GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS TUESDAY, May 20, the 140th day of 2014 with 225 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:18 and sunset is @ 8:03. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Neptune, Uranus & Venus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars, Mercury & Saturn.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama became the first European to reach India via either
the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea when he arrived at Calicut, India.

1830 – H.D. Hyde of Reading, Pennsylvania, patented the fountain pen.

1861 – North Carolina voted to secede from the Union, the last state to do so.

1861 – The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond,Virginia.

1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act, a program designed to grant 250 million acres of public land to small farmers at low cost.

1874 – Levi Strauss began marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.
1916 – Norman Rockwell’s first cover on “The Saturday Evening Post” appeared.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York, aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, on his historic solo flight to Paris, France.

1932 – Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

1939 – Regular transatlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, New York, bound for Europe.

1941 – Germany captured the island of Crete in the first totally airborne invasion.

1961 – A white mob attacked a busload of “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery, Alabama, prompting the federal government to send in United States marshals to restore order.

1969 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, referred to as “Hamburger Hill.”

1996 – The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.

2002 – East Timor became an independent nation.