This is Memorial Day.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include British statesman William Pitt in 1759; naturalist Louis Agassiz in 1807; Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe in 1888; British novelist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, in 1908; biologist and politician Barry Commoner in 1917 (age 90); actress Carroll Baker in 1931 (age 76); Annette and Cecile Dionne, surviving members of Canada's Dionne quintuplets, in 1934 (age 73); singer Gladys Knight and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, both in 1944 (age 63); and actresses Sondra Locke in 1947 (age 60) and Christa Miller in 1964 (age 43).

In 1798, the U.S. Congress empowered President John Adams to recruit an American army of 10,000 volunteers.

In 1892, the Sierra Club was founded by famed naturalist John Muir.

In 1934, the Dionne sisters, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, Maria and Annette, first documented set of quintuplets to survive, were born near Callander, Ontario, and soon became world famous. Emilie died in 1954, Maria in 1970 and Yvonne in 2001.

In 1961, Amnesty International was founded in London by lawyer Peter Berenson.

In 1987, West German Mathias Rust, 19, flew a single-engine plane from Finland through Soviet radar and landed beside the Kremlin in Moscow. Three days later, the Soviet defense minister and his deputy were fired.

In 1988, Syrian troops moved into southern Beirut to end 22 days of fighting between rival Shiite Muslim militias.

In 1991, NATO agreed to reorganize its forces in Europe, with a 50-percent cut in U.S. troops.

In 1992, Anthony Big Tuna Accardo, a former Al Capone gunman who later was labeled America's No. 1 mobster, died of natural causes at age 86.

In 1995, Bosnia's foreign minister and five other people were killed when Serb forces downed their helicopter.

In 1996, Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and two former business associates of U.S. President Bill Clinton were convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges in connection with Whitewater loans. Tucker resigned.

In 1998, Pakistan conducted five underground nuclear tests, prompting U.S. President Bill Clinton to impose economic sanctions against the Asian nation.

Also in 1998, in a first, digitized pictures taken by the Hubbell Space Telescope seemed to show an image of a planet outside the solar system. The planet circled two stars in the constellation Taurus.

In 2000, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori easily won the runoff election but nationwide demonstrations against him continued and he would resign in September.

In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law his modified tax reduction plan which lowered the tax rate for upper- and middle-income taxpayers and trimmed rates on capital gains and dividends.

Also in 2003, a spokesman for al-Qaida told an Arabic-language magazine the terror network wanted to poison the U.S. water supply.

In 2004, the Iraqi governing council gave unanimous approval to the appointment of Iyad Alawi, a prominent secular-minded Shiite and anti-Saddam exile, as prime minister.

In 2006, San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run to move past Babe Ruth as No. 2 on the all-time major league homer list. Hank Aaron is the career leader with 755.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include King Charles II of England in 1630; patriot Patrick Henry in 1736; Ebenezer Butterick, inventor of the tissue paper dress pattern, in 1826; English novelist G.K. Chesterton in 1874; movie composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1897; entertainer Bob Hope in 1903; John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, in 1917; actors Anthony Geary (General Hospital) in 1948 (age 59), Annette Bening in 1958 (age 49), Rupert Everett and Adrian Paul, both in 1959 (age 48), and Lisa Whelchel in 1963 (age 44) and singers Melissa Etheridge in 1961 (age 46) and Melanie Brown of the Spice Girls in 1975 (age 32).

In 1453, Constantinople (now Istanbul), capital of the Byzantine Empire, was captured by the Turks.

In 1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne.

In 1790, Rhode Island became the last of the original 13 states to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1848, following approval by the territory's citizens, Wisconsin entered the Union as the 30th state.

In 1865, U.S. President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation giving a general amnesty to all who took part in the rebellion against the United States.

In 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.

In 1977, a flash fire swept through a nightclub in Southgate, Ky., killing 162 people and injuring 30.

In 1985, British soccer fans attacked Italian fans preceding the European Cup final in Brussels. The resulting stadium stampede killed 38 people and injured 400.

In 1989, Chinese students in Tiananmen Square erected a 33-foot statue similar to the Statue of Liberty.

In 1990, renegade communist Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia.

In 1991, scientists from Emory University discovered the gene that causes fragile-X syndrome, an untreatable mental retardation.

In 1996, in Israel's first selection of a prime minister by direct vote, Binyamin Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres to become leader of Israel. The margin of victory was less than 1 percent.

In 1997, Lt. Kelly Flinn, the Air Force's first female B-52 bomber pilot, was discharged following an investigation stemming from adultery charges.

