The almanac

Today is Tuesday, June 23, the 174th day of 2009 with 191 to follow.

The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Neptune, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Uranus. The evening star is 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; U.S. Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph in 1940; Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine in 1943 (age 66); U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1948 (age 61); and actors Ted Shackelford in 1946 (age 63), Bryan Brown in 1947 (age 62) and Frances McDormand in 1957 (age 52).

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 was with the Beatles.

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, United Nations-imposed oil and arms sanctions against Haiti took effect.

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

In 2001, 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 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, 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. Sen. Ted 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 2008, the U.S. Defense Department said roadside bombings and American troop fatalities in Iraq were down by nearly 90 percent compared to a year earlier. Eleven troop deaths were reported in May of 2008, compared with 92 in '07. New, heavier armored ambush resistant vehicles were given as a major reason.

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