GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS SATURDAY, April 19, the 109th day of 2014 with 255 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:57 and sunset is @ 7:29. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn & Venus. The evening stars are Mars & Jupiter.
ON THIS DAY IN: 1775 – The American Revolutionary War began with the
Battles of Lexington and Concord. Troops under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Percy, played “Yankee Doodle” as they marched from Boston to reinforce British soldiers already fighting the Americans.
1782 – The Netherlands recognized the United States.
1861 – The first blood was shed in the Civil War when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attackedMassachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C.
1892 – The prototype of the first commercially successful American automobile was completed in Springfield, Massachusetts, by Charles E. Duryea and his brother Frank Duryea.
1897 – The first Boston Marathon was run from Ashland to Boston, Massachusetts.
1933 – The United States went off the gold standard.
1939 – Connecticut finally approved the Bill of Rights.
1943 – In Warsaw, Poland, Nazi forces attempting to clear out the city’s Jewish ghetto were met by gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters — beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
1945 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel” opened on Broadway.
1960 – Baseball uniforms began displaying player’s names on the backs.
1989 – A freak explosion aboard the USS Iowa battleship killed 47 sailors.
1990 – The Contra guerrillas, the leftist Sandinistas, and the Chamorro government ended the nine-year civil war with a truce.
1993 – The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended. A fire destroyed the structure after federal agents moved in; dozens of people including the leader,David Koresh, were killed.
1995 – A truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds. Timothy McVeigh was later convicted and executed for the crime. His co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, was sentenced to life in prison.
1999 – The German parliament inaugurated its new home in the restored Reichstag in Berlin, its prewar capital.
2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected Pope Benedict XVI.