The almanac

Today is Monday, June 23, the 175th day of 2008 with 191 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Cancer. They include French Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, in 1763; the Duke of Windsor, former British King Edward VIII, in 1894; pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, also in 1894; Alan Turing, computer scientist, in 1912; former U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers in 1913; director/choreographer Bob Fosse in 1927; singer June Carter Cash in 1929; runner and U.S. Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph in 1940; Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine in 1943 (age 65); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1948 (age 60); and actors Ted Shackelford in 1946 (age 62), Bryan Brown in 1947 (age 61) and Frances McDormand in 1957 (age 51).

On this date in history:

In 1845, the Congress of the Republic of Texas agreed to annexation by the United States.

In 1865, the last Confederate holdouts formally surrendered in the Oklahoma Territory.

In 1947, The U.S. Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley labor act over the veto of U.S. President Harry Truman.

In 1956, Gamel Abdel Nasser was elected first president of the Republic of Egypt.

In 1967, the U.S. Senate censured Sen. Thomas Dodd, D-Conn., for misusing campaign funds.

In 1984, an auction of John Lennon's possessions raised $430,000, including $19,000 for a guitar used while Lennon with the Beatles. Lennon was killed by a deranged fan in 1980.

In 1985, an Air India Boeing 747 from Toronto crashed off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people aboard in the world's worst commercial air disaster at sea.

In 1991, the Group of Seven industrialized democracies agreed to offer the Soviet Union associate membership in the International Monetary Fund.

In 1992, the largest study of its kind found that eating a large bowl of oat bran cereal each day leads to a "modest" drop in cholesterol.

In 1993, U.N.-imposed oil and arms sanctions against Haiti took effect.

In 1994, a U.N.-approved French intervention force crossed into civil war-torn Rwanda.

In 2001, despite church opposition, Pope John Paul II began a Ukrainian visit.

Also in 2001, Yvonne Dionne, one of the Canadian quintuplets whose 1934 birth was hailed as a medical miracle, died at age 67 in Montreal.

In 2002, two major Arizona wildfires merged and by the next day had consumed 330,000 acres and moved close to the small evacuated town of Show Low.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in a University of Michigan case by a 5-4 vote. The high court also upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act, under which federally funded libraries must block obscene material from computers to which minors have access.

In 2004, al-Qaida threatened to kill the Iraqi interim prime minister as it said it had done to a former head of the Iraqi governing council.

Also in 2004, a U.S. lawyer sued Germany in a New York court for $18 billion as compensation for victims of the Holocaust.

In 2005, U.S, Vice President Dick Cheney said again in a TV interview that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes."

Also in 2005, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called on U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, accusing him of mismanaging the Iraq war. Rumsfeld said he had tried twice to quit but was rebuffed.

In 2006, seven men, described by the FBI as "homegrown" terrorists, were held in Miami in an alleged plot against Chicago's Sears Tower and five federal buildings.

In 2007, the Bush administration sought other assessments of progress in Iraq that likely would differ from the one the top commander, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, must provide later this year in a reported effort to decide when U.S. forces can be cut back.

A thought for the day: Wernher von Braun said, "We can lick gravity but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."