Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Wednesday, Feb. 12, the 43rd day of 2014 with 322 to follow. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Mars, Saturn and Venus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune and Uranus. Advertisement Those born on this date are under the sign of Aquarius. They include French architect Etienne-Louis Boullee in 1728; philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1791; Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, and biologist Charles Darwin, both in 1809; labor leader John L. Lewis in 1880; Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in 1881; U.S. Army Gen. Omar Bradley in 1893; actors Lorne Greene in 1915 and Forrest Tucker in 1919; Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli in 1923 (age 91); baseball player and sports commentator Joe Garagiola and Charles Van Doren, subject of U.S. TV quiz scandals, both in 1926 (age 88); former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., in 1930; basketball Hall of Fame member Bill Russell in 1934 (age 80); actor Joe Don Baker in 1936 (age 78); author Judy Blume in 1938 (age 76); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Ray Manzarek (The Doors) in 1939; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1942 (age 72); actors Maud Adams in 1945 (age 69), Joanna Kerns in 1953 (age 61), Arsenio Hall in 1956 (age 58) and Josh Brolin in 1968 (age 46); singer Chynna Phillips in 1968 (age 46); actor Christina Ricci in 1980 (age 34); and football star Robert Griffin III in 1990 (age 24). Advertisement On this date in history: In 1541, Santiago, Chile, was founded. In 1733, the American colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe. In 1855, Michigan State University was established at East Lansing, Mich. In 1877, Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, the telephone, was publicly demonstrated with a hookup between Boston and Salem, Mass. In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded. In 1973, 116 prisoners of war were flown from Hanoi to the Philippines in the first release of U.S. POWs in North Vietnam. In 1993, about 5,000 demonstrators marched on Atlanta's State Capitol to protest the Confederate symbol on the Georgia state flag. In 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted U.S. President Bill Clinton of impeachment charges. In 2000, Charles Schulz, creator of the popular comic strip "Peanuts" and the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, died of colon cancer at age 77. In 2001, a NASA spacecraft landed on the asteroid Eros. In 2004, South Korean scientists announced they had created the world's first mature cloned human embryos. In 2008, General Motors, which offered buyouts to its 74,000 unionized employees, reported a loss of $38.7 billion for 2007, the largest ever for an automaker. Advertisement In 2010, Amy Bishop, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was accused of killing three faculty members and wounding three others at the school. (She was sentenced to life in prison.) In 2012, Israeli officials announced the end of a nationwide general strike, aimed at improving worker conditions, that paralyzed the public sector for four days. In 2013, North Korea said it safely tested its third nuclear device underground, drawing condemnation from the U.N. Security Council. A thought for the day: M.G. Sriram said, "Looking at the proliferation of personal Web pages ... it looks like very soon everyone on Earth will have 15 megabytes of fame."
