The almanac

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Today is Friday, June 6, the 158th day of 2008 with 208 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Spanish painter Diego Velasquez in 1599; American patriot Nathan Hale in 1755; Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in 1799; British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1868; German novelist Thomas Mann in 1875; vaudeville bandleader Ted Lewis in 1890; Indonesian dictator Ahmed Sukarno in 1901; bandleader Jimmie Lunceford in 1902; singer/songwriter Gary "U.S." Bonds in 1939 (age 69); actor David Dukes in 1945; comedian Sandra Bernhard in 1955 (age 53); tennis player Bjorn Borg in 1956 (age 52); and actress Amanda Pays in 1959 (age 49).

On this date in history:

In 1872, feminist Susan B. Anthony was fined for voting in an election in Rochester, N.Y. She refused to pay the fine and the judge allowed her to go free.

In 1933, the first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, N.J.

In 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops began crossing the English Channel in the "D-Day" invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. It was the largest invasion in history.

In 1966, James Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi, was wounded by a sniper during a civil rights march through the South.

In 1972, a coal mine explosion in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, trapped 464 miners underground. More than 425 people died.

In 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon.

In 1994, national leaders and World War II veterans commemorated the 50th anniversary of "D-Day."

In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush proposed creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security whose main responsibility would be prevention of terrorist attacks.

In 2003, the U.S. Labor Department said unemployment in May hit a 9-year-high of 6.1 percent. The report said a net total of 2.5 million jobs had been lost in a little more than two years.

Also in 2003, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the Justice Department's detention of 762 illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and urged Congress to give the authorities even broader power to pursue suspected terrorists.

In 2005, at least 37 people were killed and dozens more injured in southern Nepal after a crowded bus hit a land mine planted by suspected Maoist rebels.

In 2006, in a document by the Pontifical Council on the Family, the Vatican said that unless abortion is punished as a crime it will be seen as a "banal" act.

Also in 2006, Satan worshippers came out in force at dawn on this, the sixth day of the sixth month of 2006 -- 6-6-6, a number the Bible deems Satanic.

In 2007, the remains of thousands of Jews killed by Nazis during World War II were unearthed from a mass grave found in the Ukraine by workers digging pipelines.

Another mass grave suspected of holding the bodies of as many as 500 ethnic Albanians killed in the Kosovo War was found in an abandoned Serbian quarry.

Also in 2007, An estimated 10,000 young protesters clad in black threw stones at riot police at the Group of Eight summit in Germany, prompting a response of tear gas and water cannon.

A thought for the day: "The only certainty is that nothing is certain," from Pliny the Elder.