The Almanac

Today is Saturday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2003 with 46 to follow.

The moon is waning. The morning stars are Jupiter and Saturn. The evening stars are Mercury, Mars, Venus, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include British statesman William Pitt ("the elder") in 1708; British astronomer Sir William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus, in 1738; Nobel Prize-winning physiologist August Krogh of Denmark in 1874; artist Georgia O'Keeffe in 1887; jurist Felix Frankfurter in 1882; diplomat W. Averell Harriman and World War II German Gen. Erwin Rommel, both in 1891; Annunzio Mantovani, band leader, in 1905; Gen. Curtis LeMay in 1906; TV personality and retired Judge Joseph Wapner in 1919 (age 84); actor Edward Asner in 1929 (age 74); pop singer Petula Clark in 1932 (age 71); actors Yaphet Kotto in 1937 (age 66) and Sam Waterston in 1940 (age 63); conductor Daniel Barenboim in 1942 (age 61); actress Beverly D'Angelo in 1954 (age 49); and "Tonight Show" band leader Kevin Eubanks in 1957 (age 46).

On this date in history:

In 1864, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman began his Civil War march from Atlanta to the sea.

In 1920, the first assembly of the League of Nations was called to order in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered Gypsies and part-Gypsies to be placed in Nazi concentration camps.

In 1960, Hollywood king Clark Gable, best remembered as Rhett Butler in "Gone With The Wind," died of a heart attack at the age of 59.

In 1969, 250,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the Vietnam War.

In 1984, five-week-old Baby Fae died after her body rejected the baboon heart she had lived with for 20 days at California's Loma Linda University Medical Center.

In 1987, 27 people were killed when a Continental Airlines DC-9 jet crashed in a snowstorm during takeoff from Denver.

In 1989, tornadoes struck six Southern states, killing 17 people and injuring 463, causing at least $100 million in damage in Huntsville, Ala., alone.

In 1990, the so-called "Keating Five" -- Sens. Alan Cranston, D-Calif.; Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.; John Glenn, D-Ohio; John McCain, R-Ariz.; and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. -- maintained their innocence at the opening of Senate hearings into charges of influence peddling on behalf of S&L kingpin Charles Keating.

In 1991, the Justice Department revealed criminal indictments of BCCI and three businessmen associated with it.

In 1992, Newsweek quoted Elizabeth Tamposi saying a State Department colleague acting on behest of the White House asked her to dig up information on then-Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton.

In 2001, U.S. commandos were on the ground in southern Afghanistan in the search for al-Qaida leaders and more than 250 American and British special-force troops landed north of Kabul.

In 2002, the White House and the FBI backed off from a warning that al-Quaida was plotting "spectacular" attacks against the United States after critics latched on to it to show progress in the war on terror was faltering.

A thought for the day: Nobel Prize-winning poet George Seferis said, "We have many monsters to destroy."

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