GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS THURSDAY, November 20, the 324th day of 2014 with 41 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:40 and sunset is @ 4:18. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, & Mercury. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 269 – Diocletian was proclaimed emperor of Numerian in Asia Minor.

1789 – New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights, approving 10 of the 12 amendments.
1818 – Simón Bolívar, declared Venezuela independent of Spain.
1820 – The whaler Essex, from Nantucket, Massachusetts, was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale near the western coast of South America. It was the first American vessel sunk by a whale.
1866 – Howard University, the first university for African-American students, was founded in Washington, D.C. as the Howard Theological Seminary.
1914 – Bulgaria proclaimed its neutrality in World War I.
1945 – The Nuremberg Trials began for 24 top Nazis accused of war crimes and atrocities.
1947 – Britain’s future queen, Princess Elizabeth II, married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, in a ceremony broadcast worldwide from Westminster Abbey.
1967 – The U.S. census reported the population at 200 million.
1969 – The Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT.
1974 – The United States filed an antitrust suit to break up AT&T.
1980 – In China, Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s widow, went on trial on charges of treason and government subversion.
2000 – Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori resigned, ending a 10-year reign.