The Almanac

Today is Saturday, April 10, the 101st day of 2004 with 265 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include Admiral Matthew Perry, who concluded the first treaty between Japan and the United States, in 1794; soldier, diplomat and novelist Lewis Wallace, author of "Ben-Hur," in 1827; William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, in 1829; journalist and publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1847; Frances Perkins, the first woman Cabinet member, in 1882; poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran in 1883; journalist and diplomat Clare Booth Luce in 1903; actors Harry Morgan in 1915 (age 89), Chuck Connors in 1921, Max von Sydow in 1929 (age 75) and Omar Sharif in 1932 (age 72); sports commentator John Madden in 1936 (age 68); actors Steven Seagal in 1951 (age 53) and Peter MacNicol in 1954 (age 50); singer/songwriter/producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds in 1957 (age 47); singer Mandy Moore in 1984 (age 20); and actor Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense") in 1988 (age 16).

On this date in history:

In 1790, merchant Robert Gray docked at Boston Harbor, becoming the first American to circumnavigate the globe. He'd sailed from Boston in September 1787.

In 1849, William Hunt of New York patented the first safety pin.

In 1864, Austrian Archduke Maximilian became emperor of Mexico.

In 1919, Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, was ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by government forces.

In 1942, Japanese soldiers herded together American and Filipino prisoners of war on Bataan in the Philippines and forced them to march to another camp. During the six-day "Death March," more than 5,200 Americans and many more Filipinos died.

In 1945, the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army 80th Division.

In 1963, the U.S. nuclear submarine "Thresher" sank in the Atlantic Ocean 220 miles east of Boston. All 129 men on board were lost.

In 1971, the U.S. table tennis team arrived in China, the first American group to penetrate the so-called "Bamboo Curtain" since the 1950s.

In 1972, during his first visit to the United States in 20 years, movie pioneer and comic genius Charlie Chaplin accepted an honorary Academy Award for his "incalculable" contribution to the art of filmmaking.

In 1987, the state of Utah began pumping water from the Great Salt Lake to reduce damaging record water levels.

In 1990, a Belgian man, his French girlfriend and their daughter, who was born in captivity, were released in the Middle East. They'd been seized along with four other Belgians by the Fatah Revolutionary Council aboard a pleasure boat in the eastern Mediterranean in November 1987.

In 1991, an Italian ferry headed to Sardinia collided with an oil tanker near Leghorn, Italy, killing 151 passengers and crew. The tanker crew survived.

In 1992, Charles Keating Jr., considered a symbol of the nation's savings and loan debacle, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for securities fraud.

Also in 1992, in formal Gulf War report, the Pentagon said allied bombers destroyed more Iraqi electrical generating facilities than necessary, causing undue postwar hardship on civilians.

In 1993, jurors began deliberations in the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers charged with violating Rodney King's civil rights. Two of the officers would be convicted.

In 1994, two U.S aircraft bombed a Serbian command post in Bosnia. It was the first-ever NATO air attack against ground forces.

In 1995, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan, announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.

In 1996, President Clinton vetoed a ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions. Congress was unable to override the veto.

In 1997, a federal judge in Washington ruled the Line-Item Veto Act of 1996 was unconstitutional.

In 1998, Britain and Ireland reached an agreement aimed at ending the long and bloody dispute over the future of Northern Ireland.

Also in 1998, the anti-impotence drug Viagra went on the market and became one of the best-selling new medications of all time.

In 2000, the Nasdaq plunged 258 points in its second-biggest drop ever, starting the dramatic fall-off in the value of technology stocks.

In 2003, the United States and Britain launched a massive public relations campaign over the Iraqi airwaves with President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair recording speeches to Iraqis over a new, jointly run television network.

Also in 2003, the pneumonia-like illness SARS, which has sickened thousands and killed more than 100, continued to spread to new areas around the globe with Kuwait reporting its first case.

A thought for the day: Pablo Casals said, "Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart."