The almanac

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 25, the 56th day of 2014 with 309 to follow.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Pisces. They include French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1841; Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso in 1873; U.S. statesman John Foster Dulles in 1888; actor Herbert "Zeppo" Marx, the "sane" sibling of the early Marx Brothers movies, in 1901; actor Jim Backus in 1913; British writer Anthony Burgess in 1917; tennis Hall of Fame member Bobby Riggs in 1918; baseball Hall of Fame member Monte Irvin in 1919 (age 95); producer/writer Larry Gelbart in 1928; talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael in 1935 (age 79); actors Tom Courtenay in 1937 (age 77) and Diane Baker in 1938 (age 76); former Beatle George Harrison in 1943; director Neil Jordan in 1950 (age 64); sportscaster James Brown in 1951 (age 63); comedian Carrot Top, born Scott Thompson, in 1965 (age 49); and actors Tea Leoni in 1966 (age 48), Sean Astin in 1971 (age 43), Anson Mount in 1973 (age 41) and Chelsea Handler in 1975 (age 39).

On this date in history:

In 1791, the First Bank of the U.S. at Philadelphia became the first national bank chartered by Congress.

In 1836, Samuel Colt patented a "revolving gun," the first of the six-shooters.

In 1870, Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Miss., was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African-American to sit in Congress.

In 1901, the United States Steel Corp. was founded by J.P. Morgan.

In 1951, the inaugural Pan American Games began in Buenos Aires.

In 1964, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) defeated Sonny Liston and was named world heavyweight boxing champion.

In 1967, U.S. warships began shelling Vietnam.

In 1986, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos left his Manila palace for Hawaii, ending 20 years in power.

In 1990, Violeta Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate for the presidency of Nicaragua, scored an upset victory over President Daniel Ortega, leader of the leftist Sandinista Liberation Front.

In 1991, the Warsaw Pact nations signed an agreement to dissolve the alliance after 36 years.

In 1994, 32 Muslim worshippers were killed by a Jewish settler who opened fire with an automatic weapon in the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank town of Hebron. The settler was overpowered and beaten to death.

In 1996, a bus bombing in Jerusalem killed 25 people.

In 2005, authorities arrested Dennis Rader, a municipal employee and church leader, for the so-called BTK (blind, torture, kill) serial killings that terrorized Wichita, Kan.

In 2006, Emmy-winning comic star Don Knotts, best known for his Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show," died of lung cancer. He was 81.

In 2007, Iran said it fired its first rocket into space.

In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was sworn in as president of Ukraine.

In 2011, voters turned sharply against the Fianna Fail party, which had dominated politics in Ireland since the 1930s, with a parliamentary election rout blamed on a severe financial crisis and other problems.

In 2012, Yemen's new president, Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi, was sworn in with a promise to continue fighting al-Qaida, calling it "a religious and national duty."

In 2013, the Roman Catholic Church announced that Cardinal Keith O'Brien, 74, the church's most senior cleric in Britain, resigned amid allegations of committing "inappropriate acts" years earlier in his relations with certain priests.

A thought for the day: John Foster Dulles said, "The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year."