The almanac

Today is Saturday, Oct. 26, the 299th day of 2013 with 66 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include cereal foods entrepreneur C. W. Post in 1854; baseball Hall of Fame member Judy Johnson in 1900; boxing champion Primo Carnera in 1906; singer Mahalia Jackson and football Hall of Fame member Sid Gillman, both in 1911; bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1913; actor Jackie Coogan in 1914; French President Francois Mitterrand and U.S. aviator Boyd Wagner, both in 1916; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, in 1919; actor Bob Hoskins in 1942 (age 71); author Pat Conroy in 1945 (age 68); TV personality Pat Sajak in 1946 (age 67); former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton, in 1947 (age 66); and actors Jaclyn Smith in 1947 (age 66), Dylan McDermott in 1961 (age 52), Cary Elwes in 1962 (age 51) and Tom Cavanagh in 1963 (age 50); rock musician Keith Strickland in 1953 (age 60); Bolivian President Evo Morales in 1959 (age 54); singers Natalie Merchant in 1963 (age 50) and Keith Urban in 1967 (age 46); and actors Seth McFarlane in 1973 (age 40) and Jon Heder in 1977 (age 36).

On this date in history:

In 1775, King George III declared the American colonies to be in rebellion and approved a military campaign to stop the revolution.

In 1881, the storied gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in Tombstone, Ariz.

In 1906, workers in St. Petersburg set up the first Russian "soviet," or council.

In 1920, the lord mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, demanding independence for Ireland, died after a 2 1/2-month hunger strike in a British prison cell.

In 1942, Japanese warships sank the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the Solomon Islands.

In 1944, after four days of furious fighting, the World War II battle of Leyte Gulf, largest air-naval clash in history, ended with a decisive U.S. victory over the Japanese.

In 1965, the Beatles were presented Member of the Order of the British Empire medals by Queen Elizabeth.

In 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1984, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl's defective heart with a healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.

In 1990, District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 for his conviction on misdemeanor drug charges.

In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty at a desert site along the Israeli-Jordanian border.

In 1995, Islamic Jihad leader Fathi ash-Shiqaqi was assassinated in Malta.

In 1998, the presidents of Ecuador and Peru signed a peace treaty, ending a decades-long border dispute.

In 2002, a four-day Moscow hostage crisis came to a bloody end after Russian soldiers stormed a theater where Chechen rebels had held 700 people for ransom. Ninety hostages and 50 rebels were killed.

In 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ignited international outrage when he said Israel should be wiped off the map.

In 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing construction of nearly 700 miles of fencing on the U.S. border with Mexico to better control illegal immigration.

In 2009, two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan killed 14 Americans -- 11 soldiers and three civilians -- on one of the deadliest days of the eight-year war.

In 2010, GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug manufacturer, agreed to settle criminal and civil complaints for $750 million, stemming from accusations of knowingly selling drugs with questionable safety standards.

In 2012, U.S. Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev., was injured in a six-car pileup on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas. A statement from Reid's office said, "Senator Reid was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident. He experienced rib and hip contusions and has been cleared for release by the doctors."

A thought for the day: English writer William Hazlitt said, "Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it but they labor in it because they excel."