GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS THURSDAY, July 3, the 184th day of 2014 with 181 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:11 and sunset is @ 8:25. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, Neptune, Uranus & Venus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars & Saturn.
ON THIS DAY IN: 321 – Sunday was designated a day of rest by Roman Emperor Constantine I.
1775 – General George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge,Massachusetts.
1863 – The three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, ended in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.
1890 – Idaho became the 43rd state of the Union.
1922 – “Fruit Garden and Home” magazine went on sale; two years later it was renamed “Better Homes and Gardens”.
1930 – Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration.
1954 – Nearly nine years after the end of the World War II, food rationing in Britain finally ended.
1962 – Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.
1988 – USS Vincennes mistook an Iran Air jetliner to be a fighter aircraft during the Iran-Iraq conflict and shot it down over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.
2005 – A NASA space probe, Deep Impact, hit Tempel 1 as planned, its comet target.
2006 – A near-earth asteroid labeled 2004 XP14 passes within 432,308 km of Earth.