The Almanac

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 19, the 323rd day of 2002 with 42 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include English King Charles I in 1600; frontier military leader George Rogers Clark in 1752; James Abram Garfield, 20th president of the United States, in 1831; religious revivalist Billy Sunday in 1862; explorer Hiram Bingham, discoverer of the Inca city of Machu Picchu, in 1875; actor Clifton Webb in 1896; bandleader Tommy Dorsey in 1905; Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1917; former U.S. United Nations ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick in 1926 (age 75); talk show host Larry King in 1933 (age 69); entertainer Dick Cavett in 1936 (age 66); entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1938 (age 64); fashion designer Calvin Klein in 1942 (age 60); sportscaster Ahmad Rashad in 1949 (age 53); actress Kathleen Quinlan in 1954 (age 48); Eileen Collins, first female shuttle commander, in 1956 (age 46); actress Meg Ryan in 1961 (age 41); actress/director Jodie Foster in 1962 (age 40); actress Terry Farrell ("Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Becker") in 1963 (age 39); and Olympic gymnast Kerri Strung in 1977 (age 25).

On this date in history:

In 1863, 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 1874, the Women's Christian Temperance Union was founded in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1939, 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 1985, a Houston jury ruled Texaco must pay $10.5 billion, the largest damage award in United States history, to Pennzoil Company for Texaco's 1984 acquisition of Getty Oil Co.

In 1986, at the beginning of what became the Iran-Contra scandal, President Reagan said the United States would send no more arms to Iran.

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.

Also in 1991, Eduard Shevardnadze was reappointed Soviet foreign minister after resigning in December 1990 with a warning of an impending coup.

In 1992, Dorothy Walker Bush, 91, mother of President George H.W. Bush and grandmother of President George W. Bush, died following a stroke at her home in Greenwich, Conn., hours after a last visit with her son.

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 1996, a United Express plane collided with a light plane in Quincy, Ill. All aboard both planes died.

In 1997, Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in Des Moines, Iowa, the first time seven babies had been born and survived.

In 2001, the U.S. government offered a $25 million award for information leading to the location or capture of Osama Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America.

A thought for the day: Milan Kundera said, "The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."