The same day, the Army relieved Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis of his command of the Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon, Ga., because of an apparently improper relationship with a civilian nurse caring for his wife.

Also in 1997, Zaire rebel leader Laurent Kabila was sworn in as president of what was again being called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 2000, the Indonesian government placed former President Suharto under house arrest on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

In 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington might have been avoided if the FBI had acted on available information.

In 2003, comedian Bob Hope was honored by the White House on his 100th birthday with establishment of the Bob Hope Patriotism Award for those showing extraordinary love of country and devotion to the personnel of the U.S. armed forces.

Also in 2003, Microsoft agreed to pay AOL Time Warner $750 million to end a private antitrust suit brought by AOL's Netscape Communications.

In 2004, the World War II memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington. Some 70,000 veterans of that war were on hand.

Also in 2004, a residential compound in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, was invaded by four armed militants who killed 22 and wounded 25, mostly workers in the oil industry from several counties.

In 2005, U.S. and British aircraft doubled Iraq bombings in 2002 to try to provoke Saddam Hussein into war, reports say.

In 2006, relief workers struggled to prevent sickness and hunger among hundreds of thousands of survivors from the Indonesian earthquake in Java. More than 5,000 people were killed in the 6.3 quake.

Also in 2006, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe won a second term by a sizable margin.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and many other cartoon characters, in 1908; bandleader/clarinetist Benny Goodman in 1909; restaurant executive Bob Evans in 1918 (age 89); Christine Jorgensen, who gained notoriety for undergoing a sex-change operation, in 1926; actors Clint Walker in 1927 (age 80), Keir Dullea in 1936 (age 71) and Michael J. Pollard in 1939 (age 68); NFL Hall of Fame running back Gale Sayers in 1943 (age 64); actors Colm Meaney in 1953 (age 54) and Ted McGinley in 1958 (age 49).

In 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, at age 19. She had been convicted of sorcery.

In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first daily newspaper published in the United States.

In 1806, future U.S. President Andrew Jackson took part in a duel, killing Charles Dickinson, a Kentucky lawyer who had called Jackson's wife Rachel a bigamist.

In 1868, the first major Memorial Day observance was held to honor those killed during the Civil War. It was originally known to some as Decoration Day.

In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington.

In 1937, a battle between police and strikers at the Republic Steel Corp. plant in Chicago killed 10 people and wounded 90.

In 1943, the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu off the Alaskan coast were retaken by U.S. forces after being occupied by Japanese troops during World War II.

In 1972, the unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 9 was launched on a mission to gather scientific data on Mars, ultimately sending back valuable information and becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a planet other than the Earth.

In 1972, three Japanese terrorists killed 22 people with automatic weapons at the airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In 1982, Spain became the 16th member nation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In 1995, the United States announced it had moved seven ships and 12,000 Marines and sailors to the Adriatic Sea in response to the Serbian hostage-taking of U.N. peacekeepers.

In 1998, Pakistan conducted another underground nuclear test, despite condemnation from many leading countries and the imposition of U.S. economic sanctions.

In 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the FBI would have expanded powers to monitor religious, political and other organizations as well as internet and other media as a guard against possible future terrorist attacks.

Also in 2002, the massive cleanup was completed in the ruins of New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

In 2004, a standoff near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between Saudi authorities and terrorists who held 50 hostages ended when commandos stormed the building. At least nine hostages were killed by Islamic militants.

In 2005, at least 27 people, mostly police officers, were killed and more than 100 were wounded when two suicide bombers exploded bomb vests in a city south of Baghdad.

In 2006, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow resigned, saying he was anxious to return to private life. U.S. President George Bush quickly nominated Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Henry Paulson to succeed him.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include poet Walt Whitman and surgeon William Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, both in 1819; radio humorist Fred Allen in 1894; clergyman-author Norman Vincent Peale in 1898; actor Don Ameche in 1908; U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash., in 1912; Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1923; actor Clint Eastwood in 1930 (age 77); Peter, Paul and Mary's Peter Yarrow in 1938 (age 69); country singer Johnny Paycheck in 1938; NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath and actress Sharon Gless (Cagney and Lacey), both in 1943 (age 64); actors Tom Berenger and Gregory Harrison, both in 1950 (age 57), and Kyle Secor (Homicide: Life on the Street) in 1958 (age 49); actor/writer Chris Elliot in 1960 (age 47); actress Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City) in 1961 (age 46); and actress/model Brooke Shields in 1965 (age 42).

