The Almanac
Today is Wednesday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2017 with 319 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: Italian astronomer
and physicist Galileo Galilei in 1564; inventor Cyrus McCormick in
1809; jeweler Charles Tiffany in 1812; feminist pioneer Susan B.
Anthony in 1820; Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elihu Root in 1845; British
philosopher/mathematician Alfred North Whitehead in 1861; Irish
explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1874; songwriter Harold Arlen in 1905;
actor John Barrymore in 1882; actor Cesar Romero in 1907; actor Harvey
Korman in 1927; actor Claire Bloom in 1931 (age 86); astronaut Roger
Chaffee (killed in a fire on the ground during a 1967 Apollo I test) in
1935; football Hall of Fame member John Hadl in 1940 (age 77); actor
Marisa Berenson in 1947 (age 70); actor Jane Seymour in 1951 (age 66);
singer Melissa Manchester in 1951 (age 66); Simpsons cartoonist Matt
Groening in 1954 (age 63); comedian Chris Farley in 1964; actor Renee
O'Connor in 1971 (age 46); longtime NHL player Jaromir Jagr in 1972
(age 45). On this date in history: In 1764, the city of St. Louis was
founded along the Mississippi River. In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine
exploded in Havana harbor, killing 260 crewmen and leading to a U.S.
declaration of war against Spain. In 1933, U.S. President-elect
Franklin Roosevelt narrowly escaped assassination in Miami when several
shots were fired at him, fatally wounding Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.
In 1942, the British bastion of Singapore surrendered to the Japanese
army. In 1965, Canada adopted a new national flag featuring a maple
leaf emblem. In 1982, the oil-drilling rig Ocean Ranger capsized and
sank in a storm off Newfoundland. All 84 people aboard were lost. In
1989, Radio Moscow announced the last Soviet soldier had left Kabul,
Afghanistan. In 1997, Tara Lipinski, 14, defeated defending women's
champion Michelle Kwan to become the youngest U.S. figure skating
champion. In 2002, discovery of a human skull in a wooded area near a
crematory in Georgia led investigators to remains of more than 300
bodies that were to have been cremated but instead were stacked in
sheds and in the woods. In 2005, a U.S. appeals court in Washington
ruled that journalists have no First Amendment privilege to protect
confidential sources. In 2008, Steve Fossett, the 63-year-old
millionaire commodities trader turned record-breaking aviator, was
declared legally dead five months after he vanished while flying in
Nevada. In 2012, fire broke out in an overcrowded Honduras prison,
killing a reported 359 inmates and a visiting wife, one of the worst
prison fire death tolls in history. One of the convicts was suspected
of starting the fast-moving conflagration by setting his mattress on
fire. In 2013, Russian officials said a hail of meteorite fragments hit
the Chelyabinsk region, injuring more than 1,000 people, most of the
victims hit by glass from shattered windows. In 2014, the
pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more 140,000
people, including 7,600 children, had been killed in Syria's 3-year-old
civil war. A thought for the day: To acquire the habit of reading is to
construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
-- W. Somerset Maugham .
