The almanac

Today is Saturday, Dec. 5, the 339th day of 2009 with 26 to follow.

The moon is waning. 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 Sagittarius. They include Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States, in 1782; U.S. Army Gen. George Custer in 1839; film director Fritz Lang in 1890; Walt Disney in 1901; U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., in 1902; film director Otto Preminger in 1906; singer Little Richard (Richard Penniman) in 1932 (age 77); author Joan Didion in 1934 (age 75); opera tenor Jose Carreras in 1946 (age 63); rock singer Jim Messina in 1947 (age 62); comedian Margaret Cho in 1968 (age 41); and actor Frankie Muniz ("Malcolm In The Middle") in 1985 (age 24).

On this date in history:

In 1776, the first scholastic fraternity in America, Phi Beta Kappa, was organized at William and Mary College in Virginia.

In 1848, U.S. President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in California, leading to the "gold rush" of 1848 and '49.

In 1933, prohibition of liquor in the United States was repealed when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers disappeared on a routine flight in the area of the Atlantic known as the Bermuda Triangle.

In 1955, in one of the early civil rights actions in the South, blacks declared a boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Ala., demanding seating on an equal basis with whites. The boycott, prompted by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, lasted until Dec. 20, 1956, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling integrated the city's public transit system.

Also in 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization merged after 20 years of rivalry to form the AFL-CIO.

In 1990, the U.S. State Department said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had accepted the idea of direct high-level U.S.-Iraqi talks to resolve the Gulf crisis.

In 1991, British media magnate Robert Maxwell disappeared while on his yacht off the Canary Islands.

Also in 1991, convicted mass murderer Richard Speck died, one day short of his 50th birthday and 25 years after killing eight student nurses in Chicago.

In 1993, Rafael Caldera Rodriguez was elected president of Venezuela.

In 2001, factions in war-shaken Afghanistan agreed on an interim government, naming Hamid Karzai as their new leader.

In 2002, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., celebrated his 100th birthday on Capitol Hill. Thurmond, who retired the following year, had served the Senate since 1954, making him both the longest-serving and oldest member of Congress. He died June 27, 2003.

In 2004, the U.S. Congress said it was considering a proposal to withhold millions of dollars in foreign aid unless countries agree to shield Americans from prosecution of war crimes.

In 2006, Fiji's prime minister was placed under house arrest as the Pacific island nation's military announced it had taken control of the government.

In 2007, a man opened fire in a popular Omaha mall, killing eight and wounding five others before apparently turning the gun on himself.

In 2008, about 533,000 non-farm U.S. jobs were lost in November, the highest number since 1974, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate increased 0.2 of a point to 6.7 percent.

A thought for the day: Archibald MacLeish said of Americans, "They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world."