GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS FRIDAY, October 31, the 304th day of 2014 with 61 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 7:16 and sunset is @ 5:39. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter and Mercury. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1517 – Martin Luther posted the “95 Theses” on the door of the Wittenberg Palace church in Germany, starting the Protestant Reformation.

1803 – Congress ratified the Louisiana Purchase, adding territory which will eventually become 13 states.

1902 – The first telegraph cable across the Pacific Ocean was completed.

1941 – USS Clemson Class destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German submarine, the first U.S. warship sunk in World War II. Though some were saved, 96 crew members died.

1941 – Mount Rushmore National Memorial was completed after 14 years.

1950 – Earl Lloyd became the first black to play in the NBA when he took the floor for theWashington Capitols.

1952 – The U.S. exploded its first hydrogen bomb, at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1956 – U.S. Rear Admiral George J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at theSouth Pole.

1959 – Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine from Texas, announced in Moscow that he would never return to the United States.

1968 – President Lyndon Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.

1980 – Reza Pahlavi, oldest son of the late shah, proclaimed himself the successor to thePeacock Throne.

1992 – Vatican formally rehabilitated Galileo Galilei, who was forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to recant his assertion that the Earth orbits the Sun.

2001 – Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department reached a tentative agreement to settle the historic antitrust case against the software giant.