The Almanac

Today is Wednesday, June 23, the 175th day of 2004 with 191 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include the Duke of Windsor, Britain's former King Edward VIII, in 1894; pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, also in 1894; Alan Turing, computer scientist in 1912; former Secretary of State William Rogers in 1913; director/choreographer Bob Fosse in 1927; singer June Carter Cash in 1929; actor Bert Convy in 1939; runner and U.S. Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph in 1940; Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine in 1943 (age 61); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1948 (age 56); and actors Ted Shackelford in 1946 (age 58), Bryan Brown in 1947 (age 57), and Frances McDormand in 1957 (age 47).

On this date in history:

In 1845, the Congress of the Republic of Texas agreed to annexation by the United States.

In 1865, the last Confederate holdouts formally surrendered in the Oklahoma Territory.

In 1947, Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley labor act over the veto of President Truman.

In 1956, Gamel Abdel Nasser elected first president of the Republic of Egypt.

In 1967, the Senate censured Sen. Thomas Dodd, D-Conn., for misusing campaign funds.

In 1984, an auction of John Lennon's possessions raised $430,000, including $19,000 for a guitar used while with the Beatles. Lennon was shot and killed by a deranged fan in 1980.

In 1985, an Air India Boeing 747 from Toronto crashed off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people aboard in the world's worst commercial air disaster at sea.

In 1991, the Group of Seven industrialized democracies agreed to offer the Soviet Union associate membership in the International Monetary Fund.

In 1992, the largest study of its kind found that eating a large bowl of oat bran cereal each day leads to a "modest" drop in cholesterol.

In 1993, U.N.-imposed oil and arms sanctions against Haiti took effect.

In 1994, a U.N.-approved French intervention force crossed into civil war-torn Rwanda.

In 2001, despite church opposition, Pope John Paul II began a Ukranian visit.

Also in 2001, Yvonne Dionne, one of the Canadian quintuplets whose 1934 birth was hailed as a medical miracle, died at age 67 in Montreal.

In 2002, two major Arizona wildfires merged and by the next day had consumed 330,000 acres and moved close to the town of Show Low (population 8,000) that had been evacuated.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in a University of Michigan case by a 5-4 vote. The High Court also upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act, under which federally-funded libraries must block obscene material from computers to which minors have access.

A thought for the day: Wernher von Braun said, "We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."