In 1790, U.S. President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright law.

In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead.

In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.

In 1962, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann for his part in the killing of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

In 1973, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off funds for U.S. bombing of Cambodia.

In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934.

In 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened a four-day summit in Washington, focusing on the role of a united Germany in Europe.

In 1991, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced the United States had begun storing military supplies in Israel for use in future conflicts.

In 1994, U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., was indicted on felony charges, including embezzlement.

In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, in which two died, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina.

In 2004, a bomb ripped through a Shiite mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, while worshippers were saying evening prayers. Sixteen people were killed.

In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was Deep Throat, the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon's resignation.

In 2006, Officials said an estimated 200,000 people had died in the 3-year civil in Sudan's Darfur region and 2 million more had become refugees. The government and one rebel group agreed to stop fighting earlier in the month.

Also in 2006, Kimberly Dozier, the 39-year-old CBS reporter injured in a Baghdad bomb blast, was listed in critical but stable condition at a military hospital in Germany. Two members of the crew were killed.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Jacques Marquette, Jesuit priest and French explorer of the Mississippi, in 1637; Mormon leader Brigham Young in 1801; bandleader Nelson Riddle in 1921; actress Marilyn Monroe in 1926; actors Andy Griffith in 1926 (age 81), Pat Corley (Murphy Brown) in 1930; Edward Woodward, also in 1930 (age 77); crooner Pat Boone in 1934 (age 73); actor Morgan Freeman in 1937 (age 70); actor/comedian Cleavon Little in 1939; actor Rene Auberjonois in 1940 (age 67); actor Jonathan Pryce and rock musician Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones, both in 1947 (age 60); actress Diana Canova (Soap) in 1953 (age 54); actress Lisa Hartman Black in 1956 (age 51); comedian/actor Mark Curry in 1964 (age 43); and singer Alanis Morissette in 1974 (age 33).

In 1812, U.S. President James Madison warned Congress that war with Britain was imminent. The War of 1812 started 17 days later.

In 1880, the first public pay telephone began operation in New Haven, Conn.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court banned prayers and Bible teaching in public schools on the constitutional grounds of separation of church and state.

In 1968, Helen Keller, a world-renowned author and lecturer despite being blind and deaf from infancy, died in Westport, Conn., at the age of 87.

In 1973, Greek Prime Minister George Papadopoulos abolished the Greek monarchy and proclaimed Greece a republic with himself as president.

In 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN), TV's first all-news service, went on the air.

In 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to sharp cuts in chemical and nuclear weapons.

Also in 1990, the South African government proposed a bill to scrap the 37-year-old law segregating buses, trains, toilets, libraries, swimming pools and other public amenities.

In 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh resolved differences over a conventional weapons reduction treaty.

In 1993, the Guatemalan military, acting in response to appeals from the judiciary and the public, ousted President Jorge Serrano Elias from office.

Also in 1993, President Dobrica Cosic of Yugoslavia was voted out of office by parliament.

In 1997, French parliamentary elections brought parties of the left into power for the first time since 1986.

In 2003, with hostilities continuing in Iraq, coalition leaders decided against creating a large national assembly soon but rather devised a plan for an advisory council of 25 to 30 Iraqis instead.

In 2004, oil prices jumped to $42.33 a barrel, highest reported at that time.

Also in 2004, the Iraq Governing Council chose Ghazi al-Yawer to be the country's president as shells killed 15 near Baghdad's Green Zone, home of the U.S. Army command and Coalition Authority.

In 2005, Dutch voters joined France in overwhelmingly rejecting the proposed EU constitution.

In 2006, U.S. officials say they planned to exhume bodies of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by U.S. Marines in a 2005 retaliation attack at Haditha in western Iraq. Iraqi leaders said they would begin their own investigation.

Also in 2006, Indonesian authorities raised the Java earthquake death toll to 6,200.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include the first U.S. first lady, Martha Washington, in 1731; French writer Marquis de Sade in 1740; English novelist Thomas Hardy in 1840; English composer Edward Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance) in 1857; Hollywood columnist; Olympic gold-medal swimmer and Tarzan movie star Johnny Weissmuller in 1904; actor-composer Max Showalter in 1917; astronaut Charles Pete Conrad of Apollo XII in 1930; actress Sally Kellerman in 1937 (age 70); drummer Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones in 1941 (age 66); actors Stacy Keach in 1941 (age 66) and Charles Haid in 1943 (age 64); composer Marvin Hamlisch in 1944 (age 63); actor Jerry Mathers (Leave It to Beaver) in 1948 (age 59); and comedian Dana Carvey in 1955 (age 52).

