The Almanac

Today is Friday, Dec. 10, the 345th day of 2004 with 21 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include Francis Gallaudet, founder of the first free school for the deaf, in 1787; poet Emily Dickinson in 1830; librarian Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey decimal book classification system, in 1851; bandleader Vincent Lopez in 1894; TV newscaster Chet Huntley in 1911; actress Dorothy Lamour in 1914; actor Harold Gould in 1923 (age 81); actress Susan Dey in 1952 (age 52); and actor Kenneth Branaugh in 1960 (age 44).

On this date in history:

In 1869, the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote.

In 1898, Spain signed a treaty officially ending the Spanish-American War. It gave Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States.

In 1901, the Nobel prizes were first awarded in Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden.

In 1927, the Grand Ole Opry made its first radio broadcast from Nashville.

In 1936, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. His brother succeeded to the throne as King George VI.

In 1941, Japanese troops landed on northern Luzon in the Philippines in the early days of World War II.

In 1950, American diplomat Ralph Joseph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace mediation during the first Arab-Israeli war. He was the first African American to win the prestigious award.

In 1984, the National Science Foundation reported the discovery of the first planet outside our solar system, orbiting a star 21 million light years from Earth.

In 1990, the communists won a major victory in the first postwar multi-party elections in the Yugoslavian republics of Serbia and Montenegro.

In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law that allowed a criminal's profits for selling his story to be seized and given to his victims.

In 1997, the Swiss high court ruled that $100 million of the money that had been salted away in banks by former dictator Ferdinand Marcos would be returned to the Philippine government.

In 2002, the Roman Catholic diocese of Manchester, N.H., admitted responsibility for failing to protect children from abusive priests.

In 2003, The European Union planned to examine the legality of a United States decision to exclude several nations from multi-billion-dollar reconstruction contracts in Iraq because they there.

Also in 2003, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council announced the formal establishment of a war crimes tribunal.

And, Mick Jagger is now Sir Mick after the Rolling Stones' front man was knighted by Prince Charles.

A thought for the day: Marcel Proust said, "Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe ..."