The almanac

Today is Tuesday, June 5, the 157th day of 2012 with 209 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include British furniture maker Thomas Chippendale in 1718; Scottish economist Adam Smith in 1723; Lincoln County, N.M., Sheriff Pat Garrett, noted as the man who shot Billy the Kid, in 1850; Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in 1878; English economist John Maynard Keynes in 1883; actor William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy) in 1895; Italian shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo in 1898; author/illustrator Richard Scarry in 1919; actor Robert Lansing in 1928; journalist/commentator Bill Moyers in 1934 (age 78); British novelist Margaret Drabble in 1939 (age 73); Olympic athlete John Carlos in 1945 (age 67); Welsh author Ken Follett in 1949 (age 63); financial adviser Suze Orman in 1951 (age 61); entertainer Kenny G in 1956 (age 56); rapper-turned-actor Mark Wahlberg in 1971 (age 41); and actor Chad Allen in 1974 (age 38).

On this date in history:

In 1783, the first public demonstration of a hot-air balloon occurred at Annonay, France.

In 1933, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill abolishing the gold standard.

In 1967, the Six-Day War began between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

In 1968, as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in Los Angeles, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestine-born Arab. Kennedy, 42, died the next day.

In 1976, the Teton River Dam in Idaho collapsed as it was being filled for the first time, killing 14 people, flooding 300 square miles and causing an estimated $1 billion damage.

In 1985, General Motors agreed to buy Hughes Aircraft for more than $5 billion. At the time, it was the biggest corporate purchase outside the oil industry.

In 1986, Ronald Pelton, a former National Security Agency employee, was convicted in Baltimore of spying for the Soviet Union. The verdict came one day after former Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage on behalf of Israel.

In 1991, in a step away from apartheid, South African legislators repealed the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, which reserved 87 percent of land for whites.

In 1992, on the 20th anniversary of the first U.N. environmental conference, Brazil and 11 other nations signed a biodiversity treaty setting guidelines for the protection and use of plant and animal species.

In 1993, 23 Pakistani members of the U.N. peacekeeping forces were killed in a series of attacks in Mogadishu, Somalia.

In 2000, Ukrainian officials announced that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the worst radiation accident in history, would be closed.

In 2003, officials say U.S. troops would withdraw from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, bringing an end to 50 years of guard duty.

Also in 2003, a suicide bomber killed herself and 17 others at a bus stop in northern Russia near Chechnya.

In 2004, Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. president, died at his Los Angeles home at the age of 93 of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

In 2005, officials said U.S. forces in Iraq discovered dozens of bunkers used to store weapons for militants, with one the size of several U.S. football fields.

In 2007, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for U.S. Vice President Dick Chaney, was sentenced to 30 months in jail for lying to FBI agents and to a grand jury in the investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent to the news media.

In 2008, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States told a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he wanted to plead guilty to the charges to become a martyr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed said he expected to face the death penalty.

In 2009, at least 40 people were killed in a bomb attack on a mosque near Pakistan's Swat Valley, the ninth such assault since a U.S.-backed campaign against Taliban militants began in April.

Also in 2009, a federal judge ordered the Obama administration to release secret evidence it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

In 2010, after several unsuccessful attempts, BP placed a cap on the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well and began funneling crude into a drill ship. The well, off the Louisiana coast, had been spewing an estimated 798,000 gallons of crude a day into the gulf for more than a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.

In 2011, German officials said bean sprouts grown in Germany were the likely source of an E. coli outbreak that killed 29 people in that nation and sickened nearly 3,000 others. Cases also were reported in the United States and Canada.

Also in 2011, the center-right Social Democratic Party, headed by Pedro Passos Coelho, won the Portuguese parliamentary election over the incumbent Socialists. In Peru, Olllanta Humala Tasso, a leftist former military officer, was elected president in a runoff.

A thought for the day: Alfred Whitney Griswold said: "Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history the censor and the inquisitor have always lost."