The almanac

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 14, the 14th day of 2014 with 351 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include Roman general Mark Antony in 83 B.C.; British Unitarian theologian John Biddle in 1615; American turncoat Gen. Benedict Arnold in 1741; Thornton Waldo Burgess, author of "Peter Rabbit," in 1874; philosopher, medical missionary and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer in 1875; film director Hal Roach in 1892; novelist John Dos Passos in 1896; English photographer Cecil Beaton and hockey Hall of Fame member Babe Siebert, both in 1904; "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney in 1919; actors William Bendix in 1906 and Guy Williams in 1924; drag racing driver Don "Big Daddy" Garlits in 1932 (age 82); singer Jack Jones in 1938 (age 76); civil rights activist Julian Bond in 1940 (age 74); actor Faye Dunaway in 1941 (age 73); astronaut Shannon Lucid in 1943 (age 71); evangelist-turned-actor singer Marjoe Gortner and journalist Nina Totenberg, both in 1944 (age70); musician T. Bone Burnett and actor Carl Weathers, both in 1948 (age 66); New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in 1952 (age 62); filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan in 1949 (age 65); film director Steven Soderbergh in 1963 (age 51); television news anchor Shepard Smith in 1964 (age 50); actors Jason Bateman in 1969 (age 45), Emily Watson in 1967 (age 47), LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith) in 1968 (age 46) and Kevin Durand in 1974 (age 40); and rock musician David Grohl in 1969 (age 45).

On this date in history:

In 1639, the first constitution in the American colonies, the "Fundamental Orders," was adopted in Hartford, Conn., by representatives of Wethersfield, Windsor and Hartford.

In 1794, Dr. Jesse Bennett of Edom, Va., performed the first successful Caesarean section.

In 1907, an earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, killed more than 1,000 people.

In 1914, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line method of manufacturing cars, allowing for completion of one Model-T Ford every 90 minutes.

In 1943, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opened a 10-day World War II strategy conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

In 1952, NBC's "Today," the program that started the morning news show format as it is now known, premiered.

In 1964, George Wallace was inaugurated as the governor of Alabama, promising his followers, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

In 1969, a series of explosions aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off Hawaii killed 27 men.

In 1993, David Letterman accepted a multimillion-dollar deal to move his late-night talk show to CBS in August after his NBC contract expired.

In 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush outlined a plan to establish a colony on the moon from where manned expeditions to Mars could be launched.

In 2005, a U.S. Army reservist, Spc. Charles Graner, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing detainees at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison. (Graner, who said he didn't regret his actions, was released from prison after 6 1/2 years.)

In 2007, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the judge who approved the 1982 killing of 148 Shiite men and boys were executed by hanging in Baghdad. (Saddam was hanged two weeks earlier.)

In 2011, anti-government protesters forced the ouster of Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

In 2012, retired army Gen. Otto Perez Molina was sworn in as Guatemala's president and Taiwanese President Ma Ying Jeou was re-elected.

In 2013, California prison reform advocates called on Gov. Jerry Brown to release more so-called low-risk inmates and reduce overcrowding in the state's prison system.

A thought for the day: "The soul is healed by being with children." -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky