953 (age 64); actor Charles
Shaughnessy in 1955 (age 62); country singer Travis Tritt in 1963 (age
54); actor Tom Hiddleston in 1981 (age 36); American Taliban John
Walker Lindh in 1981 (age 36); actor Michael B. Jordan in 1987 (age
30). On this date in history: In 1825, after no presidential candidate
won the necessary majority, the House of Representatives elected John
Quincy Adams the sixth president of the United States. In 1900, the
solid silver trophy known as the Davis Cup was first put up for
competition when American collegian Dwight Filley Davis challenged
British tennis players to compete against his Harvard team. In 1943, in
a major World War II strategic victory, the Allies retook Guadalcanal
in the Solomon Islands from the Japanese. In 1950, U.S. Sen. Joseph
McCarthy, R-Wis., charged the U.S. State Department was infested with
communists, touching off the infamous McCarthy era. In 1964, the
Beatles appeared on television's The Ed Sullivan Show. An estimated 73
million people watched. In 1971, Satchel Paige became the first Negro
League player voted into baseball's Hall of Fame. In 1984, Soviet
President Yuri Andropov, in power 15 months, died at age 69. In 1991,
Lithuanians overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Soviet Union. In
2001, the submarine USS Greeneville collided with the Ehime Maru, a
Japanese fishery training boat, off the coast of Oahu in Hawaii during
a surfacing drill. Nine people on the fishing vessel were killed. The
victims included four high school students. In 2008, the U.S. space
shuttle Atlantis delivered a $2 billion European-made science lab to
the International Space Station, doubling its zero-gravity research
capacity. In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a memorandum
setting up a federal task force to tackle childhood obesity. In 2012,
after a yearlong study, the Pentagon announced women in the U.S.
military would be permanently assigned to battalions but combat would
remain off-limits for them. In 2013, Afzal Guru, who authorities said
was the mastermind behind a 2001 attack on India's Parliament, killing,
seven people, was executed in New Delhi. In 2014, Swiss voters approved
a stop mass immigration proposal limiting the number of foreigners
allowed to live and work in the country. A thought for the day: Justice
requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow,
saying, 'His color is not mine,' or 'His beliefs are strange and
different,' in that moment he betrays America ... . -- President Lyndon
B. Johnson .
