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The almanac

By United Press International
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Today is Monday, Nov. 19, the 324th day of 2012 with 42 to follow.

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

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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; actors Clifton Webb in 1889, Alan Young in 1919 and Gene Tierney in 1920; baseball Hall of Fame member Roy Campanella in 1921; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1926; talk show host Larry King in 1933 (age 79); entertainer Dick Cavett in 1936 (age 76); entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1938 (age 74); fashion designer Calvin Klein in 1942 (age 70); actor Kathleen Quinlan in 1954 (age 58); Eileen Collins, first female space shuttle commander, television personality Ann Curry and actor Glynnis O'Connor, all in 1956 (age 56); actors Allison Janney in 1959 (age 53) and Meg Ryan in 1961 (age 51); actor/director Jodie Foster in 1962 (age 50); actor Terry Farrell in 1963 (age 49); Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug in 1977 (age 35); and the McCaughey septuplets in 1997 (age 15).

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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 1930, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow carried out the first of their series of bank robberies.

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 1969, Apollo 12 lands on the moon. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean become the third and fourth human to walk on the moon.

In 1969 sports, Pele scored the 1,000th goal of his soccer career.

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.

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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 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 2005, Ford Motor Co. said it would eliminate 4,000 white-collar jobs 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.

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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 fell to less than 8,000.

In 2009, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., became the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress in history, serving 56 years, 10 months and 16 days. The 92-year-old lawmaker eclipsed the record of Arizona Democrat Carl Hayden.

Also in 2009, Roberto Micheletti, the de facto leader of Honduras, who ousted President Manuel Zelaya from power in June, agreed to temporarily cede power to his Cabinet ministers while awaiting the presidential election slated for Nov. 29.

In 2010, a series of explosions was blamed for the deaths of 29 miners and contractors in a New Zealand coal mine. Two men escaped. It was the country's worst mine disaster since 1914.

In 2011, one of the fugitive sons of deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was captured near the border with Niger. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi was wanted for alleged crimes against humanity for the government's use of military force against civilians calling for democratic reforms.

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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."

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