GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS THURSDAY, July 17, the 198th day of 2014 with 167 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 5:21 and sunset is @ 8:19. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Mercury, Neptune, Uranus & Venus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mars & Saturn.

ON THIS DAY IN:
1754 – King’s College opened in New York City; the Anglican academy would later become Columbia University.

1821 – Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

1867 – Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, Massachusetts — the first dental school in the U.S.

1898 – During the Spanish-American War, Spanish troops in Santiago, Cuba, surrendered to U.S. forces.

1945 – President Harry Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit of World War II.

1955 – Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California.

1975 – The U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 docked in space.

1996 – Shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport, a TWA Boeing 747 jetliner bound for Paris exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 people aboard. Investigators concluded that the explosion resulted from mechanical failure.

1997 – After 117 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores.

1998 – An earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, hits Papua New Guinea resulting in a tsunami which swept the coast.