The Almanac

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Today is Wednesday, July 6, the 187th day of 2005 with 178 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include John Paul Jones, founder of the U.S. Navy, in 1747; band leader, composer John Phillip Sousa ("The Stars and Stripes Forever") in 1854; children's author Beatrix Potter ("Peter Rabbit") in 1866; singer Laverne Andrews, of the Andrews Sisters, in 1915; former first lady Nancy Reagan in 1923 (age 82); TV personality Merv Griffin in 1925 (age 80); rock 'n' roll pioneer Bill Haley ("Rock Around The Clock"), also in 1925; actress Janet Leigh in 1927 (age 78); singer/actress Della Reese in 1932 (age 73); actors Ned Beatty in 1937 (age 68), Burt Ward in 1945 (age 60) and Sylvester Stallone in 1946 (age 59); President George W. Bush, also in 1946 (age 59); and actresses Shelley Hack in 1949 (age 56) and Allyce Beasley in 1954 (age 51).

On this date in history:

In 1699, pirate Capt. William Kidd was seized in Boston and deported to England. He later was hanged.

In 1854, the Republican Party was formally established at a meeting in New York City.

In 1885, French bacteriologist Louis Pasteur inoculated the first human being, a boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The youngster did not develop rabies.

In 1919, a British dirigible landed at New York's Roosevelt Field to complete the first airship crossing of the Atlantic.

In 1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.

In 1933, the first midsummer Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The American League beat the National League, 4-2.

In 1942, diarist Ann Frank and her family took refuge in a secret section of an Amsterdam warehouse where they hid from the Nazis for two years. Finally discovered, they were shipped off to concentration camps where Ann eventually perished but her diary lived on.

In 1944, fire in the big top of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Conn., killed 167 people, two-thirds of them children, and injured 682 others.

In 1957, while attending a church picnic near Liverpool, 15-year-old Paul McCartney met 16-year-old John Lennon. Lennon's band was playing at the picnic and by the end of the day McCartney had joined the group.

In 1958, Alaska became the 49th state.

In 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria.

In 1971, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, one of the 20th century's most influential American musicians, died at age 69.

In 1976, women were first admitted to the Naval Academy.

In 1984, President Reagan, in a TV interview, said it was a "probability" that many young people now paying into Social Security "will never be able to receive as much as they're paying."

In 1992, a bomb exploded near the car carrying French President Mitterrand's wife during a visit to Kurdish settlements in northern Iraq. Mrs. Mitterrand was unhurt, but at least two other people were killed.

In 1993, the flooded Mississippi River was closed to barge traffic from Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis.

In 1994, a firestorm killed 14 firefighters near Glenwood Springs, Colo., while fighting a forest fire.

Also in 1994, President Clinton visited Latvia, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to the Baltic region.

In 1995, the prosecution in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial rested its case after presenting 58 witnesses and 488 exhibits during 92 days of testimony.

In 1996, the Libertarians nominated financial counseling author Harry Browne for president.

In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder deployed the remote-controlled Sojourner to explore the surface of Mars.

Also in 1997, for the first time since it was founded in 1929, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party failed to win a majority in voting for the lower house of Congress.

In 1999, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced she was forming an exploratory committee to look into running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. No first lady had ever before sought public office.

Also in 1999, Ehud Barak was sworn in as prime minister of Israel.

In 2002 sports, Serena Williams defeated sister Venus for the Wimbledon women's tennis championship, 7-6 (4), 6-3. Venus had won the title the two previous years.

In 2003, Liberian President Charles Taylor, who promised to resign in the face of civil war, said he had accepted an invitation to go into exile in Nigeria.

Also in 2003, police arrested three heavily armed teenagers in Oaklyn, N.J., whom they suspected of plotting a massive random shooting spree.

In 2004, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, chose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate.

A thought for the day: Ambrose Bierce defined a bore as "A person who talks when you wish him to listen."