The Almanac -- weekly

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

In 515 B.C., the rebuilding of the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem was completed.

In 1862, the U.S. Treasury issued legal tender notes in denominations from $5 to $1,000, the first American paper money.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first telephone message to his assistant in the next room: Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.

In 1880, the Salvation Army of the United States was founded in New York City.

In 1945, 300 U.S. bombers dropped almost 2,000 tons of incendiaries on Tokyo, destroying large portions of the Japanese capital and killing an estimated 100,000 people.

In 1969, James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. (Ray died in prison in 1998.)

In 1977, astronomers discovered rings around the planet Uranus.

In 1987, the Vatican condemned human artificial fertilization or generation of human life outside the womb and said all reproduction must result from the act of conjugal love.

In 1998, Indonesian President Suharto was elected to a seventh term.

In 2003, Ivory Coast, torn by civil war for six months, got a new premier, Seydou Diarra, under a French-brokered peace accord.

In 2004, Lee Boyd Malvo, 19, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in 10 Washington-area sniper killings in 2002. (His partner, John Allen Muhammad, considered the mastermind, was executed in 2009.)

In 2007, Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

In 2011, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, signed a bill ending or sharply restricting bargaining rights for most government workers in the state.

In 2012, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was accused of a door-to-door rampage in an Afghan neighborhood, killing 16 civilians, including nine children. (Bales was sentenced to life in prison.)

In 2013, a sport utility vehicle flipped and crashed into a pond at Warren, Ohio, killing six teenagers.

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

In 1824, the U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 1845, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died in Allen County, Ind.

In 1851, Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi preformed for the first time.

In 1861, in Montgomery, Ala., delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas adopted the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

In 1888, authorities said more than 200 people had died in a four-day snowstorm that crippled New York City.

In 1918, the first cases of Spanish influenza were reported in the United States. (By 1920, the virus had killed as many as 22 million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States.)

In 1930, William Howard Taft became the first former U.S. president to be buried in the national cemetery at Arlington, Va.

In 1941, the Lend Lease Bill to help Britain survive attacks by Germany was signed into law by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1942, after struggling to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving behind 90,000 U.S. and Filipino troops.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as leader of the Soviet Union.

In 1990, the Lithuanian Parliament declared the Baltic republic free of the Soviet Union and called for negotiations to make secession a reality.

In 1993, Janet Reno won unanimous U.S. Senate approval to become the country's first female attorney general.

In 2001, one of the worst weeks in Wall Street history began with a 436.37-point (4.1 percent) decline in the Dow Jones industrial average.(By week's end, all major indexes were down 6 percent.)

In 2004, 10 bombs exploded almost simultaneously on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring 1,400.

In 2006, Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his cell at The Hague, an apparent heart attack victim.

In 2007, French President Jacques Chirac announced his retirement after more than 40 years in politics.

In 2011, Japan was hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake that struck about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. The quake caused a tsunami that swept away people, homes, vehicles and ships. (The official death toll reached 15,800 with about 2,600 missing.)

In 2013, a federal jury found former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his friend Bobby Ferguson guilty of federal racketeering and extortion charges. (Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison and Ferguson to 21 years.)

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

In 1912, Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scouts of America troop in Savannah, Ga.

In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi began a campaign of civil disobedience against British rule in India.

In 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first of his Sunday evening fireside chats -- informal radio addresses from the White House to the American people.

In 1938, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Austria.

In 1947, in a speech to Congress, U.S. President Harry Truman outlined what became known as the Truman Doctrine, calling for U.S. aid to countries threatened by communist revolution.

In 1963, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to grant former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill honorary U.S. citizenship.

In 1993, more than 250 people were killed in a wave of bombings in Mumbai.

In 1994, the Church of England ordained its first women priests.

In 1999, former Soviet allies Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO.

In 2002, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking after Israeli raids killed 31 Palestinians, declared that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

In 2003, Elizabeth Smart, 15, who had been kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in June 2002, was found in the custody of a panhandler and his wife in nearby Sandy, Utah.

In 2008, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned after being caught in a high-priced prostitution scandal.

In 2009, a 17-year-old boy, who felt no one recognized my potential, killed 16 people, including nine students, at his former school in Winnenden, Germany. He died in a shootout with police.

In 2012, after days of violence, Palestinian and Israeli authorities agreed to a truce, an agreement reached with the help of Egyptian mediators.

In 2013, Steven Ray Thacker, 42, who killed three people during a crime spree in three states was executed in Oklahoma.

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

In 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel.

In 1868, the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and successor to Abraham Lincoln, climaxing a political feud following the Civil War. (He was acquitted by one vote.)

In 1881, Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in a St. Petersburg street by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary People's Will group.

In 1887, Chester Greenwood of Maine received a patent for earmuffs.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, banks throughout the United States began to reopen after a weeklong bank holiday declared by President Franklin Roosevelt in a successful effort to stop runs on bank assets.

In 1943, a plot by German officers to kill Hitler by blowing up his plane failed.

