The Almanac

Today is Thursday, Aug. 24, the 236th day of 2006 with 129 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Virgo. They include pioneer British abolitionist William Wilberforce in 1759; English author and parodist Max Beerbohm in 1872; Joshua Lionel Cowen, inventor of the electric toy train, in 1880; country music publisher Fred Rose in 1897; Argentine poet and author Jorge Luis Borges in 1899; actor Steve Guttenberg in 1958 (age 48); former baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. in 1960 (age 46); and actress Marlee Matlin in 1965 (age 41).

On this date in history:

In 79 A.D., thousands died and the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy.

In 1814, the British captured Washington and burned the U.S. Capitol building and the White House.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the United States.

In 1987, a U.S. appeals court in Cincinnati ruled public schools could require students to study textbooks not accepted by religious fundamentalists.

In 1990, Irish-British hostage Brian Keenan, held by pro-Iranian Muslim extremists in Lebanon for more than four years, was freed.

In 1991, Soviet President Gorbachev quit as general secretary of the Communist Party central committee. He also ordered his Cabinet to resign.

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida south of Miami with sustained winds of up to 145 mph. the storm claimed 26 deaths in the United States and the Bahamas and did $26.5 billion in damage.

In 1995, Beijing convicted and then expelled Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu, arrested in June while trying to enter China from Kazakhstan.

In 1996, four women became students at The Citadel, a military school in South Carolina that had fought in court to remain all-male.

In 2003, a Newsweek poll indicated that Americans were growing increasingly wary of U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

In 2004, two Russian passenger jetliners crashed within minutes of each other after taking off from Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. A total of 89 people were killed.

In 2005, U.S. President George Bush vowed in an Idaho speech that he would not retreat from Iraq or the rest of the Middle East until U.S. troops "win the war on terror."

Also in 2005, a Peruvian passenger plane crashed in the jungle of central Peru, killing at least 40 people.

A thought for the day: it was Hartford (Conn.) Courant Editor Charles Dudley Warner -- and not his friend and colleague Mark Twain -- who said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."