The almanac

Today is Sunday, Feb. 9, the 40th day of 2014 with 325 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aquarius. They include William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States, in 1773; actor Ronald Colman in 1891; former Secretary of State Dean Rusk and actor Carmen Miranda, both in 1909; country singer Ernest Tubb and baseball entrepreneur Bill Veeck, both in 1914; actor Kathryn Grayson in 1922; Irish playwright Brendan Behan in 1923; television journalist Roger Mudd in 1928 (age 86); evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong in 1930; South African author J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate, in 1940 (age 74); singer/songwriter Carole King in 1942 (age 72); Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in 1943 (age 71); author Alice Walker in 1944 (age 70); actors Joe Pesci in 1943 (age 71), Mia Farrow in 1945 (age 69), Judith Light in 1949 (age 65) Ciaran Hinds in 1953 (age 61) and Charles Shaughnessy in 1955 (age 59); country singer Travis Tritt in 1963 (age 51); and actor Tom Hiddleston in 1981 (age 33).

On this date in history:

In 1825, after no presidential candidate won the necessary majority, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams the sixth president of the United States.

In 1900, the solid silver trophy known as the Davis Cup was first put up for competition when American collegian Dwight Filley Davis challenged British tennis players to compete against his Harvard team.

In 1943, in a major World War II strategic victory, the Allies retook Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands from the Japanese.

In 1950, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., charged the U.S. State Department was infested with communists, touching off the infamous "McCarthy era."

In 1964, the Beatles appeared on television's "The Ed Sullivan Show." An estimated 73 million people watched.

In 1971, Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player voted into baseball's Hall of Fame.

In 1984, Soviet President Yuri Andropov, in power 15 months, died at age 69.

In 1991, Lithuanians overwhelmingly voted to secede from the Soviet Union.

In 2001, nine people were killed when the U.S. submarine USS Greenville collided with a Japanese fishing boat off the coast of Hawaii during a surfacing drill.

In 2008, the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis delivered a $2 billion science lab to the International Space Station, doubling its zero-gravity research capacity.

In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a memorandum setting up a federal task force to tackle childhood obesity.

In 2012, after a yearlong study, the Pentagon announced that women in the United States military will be permanently assigned to battalions but combat would remain off-limits for them.

In 2013, Afzal Guru, who authorities said was the mastermind behind a 2001 attack on India's Parliament that killed seven people, was executed in New Delhi.

A thought for the day: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "Yesterday is not ours to recover but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."