The Almanac

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 1, the 245th day of 2004 with 121 to follow.

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

Those born on this day are under the sign of Leo. They include German composer Engelbert Humperdinck in 1854; "Tarzan" author Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1875; dancer/singer Marilyn Miller in 1898; actress Yvonne De Carlo ("The Munsters") in 1922 (age 82); boxing champ Rocky Marciano in 1923; country music singer Conway Twitty in 1933; symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa in 1935 (age 69); attorney Alan Dershowitz in 1938 (age 66); comedian/actress Lily Tomlin in 1939 (age 65); Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees pop music group in 1946 (age 58); and singer Gloria Estefan in 1957 (age 47).

On this date in history:

In 1807, Aaron Burr, vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, was acquitted of treason charges growing out of an alleged plot to set up an independent empire in the nation's south and west.

In 1914, the last known passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

In 1923, an earthquake struck Yokohama, Japan, killing an estimated 143,000 people.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France served an ultimatum on Adolf Hitler, but it was ignored.

In 1983, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 strayed into Soviet air space and was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter. All 269 people aboard died.

In 1985, scientists found the wreck of the British luxury liner Titanic, sunk by an iceberg in 1912, in the Atlantic Ocean south of Newfoundland.

In 1990, three planes left Iraq with about 500 Western and Japanese women and children in the first airlift, four days after Saddam Hussein's pledge to begin releasing some of his so-called "guests."

In 1991, President Bush established diplomatic relations with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In 1992, the insurance industry estimated that insured damage from Hurricane Andrew would reach $7.3 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

In 1993, Bosnian Muslims refused to accept a draft of an U.N. peace agreement unless the Serbs and Croats ceded them more land. Leaders of the three factions broke off talks.

Also in 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspended from office his vice president and his first deputy premiere. The Supreme Soviet rejected Yeltsin's action.

In 1995, a peace agreement worked out among Liberia's warring militias moved forward with the swearing in of an interim ruling council.

In 1996, the U.N. suspended the permission it gave Iraq to sell oil again after Iraq took over the unofficial Kurdish capital city in violation of the ceasefire terms of the Gulf War.

In 1998, President Clinton held the first of two days of talks with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow. Their meetings did not resolve the deadlock over the START II treaty.

In 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a new investigation into the events of April 19,1993, that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. A few days earlier, the FBI admitted it had fired pyrotechnic tear gas canisters at the building, but they had bounced harmlessly away and did not cause the fire that killed about 80 of the cultists.

In 2003, Libya agreed to compensate relatives of the 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over the Sahara.

A thought for the day: Edward Bellamy wrote, "An American credit card ... is just as good in Europe as American gold used to be."