GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS SATURDAY, December 06, the 340th day of 2014 with 25 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:58 and sunset is @ 4:11. The The Full Cold Moon exact @ 7:27 AM. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, Mercury & Saturn. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.
ON THIS DAY IN: 1492 – Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Santo Domingo.
1774 – Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.
1790 – The U.S. Congress moved from New York to the new capital in Philadelphia.
1877 – Thomas Edison made the first sound recording, of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” on the phonograph he invented.
1884 – Army engineers completed construction of the Washington Monument, placing the 3300-pound marble capstone atop it.
1907 – In Monongah, West Virginia 361 people were killed in America’s worst mine disaster.
1917 – The Bolsheviks imprisoned Czar Nicholas II and his family in Tobolsk.
1921 – The Irish Free State, composing four-fifths of Ireland, was declared part of an historic peace agreement with Great Britain.
1923 – The first presidential address to be broadcast on radio was given by President Calvin Coolidge to a joint session of Congress.
1947 – Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry Truman.
1948 – The “Pumpkin Papers” were found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers and became evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss was spying for the Soviet Union.
1957 – America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit blew up on the launch pad atCape Canaveral, Florida.
1957 – AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. (The Teamsters were readmitted in 1987.)
1973 – House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as Vice President, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew.
1998 – Endeavour’s astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the International Space Station in the shuttle cargo bay.
2001 – The name of the Canadian province of Newfoundland was officially changed to Newfoundland and Labrador.