The Almanac

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 8, the 312th day of 2005 with 53 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include British astronomer Edmond Halley in 1656; author Margaret Mitchell ("Gone With the Wind") in 1900; actresses Katharine Hepburn in 1909 and June Havoc in 1916 (age 89); heart transplant pioneer Dr. Christiaan Barnard in 1922; TV journalist Morley Safer ("60 Minutes") in 1931 (age 74); singers Patti Page in 1927 (age 78), Minnie Riperton in 1947 and Bonnie Raitt in 1949 (age 56); TV personality Mary Hart in 1951 (age 54); actress Alfre Woodard in 1953 (age 52); singer Ricki Lee Jones in 1954 (age 51); and actresses Courtney Thorne-Smith in 1967 (age 38) and Parker Posey in 1968 (age 37).

On this date in history:

In 1793, the Louvre in Paris, now containing one of the world's richest art collections, became a public museum after two centuries as a royal palace.

In 1837, Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts became the first American college founded exclusively for women.

In 1864, as the Civil War raged, Abraham Lincoln was elected to his second term as president. He was assassinated five months later.

In 1889, Montana was admitted to the union as the 41st state.

In 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays.

In 1942, more than 400,000 Allied soldiers invaded North Africa.

In 1982, a smoky fire set by a prisoner in a Biloxi, Miss., jail killed 28 people.

In 1985, a judge overturned Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's conviction for a 1966 triple murder in a Patterson, N.J., bar, freeing the former boxer after 19 years in prison.

In 1988, Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States.

In 1991, the European Community imposed an economic embargo on Yugoslavia in an effort to halt the civil war.

In 1994, in a stunning upset, Republican candidates swept the general election, regaining control of both chambers of Congress. It marked the first time in 40 years the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.

In 2001, a top aide said President Bush had "no plans" to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the U.N. General Assembly in New York because, in the U.S. view, Arafat had not done enough to stop the violence in Israel and the West Bank.

In 2002, the U.N. Security Council Friday unanimously approved a tough, new U.S.-British sponsored resolution authorizing the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq and "serious consequences" if Baghdad fails to cooperate.

Also in 2002, President George W. Bush assured a Muslim audience that America's war was against a network of terrorists and not against the Islamic religion or Muslim civilization.

In 2003, a suicide bomb attack on an Arab residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed 18 and wounded 110.

In 2004, in a long-awaited offensive, thousands of U.S. troops attacked one of the toughest Sunni insurgent strongholds in Fallujah, Iraq.

Also in 2004, the U.S. government authorized the first airline to equip aircraft with electric stun guns as a security measure. Korean Air has 50 flights into the United States each week.

A thought for the day: author George Sand wrote, "We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire."