The Almanac
Today is Sunday, Feb. 26, the 57th day of 2017 with 308 to follow. The
moon is new. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury. Evening
stars are Neptune, Venus, Mars and Uranus. Those born this date are
under the sign of Pisces. They include: British playwright Christopher
Marlowe in 1564; French novelist and poet Victor Hugo in 1802; Levi
Strauss, who created the world's first pair of jeans, in 1829; American
frontiersman William Buffalo Bill Cody in 1846; surgeon and cornflakes
developer John Kellogg in 1852; Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Grover
Cleveland Alexander in 1887; actor William Frawley in 1887; actor
Robert Alda in 1914; actor-comedian Jackie Gleason in 1916; actor Tony
Randall in 1920; actor Betty Hutton in 1921; rock star Antoine Fats
Domino in 1928 (age 89); former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in
1928; political commentator Robert Novak in 1931; singer Johnny Cash in
1932; rock musician Mitch Ryder in 1945 (age 72); singer Michael Bolton
in 1953 (age 64); Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 1954 (age
63); actor/singer Chase Masterson in 1963 (age 54); actor Teresa Palmer
in 1986 (age 31). On this date in history: In 1531, an earthquake in
Lisbon, Portugal, killed more than 20,000 people. In 1815, Napoleon
Bonaparte and 1,200 men left his exile on the Isle of Elba to start his
100-day campaign to regain France. In 1919, 37 years after the first
bill to establish the Grand Canyon as a national park was introduced,
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park Act,
bringing the landmark under the protection of the National Park
Service, preserving it for future generations. In 1929, Wyoming's Grand
Teton National Park was established following the signing of an
executive order by President Calvin Coolidge. In 1935, Germany began
operation of its air force, the Luftwaffe, under Reichmarshal Hermann
Goering. In 1970, National Public Radio was founded. In 1984, the last
U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping
force left Beirut. In 1993, a powerful bomb exploded in the parking
garage below the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York
City, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000. In Nov. 1997,
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were found guilty of plotting and
carrying out the attack following a three-month trial. In 1994, 11
members of the Branch Davidian religious cult were acquitted of murder
and conspiracy charges stemming from a federal raid and siege at the
compound near Waco, Texas, the year before. In 1998, a federal jury in
Amarillo, Texas, ruled in favor of Oprah Winfrey in a lawsuit filed by
Texas cattlemen who said she caused beef prices to fall with a talk
show about mad cow disease. In 2005, Bank of America acknowledged it
lost computer tapes containing account information on 1.2 million
federal employee credit cards, including those of some U.S. senators.
In 2008, the New York Philharmonic performed a historic, 90-minute
concert at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater in North Korea. In 2011,
the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose strong sanctions
on Libya and called for a war-crimes investigation. In 2013, the U.S.
Senate confirmed the nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary.
Hagel left the post in late 2014. In 2015, the Federal Communications
Commission voted 3-2 to regulate Internet service as a public utility,
a victory for net neutrality that is intended to prevent the advent of
Internet traffic manipulation. A thought for the day: In 1903,
President Theodore Roosevelt on visiting the site, remarked: In the
Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder ... Leave it as it is. You
can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can
only mar it. .
