The almanac

Today is Wednesday, June 3, the 154th day of 2009 with 211 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, in 1808; automaker Ranson Olds in 1864; actor Maurice Evans in 1901; opera tenor Jan Peerce in 1904; jazz dancer and singer Josephine Baker in 1906; actors Paulette Goddard in 1910, Tony Curtis in 1925 (age 84) and Colleen Dewhurst in 1924; country blues singer Jimmy Rogers in 1924; poet Allen Ginsberg in 1926; sax virtuoso Boots Randolph in 1927; TV producer Chuck Barris in 1929 (age 80); singer/songwriter Curtis Mayfield in 1942; singer Deniece Williams in 1950 (age 59); and actor Scott Valentine ("Family Ties") in 1958 (age 51).

On this date in history:

In 1888, the famous comic baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" was published in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Examiner.

In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, married divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore after abdicating the British throne.

In 1942, the battle of Midway began. It raged for four days and was the turning point for the United States in the World War II Pacific campaign against Japan.

In 1965, Gemini IV astronaut Ed White made the first American "walk" in space.

In 1985, an accord between Italy and the Vatican ended Roman Catholicism's position as "sole religion of the Italian state."

In 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution, died.

In 1991, France signed the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which prohibits signatories from helping other countries acquire nuclear weapons.

In 1992, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opened the largest meeting on the environment in history amid tight security in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1994, North Korea's refusal to allow inspections of two of its nuclear power plants prompted the United States to ask the United Nations about new economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

In 1997, French Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin became prime minister.

In 2004, CIA Director George Tenet, criticized for his handling of the terrorist threat, resigned.

In 2006, Canadian police said they had arrested 17 people in an alleged plot to commit a series of terror attacks against targets in southern Ontario. The suspects included 12 men and five teenage boys.

In 2007, federal officials traced an alleged aborted plot to blow up New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to a terrorist network in the Caribbean.

In 2008, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on the final day of the party's primary season. A last-day primary victory in Montana plus a rush of superdelegates put Obama, first black candidate to run for president on a major U.S. ticket, over the 2,118 delegate plateau and out of reach of Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, with whom he had waged a spirited, close campaign. Obama faced Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the fall elections.

A thought for the day: Bert Leston Taylor said, "A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you."