The almanac

Today is Sunday, Nov. 24, the 328th day of 2013 with 37 to follow.

The moon is waning. 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 Sagittarius. They include Dutch philosopher Baruch Benedict de Spinoza in 1632; British novelist and clergyman Laurence Sterne and Spanish missionary Junipero Serra, both in 1713; Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States, in 1784; architect Cass Gilbert, who designed the U.S. Supreme Court building, in 1859; painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec in 1864; ragtime composer Scott Joplin in 1868; lecturer and author Dale Carnegie in 1888; pianist Teddy Wilson in 1912; actors Geraldine Fitzgerald in 1913 and Howard Duff in 1917; political columnist William F. Buckley in 1925; basketball Hall of Fame member Oscar Robertson in 1938 (age 75); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Donald "Duck" Dunn in 1941; comedian Billy Connolly in 1942 (age 71); basketball Hall of Fame member and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing in 1943 (age 70); serial killer Ted Bundy in 1946; and actors Dwight Schultz in 1947 (age 66), Stanley Livingston in 1950 (age 63), Colin Hanks in 1977 (age 36) and Katherine Heigl in 1978 (age 35).

On this date in history:

In 1863, Union Gen. U.S. Grant launched the U.S. Civil War battle of Chattanooga in Tennessee.

In 1859, Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was published.

In 1869, women from 21 states met in Cleveland to organize the American Women Suffrage Association.

In 1874, Joseph Glidden received a patent for barbed wire, which led to the farming of the U.S. Great Plains.

In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in a Dallas jail building two days after Kennedy was slain.

In 1969, Apollo 12 returned to Earth. It was the second moon-landing mission for NASA astronauts.

In 1971, a passenger ticketed as "D.B. Cooper" hijacked a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, parachuted south of Seattle with a $200,000 ransom collected from the airline -- and disappeared.

In 1985, Arab commandos forced an Egypt Air jetliner to Malta and began shooting passengers, fatally wounding two. Fifty-seven other people died when Egyptian commandos stormed the jet.

In 1993, the Brady bill handgun-control legislation cleared Congress. U.S. President Bill Clinton signed it into law a week later.

In 1995, Irish voters passed a referendum removing a constitutional ban on divorce.

In 2003, Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn, who had more wins (363) than any other left-hander in major league baseball history, died at the age of 82.

In 2007, a brigade of 5,000 U.S. troops left Diyala province in Iraq. It was considered the first significant pullback of American troops from the country.

In 2009, two men were executed in China for involvement in the country's 2008 tainted milk scandal, which sickened 300,000 infants, killing six.

In 2012, at least 112 people were killed in a fire that swept through a clothing factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh.

A thought for the day: "Peace is not an absence of war. It is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." -- Dutch philosopher Baruch Benedict de Spinoza