The almanac

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Today is Saturday, May 31, the 152nd day of 2008 with 214 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include poet Walt Whitman and surgeon William Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, both in 1819; radio humorist Fred Allen in 1894; clergyman-author Norman Vincent Peale in 1898; actor Don Ameche in 1908; U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash., in 1912; Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1923; actor Clint Eastwood in 1930 (age 78); Peter, Paul and Mary's Peter Yarrow in 1938 (age 70); country singer Johnny Paycheck in 1938; NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath and actress Sharon Gless ("Cagney and Lacey"), both in 1943 (age 65); actors Tom Berenger and Gregory Harrison, both in 1950 (age 58), and Kyle Secor ("Homicide: Life on the Street") in 1958 (age 50); actor/writer Chris Elliot in 1960 (age 48); actress Lea Thompson ("Caroline in the City") in 1961 (age 47); and actress/model Brooke Shields in 1965 (age 43).

On this date in history:

In 1790, U.S. President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright law.

In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead.

In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.

In 1962, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann for his part in the killing of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

In 1973, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off funds for U.S. bombing of Cambodia.

In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934.

In 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened a four-day summit in Washington, focusing on the role of a united Germany in Europe.

In 1991, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced the United States had begun storing military supplies in Israel for use in future conflicts.

In 1994, U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., was indicted on felony charges, including embezzlement.

In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, in which two died, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina.

In 2004, a bomb ripped through a Shiite mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, while worshippers were saying evening prayers. Sixteen people were killed.

In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was "Deep Throat," the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon's resignation.

In 2006, officials said an estimated 200,000 people had died in the three-year civil in Sudan's Darfur region and 2 million more had become refugees. The government and one rebel group agreed to stop fighting earlier in the month.

Also in 2006, Kimberly Dozier, the 39-year-old CBS reporter injured in a Baghdad bomb blast, was listed in critical but stable condition at a military hospital in Germany. Two members of the crew were killed.

In 2007, U.S. President George Bush called on the world's top polluters to develop together a strategy to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Also in 2007, a civilian Nigerian president was succeeded by another civilian for the first time in history.

A thought for the day: Leo Tolstoy said, "It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness."