The Almanac
Today is Tuesday, Feb. 28, the 59th day of 2017 with 306 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 Pisces. They include French essayist Michel de
Montaigne in 1533; journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht in 1894;
chemist and physicist Linus Pauling, twice winner of the Nobel Prize
(peace and chemistry), in 1901; movie director Vincente Minnelli in
1903; cartoonist Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon) in
1907; actor Billie Bird in 1908; actor Zero Mostel in 1915; actor
Charles Durning in 1923; Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Soviet
dictator Josef Stalin, in 1926; architect Frank Gehry in 1929 (age 88);
actor Gavin MacLeod in 1931 (age 86); Hall of Fame basketball Coach
Dean Smith in 1931; dancer Tommy Tune in 1939 (age 78); former race car
driver Mario Andretti in 1940 (age 77); musician Brian Jones (Rolling
Stones) in 1942; former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in 1948
(age 69); actor Bernadette Peters in 1948 (age 69); actor Mercedes
Ruehl in 1948 (age 69); newspaper columnist and Nobel laureate Paul
Krugman in 1953 (age 64); comedian Gilbert Gottfried in 1955 (age 62);
actor John Turturro in 1957 (age 60); actor Rae Dawn Chong in 1961 (age
56); actor Robert Sean Leonard in 1969 (age 48); former NHL player Eric
Lindros in 1973 (age 44). On this date in history: In 1784, the
Methodist Church was chartered by John Wesley. In 1844, an explosion
rocked the war steamer USS Princeton after it test-fired one of its
guns. The blast killed or injured a number of top U.S. government
officials who were aboard. In 1885, the American Telephone and
Telegraph Co. was incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of American
Bell Telephone. In 1935, nylon was invented by DuPont researcher
Wallace Carothers. In 1942, Japanese forces landed in Java, the last
Allied bastion in the Dutch East Indies. In 1983, the concluding
episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H drew what was
then the largest TV audience in U.S. history. In 1986, Swedish Prime
Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a street in Stockholm. In 1992,
a bomb blast blamed on the IRA ripped through a London railway station,
injuring at least 30 people and shutting down the British capital's
rail and subway system. In 1993, federal agents attempting to serve
warrants on the Branch Davidian religious cult's compound near Waco,
Texas, were met with gunfire that left at least five people dead and 15
injured, and marked the start of a month-and-a-half-long standoff. In
1994, NATO was involved in combat for the first time in its 45-year
history when four U.S. fighter planes operating under NATO auspices
shot down four Serb planes that had violated the U.N. no-fly zone in
central Bosnia. In 1996, Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana
agreed to divorce after 15 years of marriage. In 2005, at least 125
Iraqi police recruits and others were killed in a suicide bomb attack
on a crowd outside a government office south of Baghdad. In 2008,
Prince Harry, third in line for the British throne, was pulled from the
front lines in Afghanistan immediately after word got out that he was
on army duty. He had spent 10 weeks in the war zone. In 2009, radio
broadcasting icon Paul Harvey, who entertained generations of listeners
with his news and comments, died. He was 90. In 2013, children fare as
well with same-sex parents as traditional parents, the American
Sociological Association said in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme
Court. In 2014, Drought-stricken Southern California was hit by a storm
that dropped more rain in one day than had fallen in many months. A
thought for the day: Your name is the most important thing you own.
Don't ever do anything to disgrace or cheapen it. -- Ben Hogan .
