The almanac

Today is Thursday, Nov. 7, the 311th day of 2013 with 54 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include British explorer Capt. James Cook in 1728; Marie Curie, discoverer of radium, in 1867; Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1879; bandleader Phil Spitalny (known for his all-female orchestra) in 1890; writer and film director Herman Mankiewicz in 1897; actor Dean Jagger in 1903; musician/comic Red Ingle in 1906; French novelist Albert Camus in 1913; evangelist Billy Graham in 1918 (age 95); jazz trumpeter Al Hirt in 1922; Australian opera star Joan Sutherland in 1926; and singers Johnny Rivers in 1942 (age 71) and Joni Mitchell in 1943 (age 70).

On this date in history:

In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at the Pacific Ocean.

In 1874, the first cartoon depicting the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party was printed in Harper's Weekly.

In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1917, Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government in St. Petersburg.

In 1940, only four months after its completion, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, collapsed. No one was injured.

In 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected to a fourth term during World War II. Roosevelt died the following April and was succeeded by Harry S. Truman.

In 1972, Republican Richard Nixon was re-elected as president of the United States, defeating Democrat George McGovern.

In 1983, a bomb exploded in the U.S. Capitol, causing heavy damage just outside the Senate chamber. There were no injuries.

In 1985, Colombian troops ended a 27-hour siege of Bogota's Palace of Justice by 35 M-19 guerrillas. Eleven Supreme Court judges were among the 100 people killed.

In 1987, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his 9-day-old candidacy following criticism of his judicial ethics and his disclosure that he had used marijuana.

In 1989, "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez was formally sentenced in Los Angeles to die in the gas chamber for 13 killings.

In 1991, basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson disclosed he was HIV-positive and announced he was retiring from the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers.

In 2000, in one of the closest U.S. presidential elections, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore wound up in almost a dead heat. Bush was eventually declared the winner following turmoil over Florida results that ultimately involved the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2005, Chilean police arrested former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori hours after he arrived in Santiago, on his way to Peru to run for president again. The 67-year-old politician was wanted for corruption and human rights abuses in his home country.

In 2008, authorities said about 90 people, mostly students, were killed when a church-run school collapsed on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in Haiti.

In 2011, a Los Angeles jury found Dr. Conrad Murray guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of pop star Michael Jackson. Murray, sentenced to four years in prison, was accused of causing the singer's death by giving him anesthesia and sedatives to help him sleep and then failing to come to his aid when he was in distress.

In 2012, near the end of his re-election victory speech, U.S. President Barack Obama said: "I believe we can seize [the] future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We're not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America."

A thought for the day: "When the rich wage war it's the poor who die." -- Jean-Paul Sartre