The almanac

Today is Tuesday, April 10, the 101st day of 2012 with 265 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius in 1583; Button Gwinnett, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, in 1735; U.S. Navy Adm. Matthew Perry, who concluded the first treaty between Japan and the United States, in 1794; soldier, diplomat and novelist Lewis Wallace, author of "Ben-Hur," in 1827; William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, in 1829; journalist and publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1847; Frances Perkins, the first woman U.S. Cabinet member (secretary of labor), in 1880; journalist and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce in 1903; actors Harry Morgan in 1915, Chuck Connors in 1921, Max von Sydow in 1929 (age 83) and Omar Sharif in 1932 (age 80); writer David Halberstam in 1934; football Hall of Fame members John Madden in 1936 (age 76) and Don Meredith in 1938; actors Steven Seagal in 1952 (age 60) and Peter MacNicol in 1954 (age 58); musicians Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds in 1958 (age 54) and Brian Setzer in 1959 (age 53); singer Mandy Moore in 1984 (age 28); and actors Orlando Jones in 1968 (age 44) and Haley Joel Osment in 1988 (age 24).

On this date in history:

In 1790, merchant Robert Gray docked at Boston Harbor, becoming the first American to circumnavigate the globe. He sailed from Boston in September 1787.

In 1849, William Hunt of New York patented the safety pin.

In 1864, Austrian Archduke Maximilian became emperor of Mexico.

In 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded by Henry Bergh.

In 1912, RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England.

In 1916, Professional Golfers Association of America was founded.

In 1919, Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, was ambushed and killed in Morelos by government forces.

In 1925, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published.

In 1942, Japanese soldiers forced U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war on Bataan in the Philippines to walk to another camp in a torturous six-day "Death March" during which more than 5,200 Americans and many more Filipinos died.

In 1963, the U.S. nuclear submarine "Thresher" sank in the Atlantic Ocean 220 miles east of Boston. All 129 men on board were lost.

In 1971, the U.S. table tennis team arrived in China, the first U.S. group to penetrate the so-called Bamboo Curtain since the 1950s.

In 1972, during his first visit to the United States in 20 years, movie pioneer and comic genius Charlie Chaplin accepted an honorary Academy Award for his "incalculable" contribution to the art of filmmaking.

In 1991, an Italian ferry headed to Sardinia collided with an oil tanker near Leghorn, Italy, killing 151 passengers and crew. The tanker crew survived.

In 1994, two U.S aircraft bombed a Serbian command post in Bosnia. It was the first NATO air attack against ground forces.

In 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton vetoed a ban on so-called partial birth abortions. The U.S. Congress was unable to override the veto.

In 1997, a U.S. judge in Washington ruled the Line-Item Veto Act of 1996 was unconstitutional.

In 1998, Britain and Ireland reached an agreement aimed at ending the long and bloody dispute over the future of Northern Ireland.

Also in 1998, the anti-impotence drug Viagra went on the market and became one of the best-selling new medications of all time.

In 2000, the Nasdaq plunged 258 points in its second-biggest drop, starting the dramatic fall-off in the value of technology stocks.

In 2006, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was narrowly beaten in his bid for another term by former premier Romano Prodi.

In 2007, three former Birmingham, Ala., college students were sentenced to federal prison for setting fire to nine rural southern U.S. churches and ordered to pay $3.1 million in restitution.

Also in 2007, four Serbian paramilitary officers were found guilty of taking part in the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims 13 years previously. Thousands of men and boys were reported slaughtered in a few days.

In 2008, a Muslim terrorist ring plot to kidnap athletes and visitors during the Summer Olympics in Beijing was uncovered, Chinese officials said. Thirty-five suspects were arrested.

Also in 2008, international observers hailed Nepal's elections as a generally peaceful success. Nepalese voters decided to end their monarchy and adopt a republic form of government with former Maoist terrorists playing a key role.

In 2009, an American ship captain held by pirates off Somalia as a hostage while his crew escaped remained in captivity after unsuccessfully trying to swim away from his kidnappers.

In 2010, Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and top government officials were among scores killed when their plane crashed while trying to land in a thick fog in western Russia.

In 2011, an estimated 17,500 people rallied in Tokyo to demand the shutdown of nuclear power plants. Engineers continued working to contain the crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant seriously damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami the previous month.

Also in 2011, at least seven people were killed and more than twice that many were wounded when a man opened fire with a machine gun in a Dutch shopping mall.

A thought for the day: Pablo Casals said, "Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart."