The almanac

Today is Thursday, Nov. 19, the 323rd day of 2009 with 42 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include English King Charles I in 1600; U.S. frontier military leader George Rogers Clark in 1752; James Abram Garfield, 20th president of the United States, in 1831; baseball player and religious revivalist Billy Sunday in 1862; explorer Hiram Bingham, discoverer of the Inca city of Machu Picchu, in 1875; bandleader Tommy Dorsey in 1905; Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1917; actress Gene Tierney in 1920; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1926; talk show host Larry King in 1933 (age 76); entertainer Dick Cavett in 1936 (age 73); entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1938 (age 71); fashion designer Calvin Klein in 1942 (age 67); actress Kathleen Quinlan in 1954 (age 55); Eileen Collins, first female space shuttle commander, in 1956 (age 53); actress Meg Ryan in 1961 (age 48); actress/director Jodie Foster in 1962 (age 47); actress Terry Farrell ("Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") in 1963 (age 46); and Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug in 1977 (age 32).

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On this date in history:

In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on a Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

In 1919, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles drawn up by the Paris peace conference at the end of World War I.

In 1939, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for his presidential library at Hyde Park, N.Y.

In 1954, the first automatic toll collection machine went into service at the Union Toll Plaza on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway.

In 1985, a Houston jury ruled Texaco must pay $10.5 billion, the largest damage award in United States history, to Pennzoil Co. for Texaco's 1984 acquisition of Getty Oil Co.

In 1986, at the beginning of what became the Iran-Contra scandal, U.S. President Ronald Reagan said the United States would send no more arms to Iran.

In 1990, NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations signed a massive conventional arms treaty in Paris to end the 40-year Cold War.

In 1991, a cargo train derailment in central Mexico killed 70 people and injured 40 more when the boxcars crushed automobiles on a highway below the tracks.

In 1994, Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano and his party claimed victory in the country's first multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections.

In 1995, in a close presidential runoff election in Poland, former communist party leader Aleksander Kwasniewski defeated incumbent Lech Walesa.

In 1997, Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in Des Moines, Iowa, the first time seven babies had been born and survived.

In 2001, the U.S. government offered a $25 million award for information leading to the location or capture of Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

In 2002, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to create a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department in the largest government reorganization in more than 50 years.

In 2004, the chief of U.S. forces in South Korea said he is concerned that North Korea may sell weapons-grade plutonium to international terrorists.

In 2005, Ford Motor Co. said it would eliminate 4,000 white-collar jobs next year as part of a major cost-cutting plan.

Also in 2005, Prince Albert II formally became ruler of Monaco when he assumed the throne of his late father Prince Rainier.

In 2007, the official death toll from the Bangladesh cyclone reached 3,000. Authorities called it the worst storm to hit the area in two decades.

Also in 2007, at least 28 people were reported dead as a result of a pipeline fire in eastern Saudi Arabia.

In 2008, data on housing and prices sent U.S. stock markets spiraling. The Dow Jones industrial average fell to a six-year low, dropping 5.1 percent to 7,997.28, the first time since 2003 that it has fallen to less than 8,000.

Also in 2008, Somali pirates demanded $25 million in ransom for the hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker Sirius Star and set a 10-day deadline, authorities said. The ship, with a cargo of 2 million barrels of oil, was seized in the Indian Ocean some 500 miles off the coast of Kenya.

And, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, found guilty of seven felony charges for lying on financial disclosure forms and failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from an oil field services company, confirmed he had lost the election to Democrat Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich after 40 years in the Senate.

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A thought for the day: Milan Kundera said, "The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."