Next up for Fey: a book

Celebrity gossip, famous birthdays and other tidbits, compiled from Seattle Times news services.

People

Tina Fey, 38, already the busiest of stars, thanks to her Emmy-winning role in "30 Rock" and definitive impersonation of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is working on a book. Little, Brown will release a book of humorous essays by Fey, two sources said. The officials asked not to be identified and declined to give financial details. A Little, Brown spokeswoman did not comment.

In the courts

Anna Nicole video ruling

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff ordered a Texas doctor and his wife Friday not to distribute videotaped footage of Anna Nicole Smith's 1994 breast-augmentation surgery. The order settles a lawsuit filed last year by Howard K. Stern, executor of Smith's estate, who was trying to stop Dr. Gerald Johnson and his wife from distributing the tapes of the former Playboy Playmate. Smith, 39, died of a drug overdose in February 2007 in Florida.

Honors

In praise of the "Smoot"

The father of a measurement known as the "Smoot" returned Saturday to be honored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he and his fraternity brothers invented it 50 years ago. Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958 when its members decided to lay him on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. After discovering Smoot measured 5 feet 7, they marked the bridge in those increments, with Smoot getting up and down for each new measurement. They soon determined the bridge was 364.4 Smoots long. Today, Google.com's calculator function can convert any measurement into Smoots. The original Smoot, who became chairman of the American National Standards Institute, spoke Saturday at "Smoot Celebration Day" at MIT and received a plaque. The plaque will be installed on the bridge this year.

Today in History

1892: The Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, was nearly wiped out while attempting to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan.

1921: The World Series was broadcast on radio for the first time.

1931: Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon completed the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Washington state some 41 hours after leaving Japan.

1947: President Truman delivered the first televised White House address. Speaking on the world food crisis, Truman called on Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry and eggs on Thursdays.

1958: Racially desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tenn., was mostly leveled by an early morning bombing.

2003: A woman opened fire at an Atlanta church before Sunday services, killing her mother and the minister before committing suicide.

Today's Birthdays

"Family Circus" cartoonist Bill Keane, 86. Actor Jeff Conaway, 58. Writer-producer-director Clive Barker, 56. Actor Daniel Baldwin, 48. Actor Guy Pearce, 41. Actress Josie Bissett, 38. Singer-actress Heather Headley, 34. Actress Parminder Nagra, 33. Actor Scott Weinger, 33. Actress Kate Winslet, 33. TV personality Nicky Hilton, 25.