The Almanac

Today is Friday, Sept. 1, the 244th day of 2006 with 121 to follow.

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

Those born on this day are under the sign of Virgo. 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 84); undefeated heavyweight boxing champ Rocky Marciano in 1923; country music singer Conway Twitty in 1933; symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa in 1935 (age 71); attorney Alan Dershowitz in 1938 (age 68); comedian/actress Lily Tomlin in 1939 (age 67); Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees pop music group in 1946 (age 60); and singer Gloria Estefan in 1957 (age 49).

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, U.S. President George H.W. 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 at the time.

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

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 United Nations suspended the permission it gave Iraq to sell oil again after Iraq took over the unofficial Kurdish capital city in violation of the cease-fire terms of the Gulf War.

In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton had two days of talks with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow but the deadlock over the START II treaty remained unresolved.

In 1999, U.S. 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. About 80 cultists died in a compound fire.

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

In 2004, a heavily armed band of 31 Chechen terrorists seized a school in Belstan in southern Russia, taking hundreds of hostages.

In 2005, U.S. President George Bush ordered a suspension of rules restricting shipments of oil and gasoline between U.S. ports to help ease hurricane-caused shortages. He called the impact of Hurricane Katrina a "temporary disruption." The president also renewed his pledge of help from the U.S. federal government for victims of the storm.

Meanwhile, floodwaters were reported receding in New Orleans where many of its thousands of homeless were being sent to other states for shelter. And, engineers, who warned for years about potential disaster, grappled with closing breaches in the levees.

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