GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS MONDAY, November 03, the 307th day of 2014 with 58 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:19 and sunset is @ 4:36. 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: 1493 – Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage, sighted Dominica in the West Indies.
1507 – Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to paint Lisa Gherardini, the “Mona Lisa.”
1631 – The first Protestant missionary, Reverend John Eliot, arrived in Boston. He was the first to try to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
1794 – Thomas Paine was released from a Parisian jail with the help of U.S. ambassador James Monroe.
1839 – The first Opium War between China and Britain began.
1868 – Ulysses S. Grant was elected 18th President of the United States of America.
1883 – The U.S. Supreme Court declared Native American Indians to be “dependent aliens.”
1896 – Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan to become the 25th President of the United States of America.
1900 – The first U.S. automobile show was held at Madison Square Garden.
1903 – Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia.
1908 – Republican William Howard Taft was elected President of the United States of America, defeating William Jennings Bryan.
1914 – Mary Phelps Jacob received the first patent for a brassiere. She marketed it under the name of Caresse Crosby.
1916 – Eugene O’Neill’s first play debuted in New York City, the one-act “Bound East for Cardiff.”
1927 – Turkey adopted the Roman alphabet or Latin alphabet, discontinuing the use of Arabic.
1936 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide election victory over Republican challenger Alfred M. “Alf” Landon.
1942 – The Battle of El Alamein in the North African desert ended, with British field marshal Bernard Montgomery victorious. Nine thousand German and Italian soldiers were captured and the Axis fled Africa.
1957 – The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika, the first living creature in space, on board.
1964 – President Lyndon Johnson defeated Republican Barry Goldwater in the election.
1969 – The Public Broadcasting System debuted when a few local educational TV channels united.
1975 – The North Sea pipeline, the first underwater pipeline, was officially opened by QueenElizabeth II.
1979 – The Greensboro Massacre occurred: five members of the Communist Workers’ Party, participating in an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, were shot to death in broad daylight by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis.
1986 – A Lebanese magazine, “Ash-Shiraa,” reported that the United States had been secretly selling arms to Iran in hopes of securing the release of American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
1992 – Bill Clinton was elected 42nd President of the United States of America, defeating President George Bush.
1992 – Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
1998 – Former pro wrestler Jesse (“The Body) Ventura” was elected governor of Minnesota.
2004 – Hamid Karzai was officially declared the winner of Afghanistan’s first presidential election.
2005 – Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, pleaded not guilty to a five-count felony indictment in the CIA leak case.