In 1974, the oil-producing Arab countries agreed to lift a five-month embargo on petroleum sales to the United States. The embargo, during which gasoline prices soared 300 percent, was in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the October 1973 Middle East War.

In 1990, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies formally ended the Communist Party's monopoly rule, establishing a presidential system and giving Mikhail Gorbachev broad new powers.

In 1996, a gun collector opened fire at a school in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 kindergarten children, their teacher and himself.

In 2000, the Tribune Co. and the Times Mirror Co., media giants featuring two of the nation's oldest and largest newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times) announced they would merge.

In 2004, Iran called an indefinite halt to inspections of its nuclear facilities.

In 2008, gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

In 2009, admitted Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, accused of defrauding thousands of clients of billions of dollars in a massive Ponzi scheme over 20 years, pleaded guilty to 11 felonies. (He was given a 150-year prison sentence.)

In 2011, the Dalai Lama, 75-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet, announced his resignation from his second job as his people's official political leader, a post he had held since he was 18.

In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, a Jesuit, became pope of the Catholic Church. He chose the name of Francis.

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

In 1794, Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.

In 1812, the U.S. government authorized the issue of America's first war bonds -- to pay for military equipment for use against the British.

In 1885, The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan made its stage debut in London.

In 1950, the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list appeared for the first time.

In 1951, Seoul was recaptured by U.N. troops during the Korean War.

In 1964, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby was convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of U.S. President John Kennedy. (Ruby was sentenced to death but the conviction was overturned and he died of cancer while awaiting a new trial.)

In 1991, scientists from around the world reported the discovery of the gene that triggers colon cancer.

In 2003, Hu Jintao was chosen to replace Jiang Zemin as president of China.

In 2004, Vladimir Putin easily won re-election as president of Russia.

In 2009, Australian authorities said a 230-ton oil spill from a Hong Kong-registered freighter caused an environmental disaster along nearly 40 miles of beach off the Queensland coast.

In 2010, Katie Spotz, 22, of Mentor, Ohio, became the youngest person and first American to complete a solo boat journey across the Atlantic Ocean, a 2,817-mile, 2 1/2-month voyage in a 19-foot wooden rowboat.

In 2012, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands, in its first verdict as a permanent war crimes tribunal, found Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of using children in war.

In 2013, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said more people are moving into the city than moving out for the first time in more than 60 years.

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

In 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus and others in Rome.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage to the New World.

In 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise between the North and South, Maine was admitted into the Union as the 23rd state. It had been administered as a province of Massachusetts since 1647.

In 1916, U.S. Army General John Black Jack Pershing led an expedition into Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, who had staged several cross-border raids. (The two-year expedition was unsuccessful.)

In 1984, the acquittal of a police officer on charges of negligently killing a youth sparked a rampage by angry African-Americans in Miami. About 550 people were arrested.

In 1985, two decades of military rule in Brazil ended with the installation of a civilian government.

In 1990, the Israeli Knesset brought down Yitzhak Shamir's government on a no-confidence motion after the Likud Party leader refused to accept a U.S. peace proposal.

In 1991, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic declared Serbia's secession from the Yugoslav federation.

In 2003, health officials said a strange new illness with pneumonia-like symptoms called severe acute respiratory syndrome -- SARS -- was spreading from Asia to Europe to North America.

In 2004, astronomers reported finding an object with a diameter of 800 to 1,100 miles circling the sun far beyond the orbit of any known planet. It was dubbed a planetoid.

In 2007, Palestinian leaders of Hamas and Fatah agreed to a coalition government but their platform didn't recognize Israel or renounce violence.

In 2008, a 19-story industrial crane collapsed on the East Side of New York's Manhattan, demolishing an apartment building and other structures. Four construction workers were killed and 13 others injured.

In 2009, Venezuelan voters abolished presidential term limits, which had restricted a president to two six-year terms.

In 2012, the Taliban in Afghanistan suspended preliminary peace negotiations with the United States, blaming unwanted U.S. efforts to include Afghan leaders in the talks.

In 2013, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said he now endorses same-sex marriage, a new perspective brought on after his son revealed in 2011 that he is gay.

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

In 1802, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

In 1827, Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the United States, was published in New York.

In 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuel rocket.

In 1966, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott docked their Gemini 8 space vehicle with an Agena craft, a first in orbital history.

In 1968, about 300 Vietnamese villagers died at the hands of U.S. troops in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre.

In 1994, the International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea barred its inspectors from checking one of the nation's seven nuclear sites.

In 1998, the Vatican apologized for not doing more to prevent the killing of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

In 2009, Japan reported its gross domestic product fell at a 12.7 percent annual rate in the last quarter of 2008, plunging the country into what experts said was its worst financial crisis since World War II.

In 2012, Belgium observed a national day of mourning for 28 people, 22 of them children, killed in a bus crash in Switzerland.

In 2013, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told conservatives the Republican Party establishment lacks new ideas and is mired in stupidity.