The almanac

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Today is Tuesday, Oct. 16, the 290th day of 2012 with 76 to follow.

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

Those born on this day are under the sign of Libra. They include lexicographer Noah Webster in 1758; Irish author and dramatist Oscar Wilde in 1854; British statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Austen Chamberlain; David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, in 1886; playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1888; Irish revolutionist Michael Collins in 1890; Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas in 1898; baseball Hall of Fame member Goose Goslin in 1900; orchestra leader and songwriter Bert Kaempfert in 1923; German novelist Gunter Grass in 1927 (age 85); actors Linda Darnell in 1923, Angela Lansbury in 1925 (age 87), Nico in 1938, Barry Corbin in 1940 (age 72) and Suzanne Somers in 1946 (age 66); basketball Hall of Fame member Dave DeBusschere in 1940 (age 72); Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and film director David Zucker, both in 1947 (age 65); actors Tim Robbins in 1958 (age 54) and Kellie Martin in 1975 (age 37).

On this date in history:

In 1701, Yale University was founded.

In 1793, French Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded.

In 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Va. He was convicted of treason and hanged.

In 1868, America's first department store, ZCMI, opened in Salt Lake City.

In 1875, Brigham Young University was founded in Provo, Utah.

In 1916, the nation's first birth control clinic was opened in New York by Margaret Sanger and two other women.

In 1946, at Nuremberg, Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials were executed by hanging for World War II war crimes. Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force, was to have been among them but he committed suicide in his cell the night before.

In 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb.

In 1972, a light plane carrying House Democratic leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana and three other men was reported missing in Alaska. The plane was never found.

In 1973, Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1978, Karol Jozef Wojtyla was elected pope and took the name John Paul II.

In 1984, black Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa won the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against apartheid.

In 1991, George Hennard killed 22 people and then took his own life after driving his pickup truck through the front window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas.

In 1998, Protestant David Trimble and Roman Catholic John Hume, political leaders in Northern Ireland, were named winners of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward bringing peace to Ulster.

In 2003, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution endorsing a U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq.

In 2004, the World Health Organization said smoke from home stoves and fires in developing countries had become a major cause of death and disease.

In 2005, Louisiana state officials were investigating the possibility of euthanasia in 215 deaths at 19 New Orleans hospitals and nursing homes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2006, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed an underground explosion in North Korea a week before was the test of a nuclear device. The explosive yield was reported less than 1 kiloton of conventional explosives.

In 2008, a Gallup poll gave Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama a 6-percentage-point nationwide lead over Republican nominee John McCain with less than a month before the election.

In 2009, U.S President Barack Obama's approval rating slipped for the third consecutive month, from 54 percent in July to 45 percent in October, a Harris Poll indicated.

In 2010, France was rocked by another day of massive protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age. Estimates of the number of demonstrators in Paris and 200 other cities neared 3 million.

In 2011, the U.N. human rights commissioner, branding the Assad regime in Syria as one of "ruthless repression and killings," called on the international community to take steps to prevent a civil war in the nation.

Also in 2011, at least 20 inmates were killed in a riot at a prison in Matamoros, Mexico, started by a fight between two convicts.

And, in sports, British race car driver Don Wheldon, 33-year-old two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, died after a 15-car pileup at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

A thought for the day: Irish author and dramatist Oscar Wilde's dying words were said to have been, "This wallpaper is killing me; one of us has got to go."