The almanac

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2011 with 46 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include British statesman William Pitt ("The Elder") in 1708; British astronomer William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus, in 1738; Nobel Prize-winning physiologist August Krogh of Denmark in 1874; actor Lewis Stone in 1879; artist Georgia O'Keeffe in 1887; jurist Felix Frankfurter in 1882; diplomat W. Averell Harriman and World War II German Gen. Erwin Rommel, both in 1891; Annunzio Mantovani, orchestra leader, in 1905; U.S. Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay in 1906; TV personality and retired Judge Joseph Wapner in 1919 (age 92); actor Edward Asner in 1929 (age 82); pop singer Petula Clark in 1932 (age 79); actors Yaphet Kotto in 1937 (age 74) and Sam Waterston in 1940 (age 71); conductor Daniel Barenboim in 1942 (age 69); actor Beverly D'Angelo in 1951 (age 60); musician Kevin Eubanks in 1957 (age 54); golf champion Lorena Ochoa in 1981 (age 30).

On this date in history:

In 1791, Georgetown University, in what is now Washington, D.C., opened as the first Roman Catholic college in the United States.

In 1864, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman began his Civil War march from Atlanta to the sea.

In 1920, the first assembly of the League of Nations was called to order in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered gypsies be placed in Nazi concentration camps.

In 1960, Hollywood king Clark Gable, best remembered as Rhett Butler in "Gone With The Wind," died of a heart attack at the age of 59.

In 1969, 250,000 people demonstrated in Washington against the Vietnam War.

In 1984, 5-week-old Baby Fae died after her body rejected the baboon heart she had lived with for 20 days at California's Loma Linda University Medical Center.

In 1987, 27 people were killed when a Continental Airlines DC-9 jet crashed in a snowstorm during takeoff from Denver.

In 1989, tornadoes struck six Southern states, killing 17 people and injuring 463, causing at least $100 million in damage in Huntsville, Ala.

In 1990, members of the so-called Keating Five -- Sens. Alan Cranston, D-Calif.; Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.; John Glenn, D-Ohio; John McCain, R-Ariz.; and Donald Riegle, D-Mich. -- were accused of influence peddling on behalf of savings and loan kingpin Charles Keating.

In 2001, U.S. commandos were on the ground in southern Afghanistan in the search for al-Qaida leaders and more than 250 U.S. and British special force troops landed north of Kabul.

In 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell submitted his resignation.

Also in 2004, facing the possibility of U.N. sanctions, Iran announced it would suspend its uranium enrichment program.

In 2005, the official death toll from Hurricane Katrina stood at 972 with more bodies found as Louisiana residents returned home more than a month after the search for victims officially ended.

In 2007, Cyclone Sidr, with winds of more than 150 miles an hour, slammed into the southwestern Bangladesh coast, killing a reported more than 3,400 people. Authorities said tens of thousands were injured and 1 million people were homeless.

In 2009, world leaders meeting in Singapore backed off from a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by roughly half by 2050, eliminating a target date in their preliminary document.

Also in 2009, a series of snowstorms in northern and central China killed 32 people, stranded thousands and ruined crops worth about $1 billion.

In 2010, a five-story building in New Delhi that housed migrant workers collapsed, killing at least 42 people with 65 others hurt and many more feared buried in debris.

Also in 2010, fire in a high-rise Shanghai apartment building, primarily a home for teachers, killed more than 40 people and injured dozens.

A thought for the day: Nobel Prize-winning poet Giorgos Seferis said, "We have many monsters to destroy."