In 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate armies of eastern Virginia and North Carolina in the Civil War.

In 1865, the Civil War came to an end when Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signed the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators.

In 1886, U.S. President Grover Cleveland, 49, married Frances Folsom, the 21-year-old daughter of his former law partner, in a White House ceremony. The bride became the youngest first lady in U.S. history.

In 1924, Congress granted U.S. citizenship to all American Indians.

In 1946, in a national referendum, voters in Italy decided the country should become a republic rather than return to a monarchy.

In 1953, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in London's Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II returned home to Poland in the first visit by a pope to a communist nation.

In 1992, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination as six states had the final primaries of the 1992 political season.

In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton met with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

In 1995, a U.S. F-16 fighter-jet was shot down by a Serb-launched missile while on patrol over Bosnia. The pilot, Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady, ejected safely and landed behind Serb lines. He was rescued six days later.

Also in 1995, Bosnian Serbs began releasing the 370 U.N. peacekeepers held hostage.

In 1997, a federal jury in Denver convicted Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. He was sentenced to death and subsequently executed.

In 1998, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky fired her lawyer, William Ginsburg, and retained two criminal lawyers. They would win her a grant of immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony before the grand jury investigating U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged relationship with her.

In 1999, in parliamentary elections, South African voters kept the African National Congress in power, assuring that its leader, Thabo Mbeki, would succeed the retiring Nelson Mandela as president.

In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission, in a controversial decision, voted 3-2 to eliminate a rule barring a media company from owning both a TV station and a newspaper in the same market.

Also in 2003, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in a report that inspectors before the war had been unable to prove or disprove the presence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

And, the bishop of the Phoenix Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church agreed under threat of indictment to give county prosecutors an unprecedented and powerful role in the church's handling of complaints about sexual abuse by priests.

In 2005, reports say a federal court has ordered the Pentagon to release photographs depicting abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Also in 2005, Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners in the second move of its kind since Mahmoud Abbas became Palestinian Authority president.

In 2006, the U.S. Senate immigration reform bill, if approved, would add nearly 20 million more immigrants to the United States population in a decade, a U.S. Congressional Budget Office report said.

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

Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, in 1808; automaker Ranson Olds in 1864; actor Maurice Evans in 1901; opera tenor Jan Peerce in 1904; jazz dancer and singer Josephine Baker in 1906; actors Paulette Goddard in 1910, Tony Curtis in 1925 (age 82) and Colleen Dewhurst in 1924; country blues singer Jimmy Rogers in 1924; poet Allen Ginsberg in 1926; sax virtuoso Boots Randolph in 1927 (age 80); TV producer Chuck Barris in 1929 (age 78); singer/songwriter Curtis Mayfield in 1942; singer Deniece Williams in 1951 (age 56); and actor Scott Valentine (Family Ties) in 1958 (age 49).

In 1888, the famous comic baseball poem Casey at the Bat was first published in the Sunday edition of The San Francisco Examiner.

In 1937, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, married divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore after abdicating the British throne.

In 1942, the battle of Midway began. It raged for four days and was the turning point for the United States in the World War II Pacific campaign against Japan.

In 1965, Gemini IV astronaut Ed White made the first American walk in space.

In 1985, an accord between Italy and the Vatican ended Roman Catholicism's position as sole religion of the Italian state.

In 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution, died.

In 1991, France signed the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which prohibits signatories from helping other countries acquire nuclear weapons.

In 1992, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opened the largest meeting on the environment in history amid tight security in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1993, after reading her writings, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced he was withdrawing the nomination of University of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

In 1994, North Korea's refusal to allow inspections of two of its nuclear power plants prompted the United States to ask the United Nations about new economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

In 1997, French Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin became prime minister.

In 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin, meeting in Moscow on a wide range of subjects, were unable to agree on the proposed U.S. missile defense system.

In 2003, North Korea accused South Korean navy ships of intruding its territorial waters, warning the border violation would lead to a second war on the Korean peninsula.

In 2004, CIA Director George Tenet, criticized for his handling of the terrorist threat, resigned.

In 2006, Canadian police said they had arrested 17 people in an alleged plot to commit a series of terror attacks against targets in southern Ontario. The suspects included 12 men and five teenage boys.

Also in 2006, an ex-con surrendered in Indianapolis to face charges of killing four adults and three children in what police believe was a robbery gone bad.