The Almanac
Today is Sunday, Feb. 12, the 43rd day of 2017 with 322 to follow. The
moon is waning. 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 French architect Etienne-Louis
Boullee in 1728 philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1791 Abraham Lincoln,
16th president of the United States, in 1809 biologist Charles Darwin
in 1809 labor leader John L. Lewis in 1880 Russian ballerina Anna
Pavlova in 1881 U.S. Army Gen. Omar Bradley in 1893 actor Lorne Greene
in 1915 actor Forrest Tucker in 1919 Italian film director Franco
Zeffirelli in 1923 (age 94) baseball player and sports commentator Joe
Garagiola in 1926 (age 91) Charles Van Doren, subject of U.S. TV quiz
scandals, in 1926 (age 91) former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., in
1930 basketball Hall of Fame member Bill Russell in 1934 (age 83) actor
Joe Don Baker in 1936 (age 81) author Judy Blume in 1938 (age 79)
musician Ray Manzarek (The Doors) in 1939 former Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak in 1942 (age 75) actor Maud Adams in 1945 (age 72) actor
Joanna Kerns in 1953 (age 64) former talk show host Arsenio Hall in
1956 (age 61) actor Josh Brolin in 1968 (age 49) singer Chynna Phillips
in 1968 (age 49) actor Christina Ricci in 1980 (age 37) football
quarterback Robert Griffin III (nicknamed RG3 ) in 1990 (age 27). On
this date in history: In 1541, Santiago, Chile, was founded. In 1733,
the American colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe. In
1877, Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, the telephone, was
publicly demonstrated with a hookup between Boston and Salem, Mass. In
1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
was founded by Moorfield Storey, Mary White Ovington and W. E. B. Du
Bois. In 1914, a dedication ceremony was held and the first stone of
the Lincoln Memorial was laid. It took eight years to complete the
monument honoring the 16th president. In 1973, 116 prisoners of war
were flown from Hanoi to the Philippines in the first release of U.S.
POWs in North Vietnam. In 1993, about 5,000 demonstrators marched on
Atlanta's Capitol to protest the Confederate symbol on the Georgia
state flag. In 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted U.S. President Bill
Clinton of impeachment charges. In 2000, Charles Schulz, creator of the
popular comic strip Peanuts and the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy,
died of colon cancer at age 77. In 2001, a NASA spacecraft landed on
the asteroid Eros. In 2004, South Korean scientists announced they had
created the world's first mature cloned human embryos. In 2008, General
Motors, which offered buyouts to its 74,000 unionized employees,
reported a loss of $38.7 billion for 2007, the largest ever for an
automaker. In 2012, Israeli officials announced the end of a nationwide
general strike aimed at improving worker conditions, which paralyzed
the public sector for four days. In 2013, North Korea said it safely
tested its third nuclear device underground, drawing condemnation from
the U.N. Security Council. In 2014, U.S. comedian Sid Caesar, one of
TV's first big stars, died after a brief illness at his home in Beverly
Hills, Calif. He was 91. In 2016, Pope Francis met Patriarch Kirill,
the first meeting between the pontiff of the Catholic Church and the
primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba. A thought for the day:
The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the
other fellow of a dull one. -- Sid Caesar .
