Today is Tuesday, Oct. 8, the 281st day of 2013 with 84 to go.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Mars and Jupiter. Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Libra. They include musician Dick Burnett in 1883; World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker in 1890; Argentine dictator Juan Peron in 1895; science fiction writer Frank Herbert in 1920; gossip columnist Rona Barrett in 1936 (age 77); tennis Hall of Fame member Fred Stolle in 1938 (age 75); civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1941 (age 72); "Goosebumps" author R.L. Stine in 1943 (age 70); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Johnny Ramone in 1948 and C.J. Ramone in 1965 (age 48); political commentator Steve Coll in 1958 (age 55); Olympic gold medal swimmer Matt Biondi in 1965 (age 48); actors Paul Hogan in 1939, Chevy Chase in 1943 (age 70), Sigourney Weaver in 1949 (age 64), Darrell Hammond in 1955 (age 58); Stephanie Zimbalist in 1956 (age 57), Matt Damon in 1970 (age 43) and Nick Cannon in 1980 (age 33); and singer Bruno Mars in 1985 (age 28).
On this date in history:
In 1871, a massive Chicago fire destroyed more than 17,000 buildings, killed more than 300 people and left 90,000 homeless.
In 1918, Sgt. Alvin York of Tennessee became a World War I hero by single-handedly capturing a hill in the Argonne Forest of France, killing 20 enemy soldiers and capturing 132 others.
In 1919, the U.S. Congress passed the Volstead Act, prohibiting the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
In 1967, communist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, an important figure in the 1959 Cuban revolution, was killed while leading a guerrilla war in Bolivia.
In 1991, a U.S. federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, approved a $1 billion settlement against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill.
In 1993, the U.S. Justice Department, in its report on the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, concluded the cult had caused the fire that destroyed the compound and killed at least 75 people.
In 1997, three years after the death of longtime North Korean ruler Kim Il Sung, his son, Kim Jong Il, officially inherited his father's title of general secretary of the Communist Party.
In 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 258-176 to begin impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In 2003, about $19 billion in peach-colored, redesigned $20 bills made their official debut across the United States.
In 2004, for the first time the Nobel Peace Prize went to an African woman, Dr. Wangari Maathai, an environmental activist from Kenya.
In 2005, a death toll close to 40,000 was reported in India and Pakistan after an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale.
In 2011, the head of the U.S. Energy Department's loan program, Jonathan Silver, resigned amid a fiscal firestorm over Solyndra, a solar energy company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving a $535 million federal loan guarantee.
In 2012, scientists John B. Gurdon of Britain and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries on reprogramming cells.
A thought for the day: "Putting is a fascinating, aggravating, wonderful, terrible and almost incomprehensible part of the game of golf." -- Arnold Palmer
