Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Tuesday, Dec. 10, the 344th day of 2013 with 21 to follow. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Saturn. The evening stars are Neptune, Uranus and Venus. Advertisement Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of the first free school for the deaf, in 1787; poet Emily Dickinson in 1830; librarian Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey decimal book classification system, in 1851; actor Una Merkel in 1903; TV newscaster Chet Huntley in 1911; actors Dorothy Lamour in 1914, Harold Gould in 1923, Dan Blocker in 1928, Tommy Kirk in 1941 (age 72) and Susan Dey in 1952 (age 61); actor/director Kenneth Branagh in 1960 (age 53); singer/actor Nia Peeples in 1961 (age 52); musician Meg White in 1974 (age 39); and actor Raven-Symone Pearman in 1985 (age 28). Advertisement On this date in history: In 1817, Mississippi joined the United States as the 20th state. In 1869, the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote. In 1884, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain was published. In 1898, Spain signed a treaty officially ending the Spanish-American War. It gave Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States. In 1901, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden. In 1906, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1936, Britain's King Edward VIII abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. His brother succeeded to the throne as King George VI. In 1941, Japanese troops landed on northern Luzon in the Philippines in the early days of World War II. In 1950, U.S. diplomat Ralph Joseph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace mediation during the first Arab-Israeli war. He was the first African-American to win the award. In 1984, the National Science Foundation reported the discovery of the first planet outside the solar system -- 21 million light-years from Earth. Advertisement In 1990, communists won a major victory in the first postwar multi-party elections in the Yugoslavian republics of Serbia and Montenegro. In 2002, the Roman Catholic diocese of Manchester, N.H., admitted responsibility for failing to protect children from abusive priests. In 2003, Mick Jagger became Sir Mick after the Rolling Stones' front man was knighted by Prince Charles. In 2005, Richard Pryor, who pushed the envelope on racial themes and vulgarity in standup and movie comedy, died of cardiac arrest. He was 65. In 2006, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former president of Chile who seized power in a bloody 1973 coup and ruled the nation for 17 years, died at the age of 91. In 2009, a special South Carolina House committee voted to censure, but not impeach, Gov. Mark Sanford for bringing "ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame" to the state in a scandal involving an extramarital affair. In 2010, Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, represented by a portrait and an empty chair, was honored during the Nobel presentations in Oslo, Norway. Liu was in a northeastern China prison serving an 11-year sentence for subversion and his family was forbidden from attending the ceremony. Advertisement In 2011, Western countries and the U.N. urged calm in the Democratic Republic of Congo after President Joseph Kabila was declared the winner in disputed elections. In 2012, in the first 10 months of the year, 1,625 U.S. soldiers were discharged from the Army for being overweight, a military report said. A thought for the day: Marcel Proust said, "Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe."
