The Almanac

Today is Saturday, Oct. 26, the 299th day of 2002 with 66 to follow.

The moon is waning.

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 Scorpio. They include Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1879; gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in 1911; French President Francois Mitterrand in 1916; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, in 1919; actor Bob Hoskins in 1942 (age 60); author Pat Conroy in 1945 (age 57); TV personality Pat Sajak and filmmaker Ivan Reitman, both in 1946 (age 56); Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton, in 1947 (age 55); and actors Jaclyn Smith in 1948 (age 54) Cary Elwes ("Twister") and Dylan McDermott ("The Practice"), both in 1962 (age 40); and singer Natalie Merchant in 1963 (age 38).

On this date in history:

In 1906, workers in St. Petersburg set up the first Russian "soviet," or council.

In 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, died after a two-and-a-half-month hunger strike in a British prison cell, demanding independence for Ireland.

In 1942, Japanese warships sank the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the Solomon Islands.

In 1944, after four days of furious fighting, the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest air-naval battle in history, ended with a decisive American victory over the Japanese.

In 1979, South Korean President Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1984, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl's defective heart with a healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.

In 1990, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 for his conviction on misdemeanor drug charges.

In 1992, beseiged GM Chairman Robert Stempel resigned as head of the No. 1 U.S. automaker.

In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty at a desert site along the Israeli-Jordanian border.

In 1995, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was hospitalized with heart trouble for the second time in less than four months.

Also in 1995, Islamic Jihad leader Fathi ash-Shiqaqi was assassinated in Malta.

In 1996, the New York Yankees won the World Series, defeating the Atlanta Braves in six games.

In 1998, just one day before threatened NATO air strikes were to begin, Serbian soldiers and police began what was said to be a significant pullback from positions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, where they were massacring ethnic Albanians.

Also in 1998, the presidents of Ecuador and Peru signed a peace treaty, ending a decades-long border dispute between the two countries. In 2001, six weeks after the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, President Bush signed into law a measure giving law enforcement agencies expanded authority to wiretap telephones and examine Internet usage.

In 2001, six weeks after the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, President Bush signed into law a new measure giving law enforcement agencies expanded authority in their battle against terrorism.

A thought for the day: English writer William Hazlitt said, "Men of genius do not excel in any profession because their labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel."