The almanac

Today is Sunday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2014 with 347 to follow.

The moon is waning. 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 Scottish engineer James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, in 1736; Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 1807; American short story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe in 1809; English metallurgist Henry Bessemer in 1813; French post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne in 1839; billiards player Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, in 1913; Ebony magazine founder John H. Johnson in 1918; former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1920 (age 94); actors Jean Stapleton in 1923, Fritz Weaver in 1926 (age 88) and Tippi Hedren in 1930 (age 84); television newscaster Robert MacNeil in 1931 (age 83); singer Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers in 1939 (age 75); British stage singer and actor Michael Crawford in 1942 (age 72); singers Janis Joplin in 1943 and Dolly Parton in 1946 (age 68); actors Shelley Fabares in 1944 (age 70) and Katey Sagal in 1954 (age 60); chef Paula Deen and journalist Ann Compton, both in 1947 (age 67); singer/actor Desi Arnaz Jr. in 1953 (age 61); and comedian Frank Caliendo in 1974 (age 40).

On this date in history:

In 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

In 1920, the U.S. Senate voted against the country joining the League of Nations.

In 1938, the Spanish Nationalist air force bombed Barcelona and Valencia, killing 700 civilians and wounding hundreds more.

In 1975, China published a new constitution that adopted the precepts and policies of Mao Zedong.

In 1977, U.S. President Gerald Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who had been convicted of treason for her World War II Japanese propaganda broadcasts as Tokyo Rose.

In 1994, ice skater Tonya Harding's former husband, Jeff Gillooly, was arrested and charged with conspiracy in an attack two weeks earlier on Harding rival Nancy Kerrigan.

In 1995, Russian forces captured the presidential palace in the rebel republic of Chechnya.

In 2005, a Southeast Asian tsunami death toll was raised to 220,000.

In 2007, former U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the only member of Congress to plead guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

In 2010, Republican Scott Brown, a little-known former state senator, scored a major political upset by winning a special Massachusetts election over a heavily favored Democrat to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Democratic legend Ted Kennedy.

In 2013, five people were wounded in accidental shootings at gun shows in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio.

A thought for the day: In "As You Like It," William Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players ... ."