The Almanac

Today is Friday, Oct. 11, the 284th day of 2002 with 81 to follow.

The moon is waxing.

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

The evening stars are Venus, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include clergyman Mason Locke Weems, who invented the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, in 1759; Englishman George Williams, founder of the YMCA, in 1821; food industry pioneer Henry John Heinz in 1844; first lady and author Eleanor Roosevelt in 1884; choreographer Jerome Robbins in 1918 (age 84); country singer Dottie West in 1932; actor Roy Scheider in 1935 (age 67); actor/singer Rob Leibman in 1937 (age 65); singer Daryl Hall in 1949 (age 53); and actors David Morse in 1953 (age 49, Joan Cusack in 1962 (age 40) and Luke Perry in 1966 (age 36).

On this date in history:

In 1811, the first steam-powered ferry in the world started its run between New York City and Hoboken, N.J.

In 1868, Thomas Alva Edison filed papers for his first invention: an electrical vote recorder to rapidly tabulate floor votes in Congress. Members of Congress rejected it.

In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

In 1984, financier Marc Rich agreed to pay the U.S. government nearly $200 million, the biggest tax fraud penalty in U.S. history.

In 1991, the UN Security Council passed a resolution barring Iraq from pursuing any atomic programs.

In 1992, President Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot squared off in St. Louis for the first presidential debate of the 1992 political campaign.

In 1993, armed demonstrators in Port au Prince, Haiti, prevented U.S and Canadian troops from landing.

In 1994, the Pentagon reported that Iraqi troops were withdrawing from the Iraq-Kuwait border. Their deployment had triggered the deployment of the U.S. Navy and the Marines to the Persian Gulf less than a week earlier.

Also in 1994, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a law that barred local governments from enacting laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination in employment and housing.

In 1996, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Jose Ramos-Harta and Carlos Ximenes Belo, who work for freedom for East Timor, Indonesia, where famine and repression had killed one-third of the entire population.

In 2000, in the second televised presidential debate, Vice President Al Gore and his Republican challenger, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, seemed to agree more than they disagreed in an event more closely resembling a cordial conversation.

A thought for the day: in her diary, Anne Frank wrote, "If God lets me live, I shall attain more than Mummy ever has done. I shall not remain insignificant. I shall work in the world and for mankind!"