The Almanac

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 9, the ninth day of 2002 with 356 to follow.

The moon is waning, moving toward its new phase.

The morning star is Venus.

The evening stars are Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include women's suffrage and peace movement leader Carrie Chapman Catt in 1859; pioneer psychologist John Watson in 1878; choreographer George Balanchine in 1904; French novelist Simone de Beauvoir in 1908; Richard Nixon, 37th president of the United States, in 1913; striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee in 1914; actors Fernando Lamas in 1915, Lee Van Cleef in 1925 and Bob Denver in 1935 (age 67); author Judith Krantz in 1928 (age 74); sportscaster Dick Enberg in 1935 (age 67); singer Joan Baez and actress Susannah York, both in 1941 (age 61); country singer Crystal Gayle in 1951 (age 51); basketball player Tyrone Curtis "Muggsy" Bogues and actress Joely Richardson, both in 1965 (age 37); and Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band in 1967 (age 35).

On this day in history:

In 1861, Mississippi seceded from the Union.

In 1945, in World War II, American troops invaded the Philippine island of Luzon and went on to liberate Manila.

In 1969, the British-French supersonic Concorde jetliner made its first test flight at Bristol, England.

In 1972, the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth was gutted by fire while docked in Hong Kong.

In 1986, the Internal Revenue Service, for the first time, announced it would withhold income tax refunds coming to 750,000 government loan defaulters, most of them former students.

In 1991, two New York City teenagers were sentenced for the 1989 rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park.

In 1993, seven people were found shot to death at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Palatine, Ill., northwest of Chicago. The crime remains unsolved.

In 1995, House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked for the resignation of House historian Christina Jeffrey after it was revealed she'd once criticized a school program on the Holocaust for not including the "Nazi point of view" or that of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1996, a federal appeals panel ruled that a sexual harassment suit filed against President Clinton by an ex-state worker of Arkansas could proceed.

Also in 1996, rebels in the Russian republic of Chechnya overran the town of Kizlyar and took 2,000 hostages at a hospital and in nearby homes.

In 1999, French NATO forces killed a suspected war criminal in Bosnia while trying to arrest him. Dragan Gagovic had been charged in the rape and torture of Muslim women during a Serb offensive in eastern Bosnia in 1992-93.

In 2001, Linda Chavez, President-elect Bush's nominee for secretary of labor, withdrew from consideration after it was revealed that she'd sheltered an illegal alien from Guatemala.

A thought for the day: Seneca said, "If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."