The Almanac
Today is Wednesday, March 8, the 67th day of 2017 with 298 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and
Venus. Evening stars are Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars. Those born on
this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1841; Scottish writer Kenneth
Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, in 1859; American
printer/type designer Frederic William Goudy in 1865; German nuclear
chemist Otto Hahn, discoverer of nuclear fission, in 1879; actor Sam
Jaffe in 1891; actor Louise Beavers in 1902; actor Claire Trevor in
1910; actor Alan Hale Jr. in 1921; dancer/actor Cyd Charisse in 1922;
actor Susan Clark in 1940 (age 77); actor Lynn Redgrave in 1943; Micky
Dolenz of the Monkees pop music group in 1945 (age 72); musician Randy
Meisner (Eagles) in 1946 (age 71); songwriter Carole Bayer Sager in
1947 (age 70); baseball Hall of Fame member Jim Rice in 1953 (age 64);
actor Aidan Quinn in 1959 (age 58); television journalist Lester Holt
in 1959 (age 58); actor Camryn Manheim in 1961 (age 56); actor Freddie
Prinze Jr. in 1976 (age 41); actor James Van Der Beek in 1977 (age 40).
On this date in history: In 1817, the New York Stock Exchange was
established. In 1913, the Internal Revenue Service began to levy and
collect income taxes in the United States. In 1917, strikes and riots
in St. Petersburg marked the start of the Russian Bolshevik revolution.
In 1921, after Germany failed to make its first war reparation payment,
French troops oc'cup'ied Dusseldorf and other towns on the Ruhr River
in Germany's industrial heartland. In 1957, Egypt reopened the Suez
Canal to international traffic after Israel withdrew from oc'cup'ied
Egyptian territory. In 1965, nearly 4,000 U.S. Marines landed in South
Vietnam. In 1974, the streaking epidemic that had been gripped parts of
the United States appeared to run its logical course. In 1983, U.S.
President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an evil empire
in a speech before the British House of Commons. In 1990, Colombia's
M-19 leftist guerrilla group surrendered its arms, ending 16 years of
insurrection. In 1999, baseball great Joe DiMaggio died at age 84. In
2008, U.S. President George W. Bush vetoed legislation that would have
outlawed severe interrogation methods such as waterboarding used by the
CIA. Bush said the proposal would eliminate one of the most valuable
tools in the war on terror. In 2010, up to 500 people were killed in a
nighttime ethnic cleansing raid on a village near Nigeria's turbulent
city of Jos. In 2013, former Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem and
ex-Defense Minister Oscar Camilion were convicted of smuggling weapons
to Croatia and Ecuador. In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 carrying
239 people vanished over the Indian Ocean en route to Beijing from
Kuala Lumpur. A massive search found no sign of the plane and a
government statement months later said all aboard -- 227 passengers and
12 crew members -- are presumed to have lost their lives. A thought for
the day: Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero
to me. -- Fred Rogers .
